<prompt> Human: One of the pieces of advice Ive seen on a few occasions is that if you can save 20 of your income towards retirement, youre in a really good spot. When this advice is suggested, does this typically include matching from your employer? For example, Im currently only putting 7 into my 401k at 31 years old. However, I also get a dollar-for-dollar match on the first 5, plus i get a 3 pension. Also, Im maxing my Roth IRA contribution each year at 5500. When I factor in the employer match and pension plus IRA contribution, it puts me just over 21. Is my math right, should I be factoring in the employer match and pension?  <response>: One thing Id add is that this is all about gross guidance. No financial advice is one size fits all. Whether it be 20 or the table that MMM has about the shockingly simple math behind retirement.I tend to like to work backwards, but it takes more thought and effort. There may also be a lot of unknowns. You can start to think about how much do I need in retirement? as a fundamental question. Do you need the same amount of take home money on an annual basis as you do now? Do you need less because of a paid off home? More because your home is already paid off but you plan to travel a lot?Once you have an annual number in mind, multiply that by 33. That is a relatively safe number for the amount of money you need to retire. This of course doesnt include things like social security or pension, you can choose howif you include those.So for me, with that number, I toss it into an investment return calculator and play with the amountstime framereturns, and just look at what my situation looks like. The thing that will become evident is if youre young, it can be really hard to figure out what that future looks like. So my real advice is...you should save as much as you can early in life as is comfortable. It will develop habits and tends to be sticky. You will never spend money you never thought you had to begin with. 