A penny saved is a penny earned
-- 18th century wisdom.
A mocha saved is a carribean vacation earned
-- 21st century wisdom
All kidding aside, this is largely how we view the concept of saving today--skimping on daily luxuries will enable us to afford the big-ticket items of life. Fair enough. The catch: you can't expect a financial miracle if you don't watch your big-ticket spending.
It's a matter of scale. Consider a mortgage where you're locked into paying $1600+/month for 40+ years. Kicking your daily coffee habit might save you $60/month, but that's small peanuts compared to the mortgage. Which decision makes a bigger impact, cutting back on coffee or living within your housing budget?
I'm not saying that Benjamin Franklin was wrong. On the contrary, I think his proverb makes perfect sense. It's just that we tend to look at spending from the bottom up instead of from the top down. The long-term ramifications of buying a Corolla instead of a Corvette are far greater than the ramifications of buying a Mac instead of a PC. If you're going to agonize over a bugetary decision, make sure your agony is proportional to the relative value of the item under consideration. Clear as mud? Let me give a specific example:
Let's say that you're in the market for some new hiking boots. You want to buy a quality product, but you don't want to make a financially irresponsible decision. After long deliberation, you've narrowed the field down to two products: 1) a pair of Coleman hiking boots, costing $60, and 2) a pair of Danner hiking boots, costing $300. What do you do? Here's where my premise comes in. I don't think it really matters which choice you make. Choosing Danner isn't going to relegate you to the poor farm for the rest of your life. It may be a $300 purchase, but compared with the bigger purchases in life (remember the mortgage? the car?) it really doesn't weigh heavily in the grand scope of your financial future.
There's a reason I wrote this article. It bothers me when I see people stress about the "small things" of life, like the next tank of gas or the month's electricity bill, when I know that better stewardship of the "big things" in life would largely obviate these concerns. True financial hardship does exist--I'm not denying that--but Americans are generally below par when it comes to financial stewardship.
Disclaimer:
Okay, now before I get in trouble, if buying those expensive boots means you can't pay next semester's tuition or buy groceries for a month, ignore me. Short term constraints may dictate a different approach to spending than an idealistic long-term approach, like I'm advocating here. Feedback is welcome.
