When You Save Are You Really Saving?

Source:freefrombroke.com
You always hear from people how they saved money on this or that. That’s great and all but sometimes I wonder – Did you really save? I mean, what did you save? Did you put money into your savings? Did your wealth grow?

Usually when someone saves what they really mean is they paid less than normal. “I bought a TV that costs $500 but I saved $150 because my uncle knows a guy and I bought it over the holiday weekend,” or some story like that. But they still bought something and paid for it. They just didn’t pay as much.

If you really want to say you saved, put the difference between the original price and the “saved” price into your savings account. It’s easy to do. Transfer the difference into an online savings account. This way when you say you saved on a purchase you really are saving.

Imagine we did this every time we paid less for what we bought. If you are a smart shopper you do your research, look for your sales, and use coupons when you can. Your savings account would grow pretty nicely over time, wouldn’t it?

Now what if the next time you feel like buying that new gadget (or whatever), you put the money it would cost into your savings instead? Maybe that new $1000 camera you want doesn’t get bought but the $1000 is now in savings? Now you’re really saving!! You can tell your friends you saved $1000 on new camera by not buying one at all. [Of course we could use anything besides a camera here.]

I’m just thinking out loud here. We are always looking for ways to save but really we are looking for ways to pay less. Maybe we should really be looking for ways to save more as well?

What do you think?