No, I think you've proven my point. $35k in 2005 is roughly $43k in 2016, which I'll use as a point of comparison because it was when I was myself making roughl

No, I think you've proven my point. $35k in 2005 is roughly $43k in 2016, which I'll use as a point of comparison because it was when I was myself making roughly $32k before taxes. I'll just stop now to point out that this would be enough alone to allow you to drop 10% - and then some - into retirement savings, without living any more or less comfortably than I did. As I said before, the best way to encourage saving is to increase pay. I assume you were paying less than my $900/month in rent (a studio price in a similar market to the one you describe), between your having the privilege of being able to split rent, and dealing with rents that were ~5% lower on average. This, again, would allow for a hefty savings rate compared to my baseline of losing roughly $100/month on necessities, even without the higher pay rate. Considering all of this, I have to conclude that you were actually a poorer financial steward of your income than I was - again, even though I was losing money every month. Living under circumstances similar to yours (higher pay, lower rent), I could easily have put away 20%+ of "my" earnings - you only managed 10%. However, the truth is that we lived under different circumstances, yours much more forgiving of carelessness or mistakes.