You know what's interesting? Warren Buffett, despite being one of the greatest stock pickers ever, actually tells most people not to pick stocks at all. His track record speaks for itself — nearly 20% annual returns since 1965, which is wild compared to the market's typical 10%. But here's the thing: he genuinely believes the average person should just throw money into index funds instead.

I've been thinking about this lately, especially when people ask me about starting small. Like, what if you just committed to saving $100 a week? That's not some crazy amount, but the math on it is actually pretty compelling.

So why does Buffett push index funds so hard? The main reasons are pretty straightforward. First, there's way less risk because you're not betting everything on one company. You get instant diversification across hundreds of stocks. Second, the fees are minimal compared to actively managed funds where you're paying managers to pick stocks (and most of them don't beat the market anyway). And third, you always know exactly what you're invested in — total transparency.

The S&P 500 is his go-to recommendation. It's basically 500 of America's biggest companies across different industries, so it's a solid proxy for the overall economy. Historically, it's averaged around 10% annual returns since the mid-1960s.

Now here's where it gets interesting. If you actually committed to investing $100 every single week, the compound interest does some serious heavy lifting over time. After just one year of saving $100 a week, you'd have put in $5,200 of your own money. That's the foundation. But if you keep going for 10 years? You're looking at $52,000 in contributions growing to around $87,000 total. That's $35,000 in gains just sitting there.

Extend that to 20 years and the picture gets wild. Your $104,000 in actual contributions turns into over $312,000. The investment returns alone are $208,000 — more than double what you put in. Go another decade to 30 years and you're at nearly $900,000. Forty years? We're talking about $2.4 million from consistent $100 weekly investments.

The really crazy part is that if you started at 20 years old and invested $100 a week for 45 years until retirement at 65, you'd have almost $4 million. And you'd have only actually contributed $166,400 of your own money. Everything else is compound growth.

One thing worth noting though: the S&P 500 isn't perfectly balanced anymore. The top 10 companies now make up almost 30% of the index's value, and most of them are tech stocks. So if tech has a rough patch, it could have an outsized impact on your returns. Some people deal with this by going with an equal-weight S&P 500 index instead, where each of the 500 companies gets the same allocation. That spreads out the risk differently.

But honestly? The core idea is solid. Start small, stay consistent, and let time do the work. Even if you save $100 a week for just a year to start, you're building momentum. The key is actually starting and then not stopping.