Periodically, I read articles that appear antithetical to the premise of paying yourself first and saving as much as you can, as early as you can to have enough saved for retirement. In the last few weeks, I’ve read two articles – one saying that traditional retirement savings for millennials is useless, and the other saying that it was ok that you’re not saving enough for retirement. Both articles mention their collective disdain for the recent tweet by Jean Chatzky saying that by the time you’re 30, you should aim to have 1x your salary saved, 3x at 40 and so on.

I happen to agree with Ms. Chatzky. In fact, you should aim to have more if possible. In my opinion, both articles disagreeing with Ms. Chatzky (as well as the replies to her tweet) seemed befitting of excuses – which are easier to agree to, and may encourage readers to not be proactive when it comes to their retirement saving.

Many of the excuses in the articles (and sarcastic replies to Ms. Chatzky’s tweets) mentioned skipping lattes, avocado toast, and how hard it can be to save given the costs of living, annual salary, when a person starts saving, and underemployment. And of course, there was the ominous student loan argument.

While I agree that all the above will impact your ability to save, I still feel that it’s very possible to have 1x or more of your annual income saved by 30 or before. It really boils down to priorities.

Think of it this way. If you tell yourself you can’t do something, or that something is too hard to accomplish, what does your mind do? It shuts down. In other words, when you give yourself excuses, it’s easy to believe them. However, by changing your words and asking yourself how could you accomplish something (saving more, for example) you automatically force your mind to think about a solution. You become proactive – not passive.

While I don’t disagree with all of what the articles say (saving what you can, getting rid of debt), they do seem to contradict themselves by saying, on the one hand, the traditional advice won’t work, but on the other hand to save early and often – which is as traditional as it gets.