Set forth below is the text of the Introduction to the book Passion Saving: The Path to Plentiful Free Time and Soul-Satisfying Work.
Stop putting money aside to provide for your old age.
Avoid sacrifice.
Don’t pay yourself first. Instead, pay yourself last.
It’s not the conventional advice on how to save money. But these are the three key rules of an approach to money management that helped me save more than I thought possible when I was following the usual strategies. I call it “Passion Saving.”
Passion Saving is saving to enhance your enjoyment of life in the years that come before you turn 65 as well as in those that come after. It’s viewing saving as a means to “buy” the true luxuries of today–plentiful free time and soul-satisfying work. It’s the financing of a different sort of retirement, one you achieve in stages as you acquire over time an increasingly enhanced ability to call the hours of the day your own.
The aim of this book is not to help you 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. Passion Savers reject characterizations of spending and saving as opposites. They view the two money allocation options as alternate ways of achieving the same purpose–an enhanced enjoyment of life both now and in the far-off future. With Passion Saving, you don’t save just for what saving can do for you tomorrow. You save for what saving can do for you today and tomorrow. You save the way you spend.
Saving generates an income stream separate from the income stream generated by the work you do. Use it to cover some of the costs of staying alive, and you diminish your dependence on a paycheck. A host of exciting opportunities are thereby opened to you. You can spend more time with family and friends. You can pursue cultural interests. You can start your own business. You can shift to a line of work that pays less but which you find more meaningful or better suited to your skills and aspirations. Saving leaves you more free to live the life you want to live. What good or service obtained by spending offers a more exciting value proposition?
There is nothing inherent in the nature of saving that requires that the gratification it supplies be long deferred. The product of saving is financial independence–freedom. That’s something that just about everyone wants more of, both the old and the young. You have a great need for financial freedom when you are old, to be sure. But financial freedom provides even greater rewards when obtained early in life. The opportunities to pursue new lines of work that a second income stream opens up provide a big edge to those who have decades of work years still ahead of them.
Saving is a far more appealing choice when you manage your money the Passion Saving way. Financial freedom is no longer a distant dream, but a current-day pursuit. Envision saving as a means of achieving your most important goals, your life’s passions, and saving becomes fun. When saving becomes fun, you don’t just try to save, or vow to save, or promise yourself that you will soon begin to save. You actually do it.
Passion Saving makes money management matter in a way that it never did before by integrating your life, work, and money goals. Become a Passion Saver, and you will no longer view saving as an act of self-denial. It will mean giving up some of the benefits of spending, to be sure. But there is no feeling of sacrifice when the net effect is to achieve a fuller, richer, freer life.
When saving is something you do out of desire rather than obligation, the “Just Do It!” approach typified by the popular “Pay Yourself First” maxim does not make sense. The idea is not to force yourself to save, but to elect the money allocation choice offering the greater benefit. That means paying yourself last, only after giving full consideration to as many spending options as possible and finding them wanting compared to the saving alternative.
I am passionate about the work I do. I am passionate about the time I spend with my family. I am passionate about running, reading, and exploring new investing ideas. Passion Saving has allowed me to pursue these passions in ways that otherwise would not have been open to me. That’s why, with my discovery of this new approach to money management, I’ve become passionate about saving money too.
Now it’s your turn.