[empthought]

I am not sure what you are arguing. Someone said that retirement works “on paper”, and you get 20% more. I pointed out that “on paper” you get more than double what you put in.

All of these other issues you raise have nothing to do with the financial illiteracy leading to the idea that you save for retirement just to get an incremental return rather than a multiple (or two, really, depending on timing) of what you put in. Perhaps if this were more well known, people would invest more at age 22.

tl;dr we’re talking about “on paper” here, investment works as advertised (In fact, much much better than the original poster believes it advertised). All of the things you bring up here are about scenarios that aren’t “on paper” any more.