By Hamza Kyeyune
In the world of financial gospel, making a virtue of frugality might sometimes be as misplaced as readily deploying the idiom "saving for a rainy day" as a metaphor for misfortune.
The accent in these approaches is on fear of the unforeseen as a motivator for keeping aside a portion of one's income to tide over the bad times.
October 31 every year is commemorated as World Savings Day to encourage people to save in preparation for known unknowns like sudden loss of income, illness, accident and severe material loss, among others.
What often gets overlooked is the potentially more potent modern reverse psychology of financial freedom — or the thought that one needn't forever remain poor — as the engine that propels a culture of saving.
Most people understand the essence of saving and possess the will to commit portions of their earnings to build a cash bulwark for the future. However, achieving this objective remains a relentless challenge for various reasons. As the adage goes, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Income disparity
According to the Global Findex Database, 55% of adults in developing economies can reliably access emergency money within a month's timeline, while 45% are left in the lurch.
This shows that while the rationale behind building up a cash reserve is universally understood, and even the weakest earner might have the strongest will to save, more is needed to achieve that goal.
In the bustling Ugandan capital of Kampala, the daily hubbub cloaks the financial troubles brewing within. Ordinary people on the city's streets say they don't have enough money to get by, let alone save.
The current state of the economy, with inflation eating into earnings, has made survival more critical than saving.
"Where is the money to save? You cannot save what you don't have. Before you can save, certain expenses must be prioritised, or else it is not feasible. You cannot save your hard-earned money on an empty stomach," a young man tells TRT Afrika.
He is one among millions facing the same predicament. Life's daily struggles have pushed savings farthest from their minds.
Small is beautiful
Be it Uganda or any other part of Africa and the world, it has been proved over and over again that the art of saving is couched in the most fundamental of human traits: habit.
In his bestselling book Atomic Habits, the American author James Clear speaks of the difference between not saving and saving as being something as organic as a shift in mindset.
"You can make hard habits more attractive if you can learn to associate them with a positive experience," he writes.
Creating a financial plan where one is saving a certain amount of money, however insignificant it might appear, is way more helpful than being weighed down by the challenge of earning enough to keep aside after meeting one's needs.
The idea is that once you save a little bit of money, the drive or urge will be there to forge ahead. It also helps to reconcile oneself to the fact that, unlike most things in the modern world, there is no instant gratification in saving money.
So, can people with low incomes or struggling to earn a living ever aspire to save?
Data shows that time is a saver's biggest ally, irrespective of the quantum of cash being put away for the future. As compounding works its magic, a small amount of regular savings over a long period becomes a corpus worth counting.
It isn't unrealistic for people with low incomes to save. Even impoverished people can save small amounts that accumulate into relevant sums over time. It is imperative to imbibe the culture of savings; there is no shortcut, say financial planners.
Savings route
Whereas family and social networks are the most common first-line sources of emergency money in society, there is a significant difference in how reliable these sources are.
About half of all poor people who turn to family and friends in times of need would admit they don't get the help they need. This number dwindles in the higher echelons of income-earners.
The only way out for people with low incomes is to bank on savings as a habit maintained over a considerable period as the most reliable way to weather a financial emergency. Anecdotal evidence and economic statistics show that this can be achieved.
Some experts advocate changing the definition of "disposable income" to spur savings. They argue that a commitment to personal savings should be considered as living costs, in which case putting money away becomes imperative rather than conditional.
Freeing resources for savings also goes beyond frugality. A thriving savings culture requires the backing of critical behavioural elements as building blocks to financial resilience.
The starting point could be valuing time over money, the only thing that's not infinite.
