I'm in my 20s. How much should I be saving?

(Money Magazine) -- Question: I'm in my 20s, so retirement is a long way off. Still, I'd like to know: What percentage of my salary should I be saving on a consistent basis for retirement, yet still be able to have a good life in the meantime? -- Will M., Santa Barbara, Calif.

Answer: You might think that a question that's so central to retirement planning would have been pored over by so many economists and financial advisers that I should be able to instantly rattle off down-to-the-decimal savings targets for any person of any age.

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Walter Updegrave is a senior editor with Money Magazine and is the author of "How to Retire Rich in a Totally Changed World: Why You're Not in Kansas Anymore" (Three Rivers Press 2005).

Ultimate Guide to Retirement

• Getting started
• 401(k)s & company plans
• Investing
• Annuities
• IRAs
• Self-employment plans
• Pensions and benefit plans
• Social Security
• Insurance
• Estate planning
• Living in retirement
• Getting help

And, in fact, it is relatively simple for you to come away with a precise-sounding number. If you go to a tool such as our What You Need To Save calculator and punch in your age, income and the amount, if any, you've already saved, you will indeed get a very specific figure.

For example, the calculator would tell someone who's 25, earns $40,000 a year and has saved not a cent to date to sock away 8.2% of yearly pay to retire on 80% of pre-retirement salary at age 65. That percentage would be higher for a 25-year-old who earns more, and lower for someone of the same age who had already set aside some savings in retirement accounts.

But while I think going through such an exercise is useful -- and a reasonable way to start preparing for retirement -- you also want to remember that what you're getting is an estimate, and a squishy one at that. I say this not to diss our calculator. Rather, any time you're making projections, especially ones decades into the future, you have to allow for a sizeable margin of error. Life just doesn't play out as predictably as a spreadsheet.

For example, to estimate the future size of your nest egg any calculator or software program must make assumptions (or allow you to make assumptions) about how you'll invest your savings and what size returns you'll earn.

If you doubt that predicting investment performance with a high degree of precision is virtually impossible, just think back to the late 1990s when investors thought they were looking forward to an unending vista of double-digit gains in stocks. Or, for that matter, remember just a few years ago when investors were surprised by the market's swoon in late 2007 through early 2009.

But shifts in the financial markets aren't the only reason that retirement projections can go astray. Sometimes we're the ones that have trouble staying on track.

You may be chugging along meeting your savings targets easily and suddenly get into a period where you're simply unable able to hit them. Perhaps you get laid off, or you switch jobs and your new employer doesn't offer a 401(k) or you're overwhelmed by unanticipated expenses.

Even absent that sort of disruption, there's the other issue you raise -- namely, the fact that while you want to save for retirement, you don't want to live the life of an ascetic in the meantime. You also want to enjoy yourself now. Which is perfectly reasonable. I don't want to suggest that a free-spending lifestyle is the measure of a well-lived life. Far from it. Nonetheless, life can be a little grim if you try to cut out every splurge or try to live within the confines of too constricting a budget to improve your odds of having a comfortable life after you retire.

So as I explained in a recent Ask the Expert video, you've got to try to arrive at a workable balance between how much of your resources you consume now vs. how much you devote to the future.

I don't think that balance usually comes automatically. I think it's more likely achieved gradually through life experience and trial and error. Some people may never get it, and end up spending more than they should or focusing so much on saving that they stint too much on the here and now. So I can't give you a definitive way to arrive at the right tradeoff. I can, however, suggest a practical way to work toward it.

I'd begin by coming up with a savings target (however imperfect it may be) by going to a calculator like the one I mentioned or, in lieu of that, working with a financial adviser. And then I'd try hitting that number, preferably in a way that required the least ongoing effort from me -- i.e., by contributing to my 401(k) or signing up for an automatic investing plan with a mutual fund firm.

Then see how it goes. If you can hit your savings goal without too much trouble, I'd raise the target a bit -- and continue to raise it more in the future if possible. Why? Because there's a good chance that at over the course of a long career you may experience a financial disruption of some sort that could make it difficult to save. Or your investments might not thrive as much as you had hoped. Saving a bit more, especially early on in life, can provide a nice cushion and improve your odds of having a decent retirement despite life's inevitable setbacks.

And what if you find you have a hard time meeting your savings target and living an acceptable lifestyle today? Do the best you can. But try to put away at least some percentage of salary consistently so that you develop the habit of saving regularly. Then, try to boost the percentage of salary you save by, say, a percentage point each year, until you gradually get to the savings level where you need to be.

Many 401(k) plans allow participants to sign up for an "auto escalation" feature that works the same way, the idea being that by starting small and raising your savings rate little by little by little, participants will be better able to make the lifestyle adjustments required for saving more -- and more likely to stick to a savings regimen. (For more techniques that can help you do the right thing for retirement at various stages of your career, I suggest you check out my colleague Penelope Wang's story on the latest in behavioral finance in MONEY Magazine's October issue.)

Remember too that setting a savings rate for retirement isn't something you do once and then forget about until you're ready to call it a career. You'll want to check in every year or so to be sure that, given changes in your salary and 401(k) balances, you're still saving enough to make progress toward retirement. You can do that by going to the What You Need To Save calculator I already mentioned or, if you're willing to put in a few more minutes, by going to our more robust Retirement Planner tool.

Ultimately, though, I wouldn't obsess too much about trying to arrive at some "ideal" savings rate. You're never going to be absolutely sure you've hit it. What's more important than the specific rate is that you begin setting aside some reasonable amount as early as possible in your career so that regular saving becomes a normal part of your lifestyle. If you do that, you can always make adjustments later on.