Chapter 1
The Coin That Would Not Sit Still
When I was a boy, my grandmother kept a coin in a tin that had once held sweets. It was nothing special, a worn ten-cent piece with the year rubbed almost smooth. She never spent it. On quiet afternoons she would take it out, set it on her palm, and say the same thing every time: "This one is working."
I did not understand her. A coin in a tin does not work. It sits. It gathers a little dust and a little tarnish, and it waits. But my grandmother had a longer view than I did, and she was pointing at something that took me many years to see clearly. She was not talking about that single coin. She was talking about a habit, and about time, and about the strange way that small things become large when you are patient enough to let them.
This book is about that strange way. It is about money, yes, but more than that it is about growth, about markets, and about the temperament of the people who live alongside both. I want to begin at the very root, because the root is where most of the confusion lives.
Here is the root. Money can sit, or it can grow. When prices rise, money kept unchanged may buy less than it did before; when prices are stable or falling, the result may differ. This is an explanation of purchasing power, not a judgment about what any reader should do. Cash and investments serve different purposes, carry different risks, and must be considered in light of individual circumstances.
