Most investors have a fantasy in the back of their mind about taking $5,000 and somehow turning it into $1,000,000. It plays out like this: a late-night scroll through success stories online, Instagram reels showing traders flexing in Lamborghinis, and that one friend's cousin who "made it big." The logic works: the markets move, people get wealthy, so why not you? The answer is much more complicated than that. Yes, it is likely possible to turn $5,000 into $1 million, but it's more than simply luck or an aggressive "go for it" strategy. It requires understanding what money actually grows, the best tools to use, withstanding the ridiculously small amount of risk, and, to be honest, whether your true risk tolerance can handle the ride. The Power of Exponential Growth: Understanding Compounding Compounding is easy to grasp but amazing in its effect—take an amount of money, that money earns return, the return earns return; repeat this long enough, and gr...