20 Ways to Save on a Shoestring, Introduction

If you've read Free Money Finance for any amount of time, you know how I love money saving tips. So when I found an article at Money Central titled "20 Ways to Save on a Shoestring" I knew I was going to share it with you.

But instead of post the entire piece in one post, I'm going to space it out so we can focus on the tips themselves. I often cover a whole article in one post, but I think that things sometimes get lost when I do it this way, so I'll post on this piece over several days.

Here's the introduction to the piece:

Saving. When you hear that word, do you feel a clutching sense of guilt and inadequacy? If you¹re like most Americans, you must. According to a study of saving behavior by economists Steven Venti of Dartmouth and David Wise of Harvard, more than 75% of respondents said they knew that their savings, specifically for retirement, were insufficient.

That’s shocking, but not as remarkable as their discovery that how much you save has very little to do with how rich you are. Venti and Wise divided the 7,700 households they studied into 10 income groups. The top 10% of the lowest income group nonetheless had saved more than $150,000 per household. Meanwhile, middle-income folks, on average, had only $45,000 in assets.

That’s annoying and embarrassing, and it means I have no excuse for my inadequate savings. And neither do you. Because what Venti and Wise found to be the most significant savings factor was no more jaw-dropping than this: Ya just gotta save it.

I need to read that one paragraph again:

That’s shocking, but not as remarkable as their discovery that how much you save has very little to do with how rich you are. Venti and Wise divided the 7,700 households they studied into 10 income groups. The top 10% of the lowest income group nonetheless had saved more than $150,000 per household. Meanwhile, middle-income folks, on average, had only $45,000 in assets.

So again we see that how much you make is not the greatest determinant of your net worth -- how much you save is the key! Stay tuned and we'll continue this series to give you some ideas on how just how to do that!

Click here to read part 2 of this series.

Comments

[Dave]

"how much you save has very little to do with how rich you are."
Actually, it has everything to do with how rich you are. It has little to do with your income, however. This may be semantics, but I think if people really understood the difference between wealth and income, more people would save.