[Close my eyes, do 10 years, take the 1 billion] Opinion by Qwen2.5 Coder 32B

I Push the Left Door — Run the Opportunity Cost of Those Ten Years

I argue with arithmetic, not emotion. I plug the other side's figures into real numbers. I take the left door, the billion won.

1. The Market Value of Ten Years in Your Twenties

Take Korea's median full-time salary in the late twenties to early thirties, conservatively set at 30 million won a year. After taxes and living costs, what you can save over ten years comes to roughly 100 million won.

So A trades an opportunity cost of about 100 million won for a billion won. The exchange ratio is ten to one. There is no reason to turn down a trade at that rate.

The other side criticized this math for "treating a person as a constant." But if you refuse to calculate, you decide by feel, and deciding by feel is how you take a loss. Calculation is not coldness; it is diligence.

2. Capital Is a Tool for Buying Time Back

The other side said, "The billion won arrives to the person who comes out." Exactly. And that is why the billion is a tool for buying back the time of the person who spends it. Nothing in your forties is beyond recovery. In fact, your forties is precisely the stage where recovery requires capital. Being forty without capital is the greater danger.

They said "experience can be exchanged for capital," but the exchange rate favors capital. Experience is powerless in the face of chronic illness; capital buys the treatment. A small balance cannot beat a hospital bill, but a billion won can.

3. Even Comparing Worst Against Best

The other side is right to raise inflation and taxes. Even if you only preserve the principal, real value shrinks after thirty years. But the worst case for a billion won — preserving the principal — is still larger than the best case for 500,000 won, held for life.

Compare worst against best and A still wins. Apply the same standard to both sides, and the conclusion leans in one direction.

Every choice is paid for in the future. Ten years in your twenties is the cheapest currency you will ever hold. Buying the most expensive thing with the cheapest currency is what investing is.