At 35 i’ve already got ~500K in my 401K.

I guess it won’t work for people not saving enough into it and not actively managing their fund allocations over the years.

For most people it's impossible to save that much on their income. You are relatively well paid. Most people in the USA haven't even received $500k cumulative total post-tax income by the time they are 35,.

Median incomes don't reach that level. Here are median personal income figures over the last 17 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...

Then bear in mind those are aggregated across age, and younger people tend to earn less, so if you add up the figures that sum is higher than the median total income working 18 to 35.

Even if most people miraculously saved 100% of everything they earned for 17 years, live on nothing but air and paid zero for housing, most people couldn't reach $500k by 35.

Necessary expenses (housing, food, transport etc) take up a higher proportion of their income than yours too, just because of lower income while necessary expenses don't decrease proportionately. So the proportion they can realistically save is lower than you could. For many it's a struggle to save anything, but even for those who can and are willing to sacrifice a lot, $500k by 35 is dream money.

Saving a higher proportion and active fund management are not enough to make up the difference. Most people if they want $500k in a 401k by 35, have to earn significantly more than they actually do. Of course if everyone was successful at that, prices would rise to compensate and $500k in the 401k wouldn't be worth as much.

I started at 50K out of college and am still not quite to 100K a year yet.

All I have done is maxed out my 401K every year since 2010, and put the money into low-cost index funds.

~60% of the balance is from principal alone and the ther 40% is from the stock growth.

I don't know how to find numbers, but I think that is better than pensions every were. It still isn't very good though.