It is difficult to establish a hard rule about the amount you should save for your retirement: it depends on how much you depend on your current income, the amount of your daily living expenses, what you want your expenses to be, and what kind of lifestyle you wish to lead upon retirement. It also depends on when you begin saving for retirement. If you start very early (in your twenties), you won’t have to save as much of your aftertax income per year, as compared with starting to save in your forties or fifties. There are no strict rules regarding saving for retirement because people’s lifestyles, expenses, and income are quite different. For people with highly variable annual incomes, it is more difficult to set a “one-size-fits-all” rule. Some experts suggest you should save approximately 10% of your after-tax income per year, putting it into a diversified portfolio so it can grow while mitigating the erosive effects of inflation, and therefore having enough savings stockpiled for a comfortable retirement.