[dndn1]

Hi - author here - these compound returns are not guaranteed. I reinforce this point under health warnings.

Here the 6% compound returns is an assumption. If that's good or bad to use depends on the purpose of the projection. For long projections in medium-risk funds this might be a reasonable value - but it can also be far off, especially in the short-term.

I made a separate post that surfaces results from an assumed distribution of outcomes rather than a single value, called Visualizing Risk: https://calcwithdec.dev/posts/viz-risk/ (basically a monte carlo simulation)

Also, in my pension calculator example on calculang.dev you can change all the assumptions: https://calculang.dev/examples-viewer?id=pension-calculator (excluding tax relief bits - it's just an example)

[spencerflem]

Yeah didn't mean it as a critique of you or the article! More just kinda speculating about society

I do think we try very hard to keep it as guaranteed as possible, if something would happen to stocks as a whole the government is willing to pull a lot of stops

[tjohns]

> I do think we try very hard to keep it as guaranteed as possible, if something would happen to stocks as a whole the government is willing to pull a lot of stops

As a matter of policy, the government explicitly doesn't set policy in attempt to influence stock returns.

However, the government does try to prop the broader economy up. Rightfully so, because if that collapses you have people without jobs or rapid inflation. Neither of which are good for society.

It just so happens that stock returns are indirectly coupled to overall economic performance, so a healthy economy (generally) means a healthy stock market.

[dndn1]

Aha - I get you!