Small increases in income can have a large impact on your ability to save

What is often missed in salary discourse is that small increases can lead to a much higher savings rate and reaching your savings goal quicker.

Get a 10% raise? That doesn't mean that you have to spend 10% more and if you keep your spending flat, your savings rate is going to be much higher than 10% as all of the extra money is going to savings.

It works better with numbers, say someone has a take home of $5,000 and they spend $4,000 a month on living expenses and having fun. That means they save $1,000 a month.

They have a goal of $100,000 house fund for down-payment and closing costs, that would take them 100 months (8.3 years) to reach that goal if nothing changes.

They now take home $5,500 a month after a promotion, if they still spend the same $4,000. They now have $1,500 to direct to the house fund, and that same $100,000 only take 67 months (5.6 years) to reach.

A 10% increase in take home salary led to a 50% increase in savings rate.

Now, of course inflation is a thing and this should be thought of outside the scope of inflation (ex. A 2-3% raise is actually a 0% raise because of the increase of cost of goods) for both the salary increase and keeping expenses flat