<prompt> Human: In February, the immediate effects of the Trump tax cuts will take effect, resulting in average take home increases of 200-300 a month per household. Edit: This is due to tax bracket changes, resulting in new W-4 withholding tables, resulting in less being taken out of your paycheck. The average social security payout is 1,000 per month. The median retirement savings of families between 56 and 61 is 17,000. Those numbers make me uncomfortable.I want to encourage you to not squander the 300 a month your family is about to receive. If you start at age 25 years old and invest 300 per month into mutual or index funds and do the stock market average of 7-8 after inflation, you will be a millionaire at age 65. That would mean you could safely withdraw 40-50,000 per year in retirement in addition to social security. I have a feeling that gets you a lot closer to the quality of life you currently enjoy than the 12,000 a year social security might give you.Do yourself a favor February 2018. When you figure up how much your take home increase will be, either up your 401k percentage at work, or go to a private brokerage and open up a Roth IRA and auto-transfer that amount to it every month. Future you will thank you when you arent eating Spam or Ramon Noodles 3 meals a day.Edit: For details on the changes in the new tax plan, please see the previous Megathread Assistant: If you get an extra 300 a month in take home pay from the tax cut you are making quite a bit of money. If you have no savings at that level then you cant be helped and you dont qualify for a Roth unless you backdoor itEdit - so people dont keep giving it out, yes I forgot about the child credit and pure standard deductionHuman: I disagree. My wife makes 35,000 per year and will be receiving an extra 150 per month or so.  <response>: Your numbers dont make sense without more information. Do you file jointly or separately? How many kids? Your income?Your wife and you combined would be taxed on 80k for a total tax savings of 1,800 over last year. And thats assuming your withholding amount total didnt change. That means you and your wife have a combined income of about 105k. This is assuming no kids and filling jointly and just doing just basic taxes. 105k total income is not typical of the average household. 