I know its probably not something you want to hear, but since you mentioned your age and having loans, I'm going to throw this out there: start now with saving. DON'T wait until the loans are paid off or you will never save anything, because there will always be a new car, or a mortgage, or a credit card bill that will get in the way if you let it be an excuse to not save. I started right out of college with $50 a month to savings which was plenty painful at the time. Oh BTW, its been 10 years and I'm still paying on student loans (at 4% interest, who cares?). Anyhow, every time I got a pay raise I increased the savings by about half of the pay raise. I'm at the point now that I am fully funding my own and my wife's IRA, we have a dedicated savings account (non-IRA), and a non-qualified mutual fund account, accounts earmarked for the children's college, and by always funding these things out of a pay raise I never missed the money, ie, it never hurt to put extra money towards savings if it always coincided with a pay raise. By only putting 50% of the raise towards increasing the savings, I still got a little more coin in my pocket to enjoy. What's scary is my financial advisor told me a few months ago I'm only putting away about half of what I need to reach my retirement goals.