Every personal finance creator references return benchmarks. Most cite the same static figures, "the S&P 500 has averaged 10% annually", without ever asking their own audience what they're actually targeting. This page does that. The data below comes from investors and finance creators who voted here. It updates as more people respond.
What Return Are You Targeting?
Vote to add your data point and see where you sit relative to the community.
What the Data Shows
Responses are still arriving — the distribution hasn't stabilized enough to draw a reliable conclusion. What's already visible is that return expectations vary widely across the creator audience, which itself is a useful data point. Check back as the sample grows; this paragraph will update to reflect the current consensus.
What the Benchmarks Actually Mean
The S&P 500 Anchor Problem
The long-run S&P 500 average return of roughly 10% nominal (7% real after inflation) has become the default anchor for "standard" portfolio expectations. This is both useful and misleading.
It's useful because it gives investors a consistent reference point across decades. It's misleading because individual investors don't hold the index in isolation, they hold portfolios with cash drag, fees, tax events, and behavioral errors that systematically underperform that benchmark. The median individual investor return is estimated to be 3–5 percentage points below the index.
Targeting 7–9% is realistic for a low-cost, diversified, buy-and-hold investor. Targeting 10–12% is achievable but requires either significant equity concentration, above-average risk tolerance, or above-average skill in security selection, each of which carries its own failure mode.
Conservative Targets Aren't Just for Retirees
The 4–6% bracket is often dismissed as overly conservative, but it's the appropriate target for anyone with a short time horizon, a high withdrawal rate, or a low tolerance for sequence-of-returns risk. A creator who builds content around "I'm targeting 5% because I'm 8 years from retirement and can't afford a drawdown" is making a sophisticated, defensible argument, not a timid one.
The data on this page shows where the creator audience sits. When conservative targets shrink, it's worth asking whether that reflects genuine risk tolerance or whether it reflects recency bias from a strong equity market.
The 13%+ Camp and the Selection Effect
Investors targeting 13%+ annual returns are making an implicit claim: that they have an edge over the market, whether through concentrated positions, active trading, alternative assets, or leverage. Some do. Most don't.
The presence of a large 13%+ cohort in this data is likely a selection effect, the type of investor who reads personal finance creator content and votes on polls skews younger, more active, and more confident in their ability to outperform. That's worth knowing when you use this data in your content.
Why These Benchmarks Matter for Creators
If you publish portfolio updates, return reports, or financial analysis, your readers are benchmarking your numbers against their own expectations. If your stated return target is in the 7–9% range and your audience is predominantly targeting 13%+, there is a credibility mismatch worth addressing explicitly.
The data on this page gives you a live read on your audience's expectations, not a static survey from two years ago, but the current distribution as it shifts with market conditions and community growth.
Publish Benchmarks That Don't Go Stale
Annual return benchmarks have a short shelf life. A chart showing "most investors target 7–9%" published in January will be factually outdated by December, not because the answer changed dramatically, but because the sample grew and the distribution shifted.
LiquiChart charts connected to this poll update automatically. The chart in your newsletter archive reflects today's distribution, not the day you published.