Of course that depends on having a great job. But there are many periods of time over which responsibly invested yields no return. If you were twenty years in right now, your investments wouldn’t even keep up with inflation. If you invested in almost any other period (1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70's) you would have been better off. But these macro-market-tops, where algorithms are running the markets through forced volatility and real corporate profit is going down (yes — read my book!), it’s hard for a passive investor to get returns. The ads are actually lying. Real return on even S&P funds is quite low.