[sophacles]

I'm not saying you aren't - I'm saying that assuming a 7% apr for the last 15 years from banks is not a good one - a savings accounts and CDs just don't pay out that high. Even if you got some big gains early (80s and early 90s) - the very low compounding rate since 2000 will squash those bank returns.

[JoeAltmaier]

Not quite true. Early money dwarfs later money in any calculation. But the last 15 years would certainly put a damper on things. Would be nice if the app calculated real interest return for us!

[sophacles]

Because I was curious, I looked up historical cd rates and got this: http://www.forecast-chart.com/rate-cd-interest.html

So i did this: https://gist.github.com/sophacles/a4469f5c656e09e4bc1d

(Note from the end of the chart linked til this month, I assumed the same interest rate).

And found that investing the once a month in a 6 month cd, with a dollar amount equal to the number of days in that month, plus reinvesting the amount coming due (principle + interest) that month from previous CDs, would yeild way less than the market according to this calculator:

In the CD case - just under $90K In the stock case - just under $560K

If my math turns out to be incorrectly done - please let me know I like to learn, but I think I did this right.