compound interest's polite way of telling you to stop spending your own success.
means putting profits or returns back into the thing that generated them instead of pocketing the cash.
from the concept traces to double-entry bookkeeping and industrial capitalism, but the word gained teeth in 20th-century finance once economists formalized how plowing earnings back into an asset compounds growth rather than just banking it.
berkshire hathaway — buffett has reinvested earnings instead of paying dividends since 1967
amazon 1997-2015 — bezos plowed profits into infrastructure, posting near-zero net income for years
drip programs — utilities like con edison let shareholders auto-reinvest dividends since the 1960s
community reinvestment act — 1977 us law requiring banks to reinvest in underserved local communities