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Are you a spender or a saver? Don’t fret if you don’t have an immediate response – there is no shortage of online quizzes designed to help you answer this question. There are even maps that help us find cities filled with spenders (such as Chicago, apparently) and cities filled with savers (such as Fort Myers).
But is there a shared definition of these terms? Presumably, a saver is not defined strictly by the amount of money they have tucked away in their savings accounts and investments. That would take some of the fun out of the online quizzes.
So consider cheapskates – people who are extremely price-sensitive, and are more than willing to sacrifice quality for low prices. Would a legendary cheapskate like George Costanza also be considered a saver? Conservative spending that is driven by a pain of paying, a fear of getting a bad deal, or a belief that most retail prices are unfair, seems quite different than active saving.
Suppose instead that the saving is active and goal-driven. Would the nature of the goal driving the saving influence your judgment of whether the person is a saver? Consider people who are saving up to buy a big-screen TV or a Lamborghini. Would people who are saving to spend (engaging in what might be called “materialistic saving”) be considered savers? Certainly, they seem closer to savers than people who just finance these goods, and pay them off over time. But once they have reached their saving goal and purchased the desired good, they may return to their normal (less restrictive) spending habits.
What about hoarders? Hoarders compulsively save goods they have collected, well after those goods ceased being useful (if they ever were). But much like cheapskates, who have difficulty parting with money, the “saving” behavior of hoarders may be driven more by difficulty discarding goods than an active attempt to accumulate as many goods as possible.
Clearly, there are different variations of saving. My own view is that a saver is someone who actively attempts to accumulate funds to protect and benefit their future selves (and perhaps their offspring as well). They may very well take pleasure in the act of protecting their future selves and believe it is “the right thing to do.” Thus, saving, from my perspective, is intimately tied to a future-oriented mindset, and has much less to do with the balance of your saving account or any attempts to “save up” to make a particular purchase.
