Interest – isn’t it great? I don’t mean the kind of interest you might get from some fuck boi on Tinder. I mean interest from the bank. It’s literally free money. Money in exchange for having money, with absolutely zero investment risk or effort required. Just shove your money somewhere, wait, and boom. Free cash.

If you’re anything like me, though, your experiences with interest will be more along the lines of a tasty little top of of about $30 each month, for those few months of your life when you actually had savings. Generally before a big trip happens, there’s that period of time when you’ve been saving and each month the interest fairy plops $30 into your account with the word ‘interest’ sprawled beneath it. Feelin’ extra fly and like the utter sass pot you truly are, this $30 will most likely be spent on brunch, a shellac mani, or it’ll bail you out of that upcoming Afterpay payment that was keeping you up at night.

Now it’s not rocket science to work out that the longer you save for, the more you’ll have at the end of it. So please please please, whatever age you are – start now.

Reckon you can afford $20 a week?

So many of us can, and if we stashed this tiny figure each week from the second we turn 21, right up to when we retire at 65 (if we’re fucking lucky – at this rate i’ll be workin’ til I’m 90), the total amount you’ve saved plus interest could fund more than a few nights at the bingo.

Here come the numbers:

Okay, so say we retire at 65, and start saving at 21 – that’s 44 years of savings.

And let’s say we open a savings account with a 3% interest rate. This will of course fluctuate over time, but let’s hedge our bets and say 3%.

With compound interest, your $20 a week would be worth $94,892 by the time you retire at 65. Of that $94,892, a whopping $49,132 is interest. So, FREE MONEY.

Sound good? Race ya to online banking!