Before reading the article I just calculated that they would probably be similar, I would probably be inclined to take the monthly $5K because I don't have as m

Before reading the article I just calculated that they would probably be similar, I would probably be inclined to take the monthly $5K because I don't have as much faith in the market delivering 6% returns over the long term. However; there are so many factors that could push me to decide that $1M would be better. I don't think it would help me personally to see a Monthly projections on my retirement accounts. In fact, I trust monthly projects less because I've seen my 401K projecting a huge per month number when I was contributing a miserly amount of my pay check. I wonder whether they were straight up lying or assuming my salary and contributions would increase. The thing about projections is that there are so many factors that the investment companies don't know about me or my plans. They don't know when I'm planning to retire, what my budget is, what other investments I have, what I expect to make in the future, or what risks I'm planning for. If people have as much information as there exists today and they make bad decisions, changing it to monthly projections won't solve their problems. It might create more.