re: Help me with my IRA understanding

It's not like the "IRA millionaire" is exactly a myth at this point. If you start contributing at 18 years old and max contributions every year, you will have over a million dollars in your account by the age of 65 even with a conservative return of 5%.

The problem is that most people don't start maxing contributions at 18 and don't compensate for the compounding problem this creates. I've spoken to people who claim it's "completely unrealistic" to have a decent nest egg by retirement age, only to find out that they didn't start investing until they were 35.