LPT: If you haven't already, start saving for retirement now. Even if it's only $25 a month, it will help. This is not a post to complain about student loans.

The average age people retire is 64. Let's just assume that you will retire at 65 so that you have a whole number to divide by. The US average life expectancy is around 78. This means that the average person will live for 13 years after they retire. Let's assume again that the average person will need to live off of their retirement for 13 years. After doing some math, if you want to live off of $4000 a month in retirement, you will need to have around $780,000 saved up when you retire. <br><br>You have two options, save, or don't save. Let's look at some numbers for option 1. If you make a monthly deposit into a 401(k), IRA, or some other type of retirement/savings account, you can accumulate a lot of money. Remember how we just said that you need $780,000 to live comfortably in retirement? Let's assume that you want to retire at 65 and you are currently 18. You will work for 47 years. Let's again do some math. This math also assumes that the money gets 4% interest per year. 4% is a low estimate as well. <br><br>If you make a monthly deposit of $25 a month for 47 years at a 4% interest rate, you will have around $126,000 when you retire. This is not a lot. If you increase the monthly deposit to $50, you will have around $250,000. Not bad, but you are still short $530,000 if you want to live comfortably. If you deposit $100 a month, you will have around $500,000 when you retire. This is a good amount, but you are still going to be short $300,000. $280 a month is the magic amount that you need to make monthly deposits for 47 years at a 4% interest rate to make $780,000. Now let's look at the numbers for someone who doesn't save for retirement. They don't need to worry about having to make monthly deposits and they will have an extra $340 a month to spend. You will also make more money as you get older. After 10 years of working, you might be able to double that monthly deposit. You might make triple that after 20 or 30 years. That's years and years in the future. As of right now, it is better to have $340 in a savings account then it is to have nothing. You will need to live off of social security when you retire. It will not be fun. If you don't save for retirement, there will be a point in your life when you will wish that you had the ability to make $340 a month in order to have the chance of retiring at 65. You might not even be able to retire at 65. Save your money now and relax in the future. Don't spend your money now and you will struggle later. The choice is yours.