OPINION | SAVE YOURSELF: Rethink spending; make '22 a happy savings new year

A happy new year is a great time to adopt happy saving, and if you have been on the fence, I want you to jump over. But what exactly is happy saving?

Let's say you celebrated Christmas and bought presents for family on a credit card. The joy of the anticipation was fun. As a naturally generous person, the knowledge of bringing your loved ones joy and cheer was all you needed to pull out that credit card, bring happiness, and whisper to yourself that you'd deal with it all later in January.

Christmas came and went. Maybe the day was just as wonderful and as joyous as you'd hoped it would be. In fact, you will treasure those memories of kids and parents opening those treasures you'd hand-picked for them. Maybe you'd even successfully obliterated that nagging dread of the credit card coming in the mail and allowed yourself to fully enjoy the holiday.

But here on the 28th you might be feeling full on dread. It's coming. And let's be real -- it's a buzz kill. If you didn't have the money to buy those gifts in December, then chances are you don't have the money to pay for them in January either. In fact, it may take several months. Time to buckle down.

Imagine a radically different approach. Next year wake up with money in a savings account for Christmas 2022. Imagine what a different experience it would be to save a little each month in anticipation of the holiday. Imagine buying those gifts, maybe even using a credit card, but with money safely tucked away to pay off that card in full in when the bill arrives in January. You would have the same anticipation, the same joy of generosity, maybe even the same amount of money spent, only no credit card dread and no credit card interest charges. You would have a great holiday and a great January.

That is happy saving.

As a former spender, I didn't understand the allure of saving. It felt so responsible, so depriving and oh so lacking in spontaneity. Also, how inefficient to have money just sitting there unspent when there were so many life improving ways to spend it at all times.

But having lived both lives, I am beckoning all the spenders on the fence who might be ready for a different way to handle your money and alleviate psychological stress, to come over to the happy saving side.

For a little clarification, this is not about saving. Period. This is about saving up. You are saving up for that next car, that next house, that ability to retire. If you can sit down right now and estimate what those savings goals are and start putting money toward them then I can promise you that you will not run the risk of accidentally saving into oblivion. Your dollars will have a job, and that is for you to live life to the fullest -- absent the stress of the financial hangover. Deprivation? Nope. Spontaneity? Sure!

Are you taking a vacation in 2022? What if you saved up for it? Let's save ahead for summer camps for your kids next year. You can save ahead for your next car repair or home repair. Are your kids going to college one day? Save ahead for that. And finally, I want you to save ahead for the one expense that you can't borrow for, even if you want to: Retirement. But as my mentor and financial guru Linda Bessette always said, "the opposite of retirement is work." Flipping that around, the opposite of work is retirement. You will get paid (yes, with your own savings) to not work all day, to own your own time. Wow, that sounds like the very definition of spontaneity.

I see people become new savers all the time, mostly young people who didn't need much convincing at all or young people who dabbled in crushing credit card debt and swore off it. They are more malleable, less informed by past choices, habits and cycles. They don't have the decades of shame and fear to sort through to just simply "try on saving." I am proud of them, but I am even more proud of mid- and later life folks who turned around decades of debt cycles.

What I've observed about the 2021 stories running through my mind right now is that those folks had to overcome all the negative emotions they had just to start their savings or debt repayment journey. Continuing it was easier. Remember, each month into the journey was another month forging a different habit and telling a different story. Moreover, that confidence was physically reinforced with deposits into savings accounts that, indeed, they were a net saver and not a net spender.

If you are ready, then please consider the magic of automation to make your savings an intentional habit. You can see some concrete direction from last year's column with some ideas: https://bit.ly/3eqR2IM

I find few people who can do this alone, though. Remember we live in a hyper-consumerism society that is desperate for you to spend. (We are what we buy.) Please find a tribe of people who might walk this journey with you. Also, consider joining a Facebook group that I co-run with Stephanie Matthews called Save10, sponsored by the Women's Foundation of Arkansas. We talk about money in healthy ways and celebrate successes. Just last week, we had a member post that her student loans went away after hitting 10 years with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. The whole group erupted in emojis.

I want happy saving for you all. I believe that saving up will make us happier people. We must reclaim the vision of the miser whose home is in the word miserable. I promise, folks, this isn't it.

Folks who save buy themselves the ability to worry less and live with more spontaneity, not less. Saving up allows us to start businesses, give more generously, start new hobbies just for fun, and lots more etceteras.

2022 is your year to give this a try.

Happy Saving, everyone.

Sarah Catherine Gutierrez is founder, partner and CEO of Aptus Financial in Little Rock. She is also author of the book "But First, Save 10: The One Simple Money Move That Will Change Your Life," published by Et Alia Press. Contact her at sc@aptusfinancial.com.

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