My bank account keeps growing constantly.

For the first eleven months a savings balance reads like an insult. Money goes in, the number barely moves, and the whole exercise feels like a joke arranged at your expense.

The second year is different and the fifth is unrecognisable. Nothing changes except that the thing is allowed to keep going.

Almost everything that grows has this shape: flat for longer than seems fair, then bending. The people who end up with the graph are rarely the ones who found a clever route. They are the ones who were still there during the flat part, putting in an amount that embarrassed them.