If one new calculator is to be taken seriously (which it isn’t), parents might be kicking themselves for having kids instead of investing in Apple in the 1980s and early ‘90s. Released on Monday, the website What If I Bought Apple Instead helps parents and curious individuals calculate how much money they would have made had they invested their kid’s college fund and living expenses in Apple stock instead.
The calculator works by estimating how much money upper, middle, and lower income families would have spent on children born between January of 1981 and July of 2016. Apple went public in December of 1980 and had a closing price of $109.48 this Monday, so children born during 1981 have the best chance of making their parents the most money—had they not been born, of course.
To give you an example, an upper-income family making a gross income of more than $111,000 a year (in 2016 dollars) and spending $100,000 on a four-year college education would have made a whopping $41 million had they invested that money in Apple instead. Even lower-income families making less than $64,000 a year and spending $40,000 on four years at a public institution would have made nearly $26 million by fostering a relationship with Apple shares instead of a plaid-wearing, Pearl Jam obsessed teenager.
Clearly, Apple was the most promising child you could buy in the ‘80s. Fast-forward 30 years, and that’s no longer the case. Let’s say you decided to buy Apple stock in 2012 instead of giving in to biological impulses and social expectations. While it’s still the financially prudent choice, no doubt, as a middle-income family you’d only turn a profit of about $16,000 after investing the approximate $60,000 you would have thrown away on daycare, diapers, iPads, and whatever else babies need these days.
So next time your little angel won’t respond to your texts, tweets, or Facebook messages, mail them a link to this calculator and a bill for $20,000,000 dollars. That should get some sort of message across.
