Question: how much money would you have if you doubled a penny everyday for a month?
Answer: Now that you've read the fable, you can see the choice is pretty clear: it's better to have a single penny that doubles everyday for a month, versus $1 million up front. This is because of the power of compound interest. If you took a single penny and doubled it everyday, by day 30, you would have $5,368,709.12.