Compounding Life | Rabbi Naftali Horowitz

My daily business routine involves helping my clients capitalize on a single idea. An idea which Albert Einstein referred to as the Eighth Wonder of the World. That idea is the Power of Compounding. You take small amounts of money, you grow it, and you multiply it many, many times over time, and that small amount of money becomes an astronomical sum. Warren Buffett, the world's greatest investor, once said the reason why he's the wealthiest investor is not that he's the best at it. It's just that he's been compounding much longer than everybody else. Sandy Bernstein, the founder of one of the firms that I work for, was an icon on Wall Street. He passed away as Zalman Chaim Bernstein, because somewhere in his late 50s and early 60s, he was Chozer B’Tshuva, he did a complete turnaround, and he's buried today on Har HaZeisim, overlooking the Makom HaMikdash. He was once asked what was it that made him turn his life around? And he said that he realized that the same strategies that he was deploying in his money, he also should be deploying in his life, overall. Sandy Bernstein one day realized that the most powerful thing that we can compound is our time. The pasuk tells us in Mishlei, Fear of Hashem adds to days, while the years of the wicked shorten it. Asks the Shlah HaKadosh, What is Shlomo HaMelech telling us? Is he telling us that if we have Yiras Hashem we will live longer? We obviously know that that's not true. So what is he telling us? Says the Shlah HaKadosh that time is linear. A moment that passes is a moment that will never come back. Time is a degrading asset. There's less time in the world left right now than there was when I started speaking, only a minute ago. Every moment is an opportunity. It's an opportunity to take that moment and bank it for all eternity into an escrow account, where it will compound forever and ever and ever. Or we can waste it by doing something trivial. יראת השם תוסיף ימים Yiras Hashem adds to time. It takes a degrading asset and it compounds it into something eternal, while the wicked take that opportunity and waste it. Warren Buffett can compound his money as long as he's alive, and then one day, it will all come to an end. We have the opportunity to take every single moment, as we walk down the street, and we have a moment where we can look or we could not look and we could think about it, I can waste this moment or I can put it away where I will enjoy the fruits of it for all eternity.