Mine was realizing the 'administrative ratios' or whatever they called it in my 401k was just them sitting on their duff not doing a damn thing for me, and still collecting huge $ even with the small percentages applied and agreed to.

1% of a million is still a lot of money to just be giving away to those pilfering jerkwads. And that's yearly. Some were double-digits...yearly. You will always lose in those scenarios.

Everybody else just wants your time and effort paid to them exclusively, for free, and if you don't understand the mechanisms for how they drink your milkshake, then that's so much better...for them.