>>“Those who are currently employed should act as if they won’t be tomorrow.”
Great advice, but it has become difficult to follow as stagnant wages meet inflation. <<
Up until very recently, inflation has been pretty tame — less than 3% http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/currentinflation.asp
But it is more of a philosophy than a planning guide: If there is $5 you can cut by not getting that Starbucks latte and you can toss it into a physical piggy bank or (ironically) a coffee can, that can add up to $100 a month or $1200 a year.
Inflation is much worse than that; who are you going to believe, the stats or your lying eyes? The rises in prices for metals, gasoline, and groceries makes it very obvious that inflation is much worse than that. Those items didn’t suddenly become much more rare; the dollar suddenly became much less valuable. The only way to mask this is to include the one area where prices have consistently fallen - home values.