<prompt> Human: I am a first year teacher making 32,000 a year before taxes. I have not yet started getting money taken out into a retirement fund. This is mostly because my school uses a retirement fund that puts your money into stocks, and I want to know more about it first. I am 23, and still on my parents insurance so no worries there.My pay-check every two weeks is 1,100. I lease a car for 200 a month, and my rent I live with my parents is 275. When I get paid, I immediately transfer 150 over to my savings account. This would mean that in a year, I will have 3,600 saved. This doesnt sound like a high number to me, but Im really not making a lot of money either. Should I be putting more of my paycheck into my savings? Right now I pay about thirty dollars a week in tolls, and 35-50 in gas. I always have money left over at the end of the two weeks before I get paid again, usually 500 on a pay cycle where I had no fun and stayed in, and maybe at the least 200. Overwhelmed by all of the feedback! Thank you all so much! I am teaching at a Catholic School, so I am sure any type of pensionretirement would be different than a public school. I am incredibly lucky and fortunate that I do not have any student loans. EDIT:Thank all of you so much for the advice! Ive decided that I am going to meet with the someone today about my 403b retirement. I am going to continue contributing 150 every paycheck, and then take 60 of what is left over and put this into my savings, that I am now going to look at as my emergency fund. Once I hit 4,000 in my savingsemergency fund, Im going to start a different savings account for vacations, things like that. Ive also downloaded mint to see what exactly Im spending my money on. Assistant: Thats more than 10 of your gross, so its not bad. Assuming youre debt free, generally you should try to save 15 towards retirement after you have an emergency fund. Youre probably saving more than 15 of your net. Too lazy to do the math. What do you do with the remaining 200-500? Human: How much money constitutes as an emergency fund? And are you saying I should start putting money towards retirement once I have this emergency fund?I am usually just keeping the money I have left over in my checking account. Seeing the replies here, it looks like I should take at least half and put it into savings.  <response>: 3 is the usual minimum, some say upwards of a 12 as uPact_Retard mentioned. A decent ballpark value would be how long youve gone without a job and add an extra month to that. 