Course 03 · Then

Time, inflation, and risk

The last four lessons slow the conversation down. Money has a date attached. Prices in the economy drift. A single company can fail even when your story about it is sincere.

1. 01A later dollar is a different dollarMoney you can use now has opportunities that money arriving later does not. Timing is part of the value.
2. 02Pulling a future sum back to todayPresent value reverses compounding. Divide a future amount by (1 + rate) for each period you wait.
3. 03What inflation does to cashInflation is a rise in the general price level. The same money buys less. Measures such as CPI are built, not discovered.
4. 04One favorite company is a fragile planSpreading savings across many holdings limits the damage from any single failure. It does not cancel a market decline, and it is not a personal savings order.