Treat saving money like it's purchasing future freedom

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Onward Weekly

Onward Team

July 28, 2026

Morgan Housel's framing around savings in his new book The Art of Spending has completely reshaped the way I approach savings. Instead of simply socking money away in an account, he pictures every deposit as purchasing the freedom he'll enjoy in the future.

If savings = freedom (to do what you want, when you want to— and to not be beholden to a crummy job or financially reliant on others), then putting money away, even a small percentage, can have an incredible life-affirming effect.

Bite-sized knowledge

The Pain of Paying.

There's a behavioral economics term, The Pain of Paying, that I wish I learned yesterday before I spent 30 mins on the Shop app before buying something I didn't need. The part of your brain that responds to pain is engaged when physically paying cash or seeing money taken out of your account.¹

The only issue is... cash is becoming irrelevant, Apple Pay and 1-click purchases are too easy, and the 'Buy now, pay later' structure creates distance from the joy of a purchase and the reality of the cost.

Give this a try

This week, leave non-essential items in your online shopping cart for 48 hours.

If you still want the item after 48 hours, buy guilt free. If you forgot, you just purchased some future freedom.

¹ Ofer Zellermayer: The Pain of Paying (Carnegie Mellon University, 1996)

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