I read the article. Bro, that dude started investing following the stock market crash of the great depression with an initial investment of ~$2500, equivalent to about $60k today. That’s not $10. That’s $60k which was then invested over 80 years starting at the lowest point in the history of the market and going into the postwar economic miracle of the US in WW2.
This is not a reasonable comparison, even a little. Average returns today are a tiny fraction of what this guy saw in his lifetime, and he was able to put down an amount that is nearly the median household income in the US today. If someone can put down a years wages into the stock market then they’re already financially stable. Nearly a third of Americans have less than $1k in savings. Not to mention, for most of the working class today, if you have $60k to throw around, it would be a better financial strategy to use that as a down payment on a house than put it into the market.
Let’s do the math. For baby boomers, I have average returns since 1970. An average of 10% a year. As a reminder, this is MARKEDLY LOWER (we’ll get there) than what your example saw in his lifetime. You’re right! Even investing $60 a month ($720 a year) over 40 years ($28,800 total) makes you a cool half a mil at that rate. HOWEVER. At today’s rates, an average return of 6.1% means you would need to invest almost 5x as much, $250 a month ($3000 a year) to reach the same amount in 40 years ($120,000 total). Meanwhile, your example lived through times where returns were, at times, on average, over 40% a year. On average. While that wasn’t the market state for his whole life, it WAS the state not long after he started investing. If you could get those numbers comsistently, it would take less than $1 a month over 25 years to make half a million dollars.
Absolutely incomparable.
To hammer home how your “just stop buying coffee” attitude on poverty today is bonkers, lets run the math on today. Average 6% returns over 40 years with the $10 a month you said. Over 40 years, with the power of compound interest and $10 a month ($120/year, 4800 total), you end up with, ta-da! $15,000. This is not a retirement fund.