5 Reasons to Quit Saving and Start Living

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Live is all about trade-offs.  You trade your time for a paycheck.  Your trade your paycheck for food, rent, and security.  Don’t get so obsessed with saving and security that you forget to live your life.   There are many good reasons to put your savings on hold in order to really live.  Here are five of them:

1.  You have an adequate emergency fund. You will never hear me advise against an emergency fund.  If you don’t have one, stop reading this and get one.  Go.   Without an emergency fund, your budget is a financial crisis waiting to happen.  With an emergency fund, you can weather life’s speed-bumps without watching them become total train-wrecks.

2.  Your retirement is on autopilot. You are not allowed to stop saving and investing for retirement.  Ever.  Assuming you have a traditionally scheduled career that involves you working until you hit 65 and deferring a huge chunk of living until then, your income will cease when you retire.  Do you know how long you will live?  Do you want to spend your retirement broke and bored?  Are you relying on the responsible financial management of the federal government to make sure you will still get your Social Security?  Invest in your retirement and get this investment on autopilot so you can stop worrying about it.

3.  Your income is set. I don’t believe in the fairy-tail of a company being loyal to its employees.  The aren’t.  However, if you have a stable-ish job, an in-demand career, and some side-income coming from alternate sources, your emergency fund can be enough to carry you through the low times.  That’s what it’s there for.

4.  You have dreams. If you’ve always wanted to travel the world, follow a band on your, volunteer extensively, or anything else, it’s time to do it.  Don’t postpone your passion.

5.   Deathbed regrets suck. Very few people lie on their deathbed lamenting the things they did.  Regrets tend to be focused on opportunities missed, skipped, or indefinitely postponed.  Do the things that are important to you before it’s too late to do them.  Don’t abandon your future in favor of current pleasures, but don’t forget to live, now.

Do you have any other reasons to stop saving?

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