The Rise of 'Save More' Advice and Why it Doesn't Work

"This is just old junk"

"No, it's not - it's a quality kitchen unit!"

Both Jonathan and I were fed up after over an hour of arguing with his mother over every trinket in the storage unit and now staring at this sad, rickety white kitchen unit our patience has finally run dry.

It was screaming communism louder than anything else we've seen that day.

Tentatively standing on 4 black legs were doors that I doubt ever aligned and two drawers that you couldn't even open anymore. The plain handles were still desperately holding on to the doors and drawers whilst through the hole of the misaligned doors you could see it was lined up with a cracked cut-out piece of green and white gingham table cloth.

Even with my limited experience of recycling furniture I knew this one was a goner 20 years ago, never mind now.

But she wasn't having any of it...

"It's vintage, it never goes out of fashion so we could sell it"

"It's worthless and it's going"

"It's been around for years so clearly it's worth something!"

And there it was...

My mother-in-law finally admitted to the mistake that's so easy to make.

She confused the time passage as a proof of value.

As if, somehow, the longer something survived the more it was proving its validity.

It's the same with so many myths stubbornly floating in many industries.

One of my pet hate myths in the money world - save more.

It sounds like it's a solid piece of advice - after all don't you want to have a stash of cash to dive into every time you feel temptation to buy something?

Of course you do. And so do I, but let me ask you this:

Give me one period of time in the last 60 years where save more advice produced better financial outcome for people.

If you think, I've put you on the spot - I'll wait...

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Exactly.

We're constantly told we must save more, even though this advice produced nothing but more debt across the world, so what's going on?

Saving more is shit advice.

People who are told most frequently to save more are exactly the people who saving will be most difficult for.

Very much like 'loose weight' is way more difficult if you've been maintaining your 20 stone body during the consumption of the last 69,458 milk chocolate digestives.

If that was you, you would need ton of exercise but the extra weight would limit the exercise you can tolerate.

Let's translate it to money.

You need to 'save more' because you're living too close to just breaking even and you have no capacity to weather any financial shit storms coming your way.

But it's difficult as you spend huge majority of what you earn already so there just isn't money leftover.

The advice assumes you'll be cancelling Netflix and the token gym membership you joined in January but are yet to set your foot on one of their running machines.

It's a tall order.

It's a slow process and your savings are constantly eroded by the inflation, and currently very high inflation at that. So the money piggy bank you're attempting to fill might just have little, magic thieves raiding it every month.

Plus from the behavioural economics point of view, AKA the psychology behind your money decisions, saving is a joyless, barren wasteland.

So forget saving money.

Figure out a way to make more money.

It's not obvious to me that making more is harder than saving more. I think it's easier. The effort is still there - very much like with saving, but at least you can challenge yourself to do it and track your progress getting your dopamine system to help you along the way.

There are times you have to save - you might want to take your family to Disneyworld or invest in your first property.

If that's the case, figure out how much you need, put things in place to make more and keep putting away what you need.

The idea is to make £10 more and from that extra money you've made spend £2-£3 on yourself and pleasing your chimp brain and save the £7 extra. That little treat will help making it sustainable for you.

Once you have the amount you need book your holiday or buy that property.

Rinse and repeat if needed.

Saving for something specific is not the same as saving for the sake of saving.

The latter is a terrible advice and will keep you stuck making money, but no progress towards the life you dream of.

P.S. If you want to bounce the ideas and plans for your money with an expert who's been and done it all, well, almost all, the best thing to do is book The Money Power Hour with me.

It's still available at the bargain introductory price here.