The same two lakh. Three time horizons. One label.
Two lakh deployed today at a twelve pct long run gross. The "found money" splurge has a forgone-growth bill that compounds quietly while the brain pretends the rupee never existed.
Yr 10
Decade horizon
One school admission cycle. One car upgrade window. The first compounding lap.
3.10x
Yr 20
Two decade horizon
Mid-career to pre-retirement runway. Where compounding starts to outpace contribution.
9.65x
Yr 30
Retirement horizon
A single Diwali bonus, left alone, sized like an early retirement contribution year.
29.96x
The label is the bug
Thaler 1985. Mental Accounting and Consumer Choice. Marketing Science. People bucket money by source not by purchasing power. Salary feels earned. Bonus feels found. The rupee does not care.
The marginal-spend bug
Thaler and Johnson 1990. Gambling with the House Money. Marginal propensity to consume on windfalls runs 0.5 to 0.9 across the literature. On salary it sits at 0.05 to 0.2. Same rupee, four to ten times the spend rate.
Illustrative compounding on a Rs 200000 lump at a 12 pct gross long run. Pre-tax. Past performance . backtest only . not a guarantee. Your numbers will differ. The label-bug will not.