Your thinking at to low a level, the choices that have real impact are things like:
Where should I live? (Buy? Roommates?)
What kind of car should I get? (Make? Age?)
Sould I learn? (To cook, draw, lisp?)
What kind of Heath insurance do I get? (none?)
What cellphone plan do I get.
What do I do for entertainment?
Should I start packing lunch?
Each of these can be with 100,000+$ at retirement should I get a soda while at I get gass may be habit forming, but it's got little long term impact. Edit: Getting a Starbucks coffie every day or bringing from home is also one of the 100,000+$ choices but only in terms of the habit not crap I forgot to buy beans what do I do?
I was trying to give a single example that fit within the framework of small decisions, but yes there are definitely bigger decisions too.
I would argue that the soda vs water is easily worth $100k at retirement. Two times a day a person might make that choice. That's $4 a day, 365 days a year or $1460. Or $43,800 after 30 years. Once you add in some kind of compounding interest (I know there is very little yield available these days, but that's not the norm) you can easily hit $100k.
I guess part of my thinking is that it's not even JUST the big decisions that a person makes, but ALL the decisions they make. You can come out ahead on any/all of them and the effects are cumulative.
