Passion Saving

I recently finished reading Passion Saving (The path to plentiful free time and soul-satisfying work) by Rob Bennett.

Bennett doesn't follow the normal advice. He says

Avoid Sacrifice

Stop putting money aside for your old age

he claims that the

aim of this book is not to help you to try to save as you always have, and succeed where before you failed. It's to urge you to adopt an entirely new way of looking at money management.

Once I started reading the book and got past the introduction, I started getting the feeling he really wasn't that much different then Dave Ramsey. Sure the media loves playing up the phrases, "Stop putting money aside," "Avoid Sacrifice," and "how to spend more then you earn" (also a Chapters title), but in reality he seems to really be saying that he thought saving meant doing w/o things he wanted to own. Instead he learned, that saving done right, is about making your life richer and fuller.

When you feel you have an obligation to spend, you rarely produce "much in the way of saving, because for most people, most of the time, the urge to spend wins the tug of war."

Dave Ramsey is often heard telling listeners and followers to save up for that new car, jet ski, vacation or whatever you want rather then borrowing for it.

Bennett says,

Spending and saving are not opposites. They are two sides of a single coin, alternative means of achieving the same general purpose. You save for the same reason you spend, to achieve your life goals. Saving doesn't come from holding your spending drive in check. It comes from seeing how that drive can in some circumstances be better realized by putting off spending for another time. The purpose of saving is to permit future spending.

I would agree with part of the concept that says we shouldn't have to force ourselves to save, rather it should be fun.

Also, I would agree that we should take baby steps (as Dave Ramsey calls them) towards retirement, rather then trying to save for the final goal.

Each of his (Bennett) points, I would be like, "yeah right. That's stupid." But, once I read where he was coming from, I began thinking, "well maybe, it's not so stupid."

I highly recommend that you get a copy of Passion Saving, by Rob Bennett and read it for yourself today. It might just give you a new way of looking at saving. That motivation, to finally do what this blog encourages you to do, saving for everything.

Money is coined liberty.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky

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