+1 on the link (or many others that are similar)9-5 Suited wrote: ↑Wed Jun 29, 2022 9:34 am This is a pretty widely circulated blog post on the topic. At some point it just boils down to how long you desire to work and the assumptions you make about investment returns. There can't be a single appropriate savings rate relative to either income or expenses since it's obviously going to be significantly different if you hope to work 10, 20, or 30 more years.
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01 ... etirement/
The interesting thing about savings rate is that you can look up how long you have to keep it up until you become independent of paid work. If you manage to get to 50% savings rate consistently, your actual time to FIRE is rather surprisingly short...short enough to be motivating for such a savings rate anyway.
Also, the whole trickery is that when you can sock away that much income and save it, you obviously do not spent it...so you condition yourself to spent on a lower level then you could (live below your means), over a significant time period (conditioning) and as such may develop skills and attitudes that prevent you to become the 2/3 of american's that live paycheck to paycheck (0 savings rate).
Does the exact percentage matter - no. Are you able to stick to your number exactly and every year - no, life happens, but as an aspirational and motivational goal it seems to work just fine