38 | Why Do We Save?: The Obvious Reason

We save to set aside money that we can spend later.

OK...?

Tell me more please...

Not saving is like...

Routinely running your gas tank to empty. You're always looking for the next gas station, you're limited in how far you can travel, and you're always susceptible to a tiny change in plans or expectations leaving you stranded on the side of the road.

Buying food for your next meal only. There's no slack in the system in case you’re unable to go to the store tomorrow, someone else decides to join you unexpectedly, or you find out the food has gone bad.

Operating with only the roll of toilet paper that is on the holder. Once you get to the second half of the roll, you're going to be pretty aggressive with conservation and pretty selective with who you'll call if you happen to run out.

We have no problem operating with a little more gas or food or toilet paper than we need for the next moment. We're also pretty adept at not hoarding any of them.

In reality, money doesn't need to be any different, but for some reason it feels much more complicated.

With money, it's easy to do the equivalent of always operating on E or towing a tank truck of gas behind you so you never run out. Finding the right middle ground is so much harder.

Inevitably, every dollar spent over a lifetime is not perfectly timed with an offsetting dollar of income. This is the essence of why we need to save something.

What's challenging is that if this is the only reason for saving, eventually we're going to get burned out, forget why we're saving, or struggle to determine how much is enough.