You know, I used to think exactly like you do, but I changed because I found that when I was using cash, I couldn't keep track of how I was spending my money.
The sum has three moving parts: the value of the current investment pot, the discount rate used to calculate the present value of future payouts, and the stream of those expected future payments.
In August 2016 news broke revealing a secret ledger that surfaced in Ukraine showing Manafort had received $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments from Yanukovych’s party over a span of 5 years.
This is a variation on something we’ve known for decades - which is that people find it harder to spend money when they’re paying in cash than if they’re using a card.