The VTSAX index is nice, if you're not unlucky. If you invested into VTSAX in mid-2007, then until today your annual return would be somewhere around 3.5%. Not

The VTSAX index is nice, if you're not unlucky. If you invested into VTSAX in mid-2007, then until today your annual return would be somewhere around 3.5%. Not horrible, but not 6% either. It does not matter that this year it's around 20%. What I'm saying is that you cannot simply take 6% return as granted -- it's similar to saying that property prices double every 10 years. Yes, usually they do raise, but not all the time. >If we have another financial crisis things are going to suck We tend to have financial crises in every decade. .com-bust, property crisis, Russian crisis, Black Friday, Japan stockmarket crash... they happen all the time. US Treasuries are practically zero risk, but obviously there are a lot of other risks - if you store your wealth in USD, then you have FX risk for example as most of your gadgets are produced in other countries like China, etc.