This means that you can put away one dollar but your spending money won't decrease by that much. Savings are created and committed. There may be a few people out there with embarrassing amounts of money piling up in their checking accounts but they are rare. Most people, regardless of income level, have to work to make sure they don't run out of money before they run out of month. And you can't get it done by saving 100 percent of income in the last 4 years of working, or 50 percent of income in the last 8 years.
Retirement depends on compound growth of small amounts of savings.
Someday, somehow, each and every one of us has to decide whether we are going to depend on others to support us when we can't support ourselves or whether we are going to take steps to do it ourselves. Grown Ups and Real Men save money. Others leave it to the Tooth Fairy. You can't fake retirement income. Questions of general interest will be answered in future columns.