Taking Control of Your Time – Why We Should be Saving Money
Here we go again. It is that topic again: saving. A bunch has been written in books, blogs, and newspaper articles. A bunch has been said on podcasts, the news and talk shows. A bunch has been said by celebrities, life coaches, stock gurus, institutional investors, and your neighbor. No matter what your financial circumstances are, somebody already thought of the top ten things to do with your money right now! It feels like everything has been said. But many people still don’t save.
Why Romantic Ryan Is Saving
Let me tell you a story…
My high school economics teacher (let’s call him Romantic Ryan) founded a stock market club at my high school. Romantic Ryan was very passionate about personal finances, stocks, investing and saving. He was known around the school for his opinion on those topics. My principal (let’s call her Delightful Dora) didn’t share Romantic Ryan’s opinion. She didn’t think investing, stocks and saving were such good ideas – especially not something that should be taught more extensively at school. And since I agreed with Romantic Ryan’s opinion, I had my fair share of arguments with Delightful Dora. They were – despite her name – not delightful (but respectful).
One day, Delightful Dora brought a picture-perfect cut out of a newspaper article to school. A little note on it said, “To Mr. Romantic Ryan”. The articles headline read “Fast jeder Dritte am Monatsende hat kein Geld mehr“ (engl. One in three Germans have no money left at the end of the month). The message: An increasing number of Germans have no money left at the end of the month to save. Delightful Dora thought that investing your savings is only for the super-rich – nothing that the average Joe should do. And the article – she thought – proved that.
It was a frustrating situation. The most powerful person at school was against Mr. Romantic Ryan, the stock market club and myself. Don’t get me wrong, Delightful Dora was an amazing teacher but a tough nut to crack when it came to money topics. It seemed like there was no way that she would ever understand our side – I guess that was a mutual thing.
So why is it that even though so much has been written about savings and personal finances that such different opinions still coexist?
Saving is Full of Emotion
Our money is something deeply emotional. Many people fail to recognize that. People have different feelings towards money, and nobody behaves like a true homo oeconomicus (human being that only makes perfectly rational decisions). The same is true for saving.
“The Psychology of Money” is about those emotions we have about our money. But instead of writing an entire blog post on Morgan Housel’s awesome book, I want to dedicate this post to just one chapter. The chapter about saving.
It is an important chapter. And it is important to me. Not only because of the story involving Romantic Ryan and Delightful Dora, but because it strikes at the heart of what this blog is about: Spending time on meaningful things.
And it turns out saving some money can help with that!
Taking Control of Your Time
At the end of the day, we just want to spend our time on things we enjoy, with the people that we like. We tend to be happier when we have more control over our time. Savings can help us take control. Extra money in the bank makes us more independent – on others, on our job and on a partner.
What does it mean to gain control?
- It means you can push back on your boss without being afraid getting fired because you have a large enough emergency fund
- It means you can cover unexpected medical bills
- It means you can take days off to visit family and friends
- It means you can wait for the right job and don’t have to take the first offer that comes around the corner
- It means that you can take the job with lower pay but closer to your home
At the end money isn’t really about money. It is a tool to gain control over your time – to be happier. Savings can do good things!
Rational Ryan didn’t want to get rich just so he can flex his big portfolio. He wanted to spend time on stuff he loved. And Rational Ryan recognized that saving and investing can help with that. That is what Delightful Dora missed. Money is a tool. It is part of a complicated equation that you want to solve. But you are not trying to solve the equation for money – you are solving for time you have spent the way you truly wanted to. That is the goal.
And who knows, at the end – with enough savings – you can even spend more time reading delightful and romantic books.
Enjoy!
