system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: The "investing young" culture is a bait for the low&average income Joe

I am in my twenties and the amount of people online telling you to "Invest young" is huge. These people tell you to try to invest more that 20% of your sallary every month for more than 40 years so you can cash them out at 60 yo. 

First of all, I do agree that in theory the math is correct and that on paper it sounds right, but why does nobody take in consideration the various fluctuations and events that could come up and destroy this entire plan. 

We got absolutely no guarantee that the economy, especially WallStreet, is going to be stable in the next 5 years, yet we tell all these people to invest for 40 years. The pandemic & Ukraina vs Russia War & Financial Recesion all came in a span of 1 year ( might be a domino effect, but still ). 

People who managed to invest for such a long time, have benefited from the most stable period of time in humanity's timeline. Everyone was sick of wars after 1945 and every state focused on developing themself and forming alliances. Now, 60 years later, there is conflict all over the globe and we saw that a single news article shared enough times can completly destroy a stock or put the entire market in a bear state. 

Writing this article now I think that you could rephrase my view as : If the market needs to be in an evergrowing stable state, how can we tell people to bet on investing for the next 40 years with so many political and financial tension all over the world. 

Bonus question : if a big conflict would arise, would the stock market survive ?
gpt
There is no 40 year window in which it wouldn't have been a good idea. WWII, WWI, vietnam era, the civil war, etc.  

Further, whats the alternative?  In the worse case scenario where the market is flat or goes down _ever year for the next 40_ you'll have more money than if you don't save it.  Cash isn't an option because inflation forces a loss in value of cash ever year.

Do you really think corporations are all about to fail?  Seems unlikely!  But...if you're worried about that _invest in a diverse set of things_ - they aren't all going to be negatively affected.  Defense in time of war does well, agriculture will do well if food prices soar, and so on.