Saving is the result of sound financial understanding and is different from miserliness

We are passing through financially turbulent times. The food shortage and crude crisis are likely to deepen further. This may impact the world economies the way we have perhaps not imagined. Incomes may fall. Savings in all times are desirable, but in such turbulent times savings may assume more importance. Saving is a sound habit and should be differentiated from miserliness. Miserliness is a state of mind and may not be responsive to situation. Saving, on the other hand, is the product of sound financial understanding and is responsive to situation that demands it. Prevention of any waste is saving. What do we mean by the term ‘waste’? In our daily life we see many instances of waste but do not notice them as ‘waste’. For example, a man with a four-seater car drives the vehicle leaving the other seats vacant. Now, you will appreciate that the consumption of petrol would be the same whether one person is travelling or four people are travelling. We never think the vacant seats as waste of petrol. If the person had the opportunity of taking along others in the car and missed the opportunity, he should be deemed to have wasted petrol. Another instance of waste is that we often leave lights in a room switched on when there is no one in the room. Do we notice a pattern in the above instances of waste? It is that in both the cases the potential of the resources consumed is not fully utilized. In the first instance, the potential of petrol to carry four people is not fully utilized. In the second instance, the potential of electricity to be useful to you is not utilized. Thus, we can say that every time we do not utilize the full potential of a resource we should be deemed to have wasted the resource. This begets the further question: what is a resource? Anything that has the potential of making our life better is a resource. May be some resources, like the feeling of compassion, have no economic value; nevertheless, all such things may make our life better are resources. And we must learn to preserve economic resources and use them in such a manner that we utilize their full potential. In the times of abundance we do not realize importance of what a resource is and what its waste amounts to. But in the times of economic slow down—such as we are facing now— we necessarily will have to learn the concepts and put them in practice. However, we must understand that though we realize the importance of these concepts, only in such times as the present, one understands them. Their importance is no less significant in good times. In fact, it is in good times that the concepts are more relevant. It is our foolhardiness that we learn them in bad times and then we do it with great pains. We always start digging a well when there is a fire. But then it is as usual always too late.