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My parents always told me to save.  My accountant tells me to set money aside in my RRSP.  Saving seems like a reasonable thing to do, but why?  Why do we save?  More importantly what are we supposed to be saving for?  After being able to take care of life’s necessities: shelter, heat, food and 3 months of living expenses set aside, what else is there?  My TV tells me I should be saving to get a new car, a bigger TV (I gave in to this one), a bigger house, a nice vacation, etc.  What a fucking scam.  You work your ass off for 60 hours / week and then you buy a nice big house or a downtown condo and now you have to work 80 hours / week to maintain the same lifestyle.  So by saving and then upgrading, you’ve essentially locked yourself into a job you already hated.  Btw, if anyone thinks their house is an appreciating asset just ask your US friends, especially those in Florida or California.

Convinced that savings suck, but not sure yet about what to do with the extra cash?  Do what I do:  Save just enough for your next business “risk”.  That could be investing in a bottomless stock market, buying a cash flow positive income property with lots of room for equity growth or starting a business.  Your friends might think these ventures are risky.  Your friends must be employed.  Investing in yourself or what you’ve researched is a lot safer than being employed by a corporation that can fire you at any time, for any reason.  What if you fail?  Each failure contains valuable clues to achieve success the next time.  Save some money and try again.  Feel shitty about failing?   Remember that your lost investment would have just eroded in your bank anyways.

It’s a bit counter-intuitive because of how society has defined “risk”, but really one of the riskiest things you can do with your money is to take no investment risk at all.  Yet somehow, I think our asian parents would disagree.