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Say you are a better investor than me. I can earn 8% annual returns and you can earn 12% annual returns.
But I am more efficient with my money. Let us say I need half as much money to be happy while your lifestyle compounds as fast as your assets.
I am better off than you are, despite being a worse investor. I am getting more benefit from my investors despite lower returns.
The same is true for incomes. Learning to be happy with less money creates a gap between what yo9u have and what you want, similar to the gap you get from growing your paycheck, but easier and more in your control.
A high savings rate means having lower expenses than you otherwise could and having lower expenses means your savings go farther than they would if you spent more.
Think about this the context of how much time and effort goes into achieving .1% of annual investment outperformance, millions of hours of research, ten of billions of dollars of effort from professionals and it is easy to see what potentially more important is or worth chasing.
Big investment return and fat paychecks are amazing when they can be achieved. But the fact that there is so much effort put into one side of the fiancé equation and so little put into the other is an opportunity for most people.
