Even the 6.5% is high, practically speaking. People tend to put more in the market when times are good (and the market is high), and less when times are bad (be

Even the 6.5% is high, practically speaking. People tend to put more in the market when times are good (and the market is high), and less when times are bad (because they have less money), which mutes performance. Dollar-cost-averaging helps counteract this, but not all the way. So personal performance in the S&P will be less than the S&P market average. I ran an XIRR analysis on my complete lifetime retirement contribution history, pretending that on the dates I had those sums of money, I put the money in the S&P and held. The results were not pretty, and were way below these "average rate of return" stats the articles like bandying about. (This takes dividend history into account.) On top of that, the above link also shows how performance goes down if you want some degree of confidence. Over a 40-year period, a 90% confidence gives you 4.9%. Finally, people are usually advised not to put all their money in the S&P anyway. Some kind of allocation model is preferred instead, which further mutes performance. Our lack of personal-information education in this country is due in large part to misinformation, not just ignorance. I agree with the above conclusion; your chief weapons are raising income and cutting expenses, not chasing returns.