I.. don't know. I'm a relatively new (~12mths) convert from a lifetime of Windows, and one of the things that has really surprised me is that I don't seem to need to care about RAM usage. I actually had to look up how to find out.

I'm mostly photo editing (Exposure, XnView, Nitro) or doing small dev projects (VSCode, Rider). On a my old Dell laptop with 16GB RAM, I'd have to actively monitor RAM usage if I wanted Exposure to run well, shut down most other apps etc. On my MBP with 16GB, it has never been an issue.

Right now I have: Mail, LibreWolf, Signal, Jellyfin, Bitwarden, LibreOffice, XnView, Nitro, Terminal, Safari, Calibre, Remote Desktop, WIIM Home, Notes and Rider open, along with a host of background things like VPN, Syncthing etc. Activity Monitor says 14.2GB used. But I'm not sure if that number matters, because I've never noticed running out of RAM.