and we were saving probably 9% towards retirement (and then employer match on top of that).

But yes, we have always expected our teens to pretty much pay for themselves, and they do. They biked to work, paid for their clothes, usually about 50% of extracurricular team costs, 50% of their school field trips, their own cell phone plans, etc. That was a design feature, I guess you could say, not a bug ... meaning we would have had that approach even if we made twice that much money.