Want to Save Big? Sweat the Small Stuff
That morning cup of coffee could cost you $38,000.
Thriftiness is the greatest of the financial virtues. Indeed, if you make a point of regularly spending less than you earn, everything else in your financial life can seem far, far easier.
The benefits: You will suffer less stress, your finances won't get so easily derailed by rough markets or unexpected expenses and you will find it a whole lot easier to retire. And it all starts with that cup of coffee.
Dross Into Gold
This train of thought, and my apparent obsession with coffee, was spurred by a simple calculator created by Henry "Bud" Hebeler, a retired engineer and author of "J.K. Lasser's Your Winning Retirement Plan." The calculator shows how much you might fatten your retirement nest egg by trimming your monthly expenses and then salting away the resulting savings.
"I think it's particularly applicable to younger people," Mr. Hebeler says. "They're spending money like drunken sailors. There needs to be a lot more stress on saving."
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Listen Now | iTunes Archive | RSS Feed | More InfoConsider an example. Let's say you are age 25, you plan to retire at 65 and you expect to live until 90. You figure your investments will earn 7% a year before retirement and 6% annually after you quit the work force, while inflation runs at 3%.
Next, assume that from Monday to Friday you save $1.50 each day by not buying coffee on your way to work. That should work out to around $33 a month. If you socked away those coffee savings in your company's 401(k) plan every month until age 65, you would have $38,000 at retirement, according to Mr. Hebeler's calculator. If your employer made a matching contribution, the sum would be even larger.
If you then drew down that $38,000 over the next 25 years, you would garner $142 in monthly after-tax retirement income. These figures are calculated in current dollars, and thus the $142 in retirement would have the same spending power as $142 today. Mr. Hebeler's calculator is available at his Web site,
www.analyzenow.com, in the section labeled "free programs."
In the above example, socking away your coffee money is hugely rewarding because we're talking about 40 years of saving money and collecting investment gains. But even those of us who are a tad older can benefit from trimming expenses. Let's use the same assumptions described above, except this time we'll presume you are 45, rather than 25.
Now, suppose you skip eating out once a month and save the $60 you would have spent. While you're at it, you also save $24 a month by bringing your lunch to work every Monday, $15 by dumping some premium cable channels, $13 by ditching your satellite radio and $15 by raising the deductibles on your auto insurance.
Add it all up and you are looking at $127 in monthly savings. Keep that up until age 65 and you would boost your monthly after-tax retirement income by $172.
"People want cellphones, high-speed Internet, they eat out a lot, they have multiple cars, their utility bills are staggering," Mr. Hebeler says. "It's really easy to see how they could save $100 a month. That could grow to be a huge sum by the time they retire."
This brings me to one of my pet peeves. As I look around, I see more and more families locking themselves into a costly lifestyle by committing to big mortgages, car payments, cellphones, cable, Internet access, satellite radio and a gazillion other recurring expenses.
Problem is, these hefty fixed costs leave folks with precious little financial breathing room -- and it makes it much tougher to save.
Fleeting Pleasures
The solution, of course, is to cut costs, and that means making some sacrifices. But ask yourself this: How much of a sacrifice would it really be?
Suppose you trade up to a luxury car or you hire a service to clean your house every week. Initially, you will get a real kick out of your higher standard of living.
After awhile, however, you will start to feel dissatisfied again. Academics refer to this as "hedonic adaptation," the notion that we quickly adapt to improvements in our lives, so that there is little or no long-run boost to our happiness.
Sound grim? Unfortunately, the problems don't end there. While the pleasure from increased spending may not last, the resulting financial drain goes on and on.
Indeed, you will want that higher standard of living for the rest of your life. This means you will need an even bigger nest egg, so you can continue your costlier lifestyle into retirement. To make matters worse, it's now harder to amass that nest egg, because you are spending more and saving less.
In fact, as I see it, there is a virtuous and vicious cycle to saving and spending. Imagine two families, both of which earn $50,000 a year.
One family saves just 5% of pre-tax income each year, or $2,500, with the other $47,500 going to spending and taxes. Not only are the members of our first family saving relatively little, but they also are locked into a fairly high standard of living, which makes it tough for them to cope with unexpected expenses or any drop in income. That will mean a lot of financial stress -- and a lot of financial struggles.
The second family is thriftier, saving 15% a year, or $7,500, with the other $42,500 going to spending and taxes. The folks in our second family may be spending less money, but they aren't necessarily less happy.
Meanwhile, they are on track for a comfortable retirement, thanks to their higher savings rate.
But that isn't the only reason they will find it easier to retire. Because our second family is used to spending less, it won't need nearly as large a retirement nest egg to replicate the pre-retirement standard of living.
The bottom line: Before you sign up for satellite radio, hire a cleaning service or start regularly buying cappuccino, think about the thousands less you will have at age 65 -- and about how many more years you will have to work to pay for today's fleeting pleasures.
勿以善小而不为-- 一杯咖啡的理财启示
清晨一杯咖啡的代价可能是3.8万美元。
节俭是最好的理财习惯。的确，如果你总是注意量力而行，不透支，那么你的个人理财就变得容易多了。
节俭的好处是：你承受的压力会减小，投资市场的不景气或意料之外的花销不至于给你的财务状况带来很大的冲击，你的退休生活也会变得轻松很多。所有这些都从一杯小小的咖啡开始。
集腋成裘
这套思路以及我对“咖啡效应”的著迷源自亨利?赫布勒(Henry 'Bud' Hebeler)发明的一种简单计算方法。赫布勒是一个退休的工程师，是《J.K.拉瑟的成功退休计划》一书的作者。这个方法向你演示了通过削减每月的开支并把省下来的钱存起来，你可以大大充实自己的退休储蓄。
“我觉得这在年轻人身上尤其可行，”赫布勒说，“他们像喝醉的水手一样挥金如土，需要给他们施加更大的储蓄压力。”
来看一个例子吧。假设你现在25岁，计划65岁退休，预计自己能活到90岁。你估计自己的投资在退休之前每年的回报率是7%，在退休后每年的回报率是6%，同时通货膨胀率是3%。
接下来，假设从周一到周五，你把每天在上班路上买咖啡的1.5美元省了下来，一个月下来就是33美元。如果你把这笔省下来的钱每月存进公司的401(k)计划，直到65岁退休，按照赫布勒的演算法，到退休时你就有3.8万美元了。如果你的老板为你存入相应的资金，这笔数目将更大。
如果你在退休后的25年内动用这3.8万美元，就意味著你的税后退休月收入将多获142美元。这些数字都是以现值美元算的，这里的142美元跟今天的142美元有同样的购买力。在赫布斯的网站
www.analyzenow.com的“free programs”栏目可以找到这个演算方法。
从上面的例子可以看出，把你的咖啡钱存起来是大有裨益的，因为我们讨论的是40年的储蓄和投资收益。不过，甚至我们当中年龄稍大一些的人也能从节省花销上获益。让我们继续沿用上面提到的假设，只更改一个条件：你现在不是25岁，而是45岁。
现在，如果你每个月少下一次馆子，就能节省60美元。同样，每周一你都能带午饭到公司吃，每月能节省24美元；取消额外的有线电视每月能节省15美元，放弃收听卫星电台能节省13美元，而增加汽车保险的免赔部分可以节省15美元。
把这些统统加起来，你每个月就可以省下127美元。这样一直持续到你65岁退休，那时你的税后退休月收入将增加172美元。
“人们想要手机、高速上网，喜欢经常下馆子，同时有好几辆车，水电等各项开支多得吓人，”赫布勒说，“他们一个月要省下100美元真的很容易，省下的钱等到他们退休的时候将是一笔很可观的数目。”
说到这，我想起了我经常感到气愤的一个问题。看看周围，我发现越来越多的家庭为了过奢侈的生活不惜承担大数额的住房贷款和汽车贷款，背负著手机、有线电视、上网接入、卫星电台和一大堆名目各异的经常性开支。
问题在于，这些繁杂的固定生活成本使得人们在财务上几乎没有喘气的空间，使得储蓄变得更加困难。
短暂的享乐
解决问题的办法自然是削减生活成本，而这意味著要作一些牺牲。不过，不妨问自己一个问题：牺牲到底有多大？
假设你买了一辆豪华轿车或请人每个星期帮你打扫一次屋子。最初，你会感觉生活水准真的提高了许多。
但没过多久，你又开始不满足了。学术上把这种现象称为“享乐适应”，即我们很快就习惯已经改善了的生活水准，因而幸福感很短暂或者没有什么幸福感。
听起来有些严重是吗？不幸的是，问题还不只这些。加大开支带来的快乐很短暂，而留下的财务压力却会持续很久。
的确，你会希望往后的生活能保持更高的生活水准，这意味著你需要为退休储蓄得更多，这样你才能把优厚的生活条件保持到退休以后。现在问题是你消费多、储蓄少，越来越难攒下钱。这样，情况就更不妙了。
在我看来，储蓄和消费实际上是个良性循环和恶性循环的问题。假设有两个家庭，他们每年都挣5万美元。
其中一个家庭把每年税前收入的5%存起来，即2,500美元，另外的4.75万美元用于消费和纳税。这个家庭不仅储蓄率比较低，并且还保持著一个相当高的生活水准。这样，遇到意想不到的支出或是出现收入下降的情况，他们将很难应付。这就意味著他们要承受很大的财务压力，当然也意味著要做一些艰难的努力。
第二个家庭比较节约，每年储蓄15%，即7,500美元，另外的4.25万美元用于消费和纳税。这个家庭消费得少，但生活乐趣不一定比前面一个家庭少。
与此同时，由于储蓄率较高，他们将有一个轻松舒适的退休生活。
但他们能轻松退休的原因还不止这一条。第二个家庭已经习惯了低消费，因此他们不需要有很殷实的退休存款来维持退休前的生活水准。
总而言之，在你签字购买卫星电台服务、请人打扫屋子或每天买一杯卡布奇诺咖啡之前，想一想你65岁时将少拿到的数万元收入。想一想为了今天短暂的快乐你要工作多少年才能补偿。
