Should I upgrade my MacBook Air to 24 GB RAM instead of 16 GB?

My advice, FWIW, is to get as much RAM as you can afford. I would opt for the 24GB RAM. You can not upgrade RAM later so if your computing requirements change to require more RAM you will need to purchase a new computer. I would also get the larger storage as that can not be changed either if more storage is needed..

It depends on what you plan to run.

If you plan to run, say, Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, or Lightroom Classic, the recommended amount of RAM for each of those programs is 16 GB or more. Professional photographers or amateur photographers who are doing things that involve "heavy lifting" might benefit from 24 GB or 32 GB of RAM.

Web browsing and word processing typically don't need anywhere near that much RAM, assuming that you don't make a habit out of having hundreds of tabs open at the same time. I got along fine for many years with an older Mac that had 8 GB of RAM. Of course, current versions of macOS are probably a little bit more RAM-hungry than the one that machine ran, even before considering the requirements to run Apple Intelligence.

DEENELL wrote:

After thinking more clearly and with confidence, I ordered the Macbook Air with 24gb ram and 1tb storage.

Now, I am trying to figure out how to close this thread. I don’t see an option anywhere to do this. Anybody know how I close this question?

There isn't a control for doing that, Sometimes the Moderators do it. The Forum software might do it, too, once the thread becomes very, very, very old – but threads can stay open for a long time.

You can add storage with external drives.

Some SSDs are very portable – about the size of a credit card or oversized flash drive. However, f you are getting a notebook computer and plan to do work "on the go" a lot, external drives may be considerably less convenient than they would be for a desktop computer or docked notebook computer.

That might argue for getting a 1 TB drive if you are unsure whether 512 GB would be big enough.