F.I.R.E. (financially independent retire early)

Your instincts are right about any guidance that uses a specific dollar amount. Any guidance should use a percentage target based on age, annual income, and your current localized cost of living. Just look at nationwide average costs per state for homes and gas. Even in California, the same home spec in Red Bluff would be magnitudes different than the east bay area. The federal tax laws also reveal to complete idiocy and inequity of dollar limits on various rules if you live in a high cost area.

My wife and I have always been hard savers and aimed to live below, yes below, our means. No debt except the house. If we got a raise, we'd increase our 401k percentage, which is a multiplier when you think about it, until we eventually maxed contributions. Building wealth is about starting early and compounding interest over the long term on autopilot. You can never make up lost time, as anyone who watches the sweep hand on an analog clock can perceive.

Back to taxes. Not sure if I'll get this right, but a couple years ago my company was merged and I enjoyed a small windfall. We had already contributed to or separate Roth IRAs for the TY, and then our AGI came back as too high to make a Roth contribution, and we had to recharacterize them as traditional IRAs immediately. This was with 2 slighty above average incomes in our area. In most areas of the US, I doubt that would happen for the average tax payer.