Just looked at some data that really puts things in perspective. A $10,000 investment in the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF two decades ago—back in 2006, right before everything went sideways—would be sitting at around $78,000 today. That's wild considering what we've been through: the financial crisis, the pandemic, the 2022 crash.

But here's what really caught my attention. According to Vanguard's latest report, the median retirement account balance is only $38,176. Think about that. Half of all retirement accounts are worth less than that. Meanwhile, the average savings of Americans overall hovers around $148,000, but that number gets inflated by a bunch of high-balance accounts. The reality is that only 3 out of 10 defined contribution plans at Vanguard actually exceed $100,000.

So that $10,000 investment from 20 years ago? It's now worth more than what the typical American has saved for retirement. That's not because people are lazy—it's just how compound returns work over decades.

The crazy part is this was a one-time investment. You didn't need to be a genius or take crazy risks with individual stocks. Just a passive S&P 500 index fund doing its thing. Imagine if you'd actually added $5,000 every year to that initial $10,000. You'd have over $513,000 by now. That's the real power play.

This is exactly what Warren Buffett means when he says you don't need to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results. The average American's retirement savings picture could look completely different if more people just stayed consistent with boring index fund investing. It's not glamorous, but the math works.