Want $1 Million in Retirement? 11 Simple Index Funds to Buy and Hold for Decades.

1 day ago 1

Selena Maranjian, The Motley Fool

Sat, January 10, 2026 astatine 10:25 AM CST 5 min read

If you're not redeeming and investing for status portion pursuing a coagulated status plan, you astir apt should be. Simply relying connected Social Security is not apt to get you precise far. After all, the mean monthly Social Security status payment was conscionable $2,013 arsenic of November. That's lone astir $24,000 for the year!

So beryllium definite to beryllium socking distant galore of your hard-earned dollars into immoderate status accounts for your future. Here are immoderate coagulated scale funds to see -- each of them successful exchange-traded money (ETF) form. (An ETF is simply a mutual-fund-like information that trades similar a stock.)

Someone has a manus  connected  their chin, looking up   portion    holding currency  fanned out.

Image source: Getty Images.

Before we research immoderate bully scale funds, let's analyse however your wealth tin grow, arsenic this whitethorn pass immoderate of your investing decisions.

The array shows however wealth tin turn implicit time. I utilized an 8% maturation complaint due to the fact that the wide banal marketplace has averaged yearly gains of adjacent to 10% implicit agelong periods -- and it mightiness mean little (or more!) than that implicit your peculiar investing period.

Growing astatine 8% for

$7,500 invested annually

$15,000 invested annually

Five years

$44,000

$88,000

10 years

$106,649

$217,298

15 years

$203,641

$407,282

20 years

$343,215

$686,429

25 years

$548,295

$1,096,589

30 years

$849,624

$1,699,248

35 years

$1,292,376

$2,584,752

40 years

$1,942,924

$3,885,848

Data source: Calculations by author, via Investor.gov.

If you're aiming to amass $1 million, you tin spot successful the array that it's precise achievable, but it mightiness instrumentality a fewer decades. Of course, determination are ways to get determination faster, specified arsenic by plowing much wealth into your status accounts and earning a higher mean yearly instrumentality than 8%.

Consider, too, whether a $1 cardinal extremity is the close 1 for you. If you're inactive youngish, there's a bully accidental that $1 cardinal won't beryllium enough. Per the flawed-but-still-useful 4% rule, you'd beryllium withdrawing 4% of that $1 cardinal successful your archetypal twelvemonth of retirement, adjusting consequent withdrawals for inflation. So that's a $40,000 withdrawal to statesman with.

If your status is still, say, 25 years away, $40,000 won't apt spell that far. It mightiness adjacent person the purchasing powerfulness of $20,000 oregon so, owed to inflation.

Of the 11 ETFs listed below, 9 look promising for holding implicit a play of 5 years oregon more.


Read Entire Article