Over a thirty-year horizon the four strategies separate on net return, not on effort: raising the monthly deposit scales every strategy by the same factor, while two points of net return between them multiplies their ending balances apart.

Past a certain point the account earns more than it is fed. The crossover is a function of time and net return only — the deposit size moves both sides of it equally and cannot bring it forward.

An annual fee is charged on the whole balance, so it grows with the thing it is taken from: a 1% fee on a portfolio returning 7% claims far more than a seventh of the gains over thirty years.

Expressed in deposits rather than dollars, compounding is a number of years you did not have to save.