Article Review
In the NPR article by Chris Arnold on It’s a good time to save more, individuals are encouraged to review their spending habits and eliminate any bad practices that hinder them from achieving financial independence and freedom. Even though debts elevate individuals to reach their goals, one should balance their credit balance to be lower than their overall income to avoid creating a deficit that affects the quality of life experienced by individuals. Arnold encourages individuals to distribute their income during this period of inactivity where movement is limited to promote health safety. The author emphasizes on the benefits of saving during this period of uncertainty because of the limited spending power that allows individuals to focus on their spending habits and create a savings account that allows them to overcome emergencies that disrupt their financial stability.
By making the saving culture automatic, individuals will have a limited control over their income, a move that will encourage their spending habits because of their ability to accomplish their desired goals. By creating a standing order with the bank or employer, generated revenue will be distributed to the different accounts to allow people to actualize their goals and live their dreams (Arnold, 2020). Although this is one of the tough financial decisions people have to make, the benefits reaped from this process are immense and guarantee individuals about their future. Hence, reducing one’s influence over the process of allocating the income will promote the saving culture and expose people closer to their goals.
Learning to prioritize is another approach that should be considered because of its impact on the sustainability of the saving process. Importantly, paying debts is an important decision that one has to make over saving their earned income. However, the debt may be higher than expected, compelling individuals to save less in an attempt to maintain their credit score. In this regard, the article encourages the readers to “compare the cost of debt to the payback from one’s savings,” to create a balance that eliminates the financial strain, which may emerge during the saving process.
Many behavioral theories are based on the concept of reward to promote a certain character trait that yields positive outcomes. Embracing the concept in the process of saving enables one to reward themselves for managing to meet their desired goals after every financial period. In this regard, the reward should not exceed the saving goal to avoid watering down the impact of the entire process of creating a goal and working towards it (Baker, Farrokhnia, Meyer, Pagel, & Yannelis, 2020). Experts indicate that combining a difficult process with a reward exposes individuals to an enabling environment where they can overcome the obstacles that hinder continuity, which guarantees results in the entire saving process.
Chris Arnold stresses the benefits of saving during the Coronavirus pandemic period because of the limited spending power that allows individuals to focus on their spending habits and create a savings account that allows them to overcome emergencies that disrupt their financial stability. Unlike other occasions where the saving process is largely affected by distractions that hinder productivity, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed individuals to an environment with limited mobility and significant inactivity that allows them to limit their spending. By taking advantage of this duration, individuals can easily focus on certain goals that define their ambitions in the business environment.
