So what percentage of your income should you save each year? Jonathan Clements, who has done time as a Wall Street Journal columnist and as a Citigroup financial education executive, suggests a goal of 12 to 15 percent, including any employer match on retirement savings. If you’re saving for a down payment or a child’s college education, you’ll need to save more. Ditto if you didn’t start saving until your 30s or 40s and hope to retire at all close to a traditional retirement age.

Most people don’t save that much yet, and getting to that goal is hard. Try increasing savings by a percentage point or two each year, perhaps by devoting a big chunk of any salary raise to it if you can afford to.

Mr. Clements, in a new money guide whose title bears his name, lays out some numbers that may make saving more go down easier. If you’re in the 25 percent federal tax bracket and earn an extra $1,000, you’ll most likely have only about $650 left after state and federal income taxes and Social Security and Medicare levies. Spend that, and you may end up with closer to $600 of goods thanks to sales taxes.

Save that money, however, and you might get a matching contribution from your employer if you haven’t already maxed out the match in your workplace retirement savings plan. That could bring the $1,000 up to $1,500 or more on Day 1. Even if there’s no match, you may get a tax deduction depending on how you save it, and decades of growth will allow the money to multiply.

Look at it that way, and saving becomes a pretty good deal.

TAX RATE Putting up to $15,000 or so out of reach of the claws of the taxing authorities each year can yield thousands of dollars in annual tax savings, which you can then use to increase your savings rate. Better still: That $15,000 may represent money you’re already spending anyway.