I know about the dreaded save-game bloat. I know about doing your best to clean up after yourself as far as weapon's and item's on the ground go to hopefully prevent this. No matter how careful you are though the size of your save-file is surely going to go up a bit as you progress.
My question is, what is the average size a save-file SHOULD be by, lets say, 30+?

At least you understand the fact that the save file natural grows as you progress.

At 30+(before I even had mods) my saves were around 8mb.

I reckon bare bones Skyrim(no mods) and having explored the whole map and about 300 dungeons is about 12mb.

My save is at 18mb, and frankly I stopped worrying about it.

If you been doing the main quests or other factions of quests, and mis. quest. The save file space can go up more than discovering dungeons, ruins, fortresses, etc .

lol, do most people not understand this?

and yeah, 12mb sounds about right.

I am only asking this question out of curiousity. I wonder at what size should i be concerned about my save-file. I see some people claim they have 25-30mb by lvl 50 on Xbox so no mods. Just didn't know if that was normal. I have never seen my file go above 20mb and that was on a lvl 62

Oh and I always see a small jump up if i build a Hearthfire home but I am sure that is to be expected.