Save, save, save

Spend, spend, spend

It’s been hard to sit down and write a newsletter this week. It feels somewhat frivolous writing about women and money when so many people are suffering. And even though I believe that having control over your finances brings a certain amount of personal power and freedom, there are times like now when things feel so hopeless that it doesn’t seem like money can fix anything. And yet, we can’t give up, and so I’ll share this roundup of resources and ways to help from the lovely Susan McPherson.

Today is National Savings Day. When I worked in a newsroom, I loathed these kinds of fake holidays and how I always had to scramble to produce a story or two to mark the occasion. But at the same time, I get it. We’re all looking for a news peg to bring one topic or another to the forefront.

There are plenty of good reasons why we should always be talking about the importance of saving money. There’s so much research that suggests Americans aren’t saving enough.

A new survey released today by Laurel Road, a digital banking platform of KeyBank, found that only 4 in 10 Americans could live off their cash savings for longer than four months. If the recession that all the experts keep discussing ever decides to show up, and unemployment increases, most of us are going to want to have more in our savings. Plus, high-yield savings account APYs are SO high right now! Banks are practically BEGGING you to save. My Capital One savings account is at 4.3%! (No, I’m not being paid to share that.)

Still, finding fresh ways to write about saving money is tough. At CNBC Make It, we were always trying to provide a service element in our articles—a worthy effort, for sure. But at some point, I begged the writers on my team to PLEASE come up with a cost-saving measure other than cutting out subscription services. Yes, canceling Netflix is an easy way to save a little bit each month, but surely if you’re in a financial pinch, you’ve already taken that step, and you’re looking for other ways to save.

But the other problem is that a lot of the advice on saving money is often one size fits all, and it doesn’t really dig into why a person needs extra cash in the first place. There’s a big difference between a person who earns a good salary and is trying to save more for a down payment, retirement, or their kids’ college fund and the person who’s struggling to make ends meet after taking a lower paying job following months of unemployment. Yet, the “10 Tips on How to Save More NOW” rarely distinguishes between the two.

Personally, I’ve been thinking a lot about saving and spending money lately, as we adjust as a family to living without me earning a steady paycheck.

I love to save money. I also love to spend it. While a lot of traditional personal finance advice likes to sort people into categories, I’ve found, from my own experience, that most of us have a much more complicated relationship to money. I love beautiful things, and I’ll admit that I have expensive taste. I also hate to waste money, and I get a real thrill watching my savings account balance creep up. As I like to joke, I contain multitudes. But we all do.

I also have firsthand experience with how saving money can really transform your life. Way back in 2014, I wrote my first money article for Refinery29 about how Ken and I saved up $100,000 to buy our first apartment. That article changed my life in many ways, as did that apartment. And Ken and I never stopped being savers (though he no longer eats a peanut butter sandwich every day). Our savings eventually allowed us to upgrade to a bigger apartment (though, as I lamented recently, maybe not quite big enough), and this year, it allowed me to feel comfortable leaving a full-time job to plunge into freelance life.