Most people want to get ahead financially. For most of us, though, it’s pulling out as much money as we can from, if we’re lucky, what’s left after paying for a dwelling and food and clothing and the car, student loans and maybe a meal out and some entertainment.
There are the voices that say cut the coffee, the avocado toast, all the small things because that’s the way to wealth. But it’s not. That’s a con game. There’s never going to be enough when $20 saved a month and put into a 6% return for 40 years you end up with $39,829.81. That’s a retirement timeline that ends up with enough money to keep you for, what, a year or two if you’re exceptionally frugal?
There are many people who want to fasten tight onto the average person and make money from them. It might be those gurus who are raking in large fees from the book sales and media blitzes and whatever else they do to keep the hope hype going.
But at least they do have some points. If you keep putting money on a regulation basis into safe investors, you’ll make more money through the fiscal grace of compound interest. You will eventually have more, although it’s not the same as the days when people got real pensions and the invention of the 401(k) was about adding some additional savings on top, not self-funding one’s golden years.
