There is saving gene in our DNA. I haven’t  firmly identified it from the human genome project  but I think it’s the black ball just to the left of the light blue one second coil along.

can you spot the saving gene?

Well there has to be a saving or hoarding gene, otherwise so many of us would save or hoard our money when we would be much better off buying daily supplies of Magnum Ice Cream.

not a sponsored ad

I was in the Co-op at about 8.30pm yesterday and I was faced with the choice of purchasing chocolate ice cream or having an untouched five pound note in my back pocket. I chose the latter. This was not a fitness thing, it was that little black dot asserting its way in the genomesphere.

This is why this tweet is so wrong.

New research finds employees auto-enrolled in retirement plans borrow more than they otherwise would have, offsetting savings. This is why we need workplace financial education programs https://t.co/Wb6jW06lVK

— Annamaria Lusardi (@A_Lusardi) January 5, 2018

I don’t have the ludicrous Annamaria Lusardi on my twitter feed but if I did I’d mute her. She is wrong, wrong , wrong!

The last thing you need when you have no money is to have some educationalist telling you not to smoke, or drink or eat the new 10 packs of Magums (with the different flavours and the diddy sticks).

Glesga pointing something else out!

It worries me that my good friend @glesgabrighton was found promoting Lusardi’s educationalism.

I fear he has a an extra frugality gene in his genome (maybe a national characteristic but I don’t want to be banned for racial slurs).

The research Lusardi is pointing to is here. The Wall Street Journal produces really great pictures; like the one below.

a truly happy man – expanding into his 401k retirement plan

When I saw the corpulent corporatist, my reading was that he’d “expanded” into a narcoleptic torpor due to the feather-bed of his 401(k) “pension” plan.

Maybe I ought to have my genome corrected by Rory Sutherland or some other behaviourist – maybe I’m aberrant. But this is precisely what the Wall Street journal article is going on about.

With more in savings, auto-enrolled employees may also feel wealthier and able to afford a larger home, Prof. Madrian said.

Prof Madrian is what the article calls a “retirement scholar”. She has the same views as Prof Choi who is presumably a “getting into debt scholar”. He has found that

A bigger mortgage can put homeowners at greater risk of default if home prices decline or the owner suffers a financial setback, he says. But in recent decades, the long-term trend is that “homes have been appreciating assets” and having a higher 401(k) balance and a bigger mortgage “is not bad and possibly even good for net worth, depending on what the housing and stock markets do.”

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Annamaria Lusardi (if you had a pipe- which I’m sure you don’t as weed is also bad for you).

You can have cake and eat it – if you work hard

The amazing conclusion of the Wall Street Article is that saving through an auto-enrolment retirement plan makes you more financially self-confident so you go out and buy a bigger house and you work a lot harder and smarter to pay for all this. In other words, you earn to get fat and fall asleep after a good lunch like the splendid fellow in the picture.

You do not have to be in charge of the human genome project or even a retirement scholar to work out that setting yourself tough financial goals, like saving proper amounts for retirement or living in a nice house, leads to success at work.

When I started out , John Ellison, my sales manager made me buy a brand new golf GTI (D85 EYP) which remained my reason to do 20 sales appointments a week for the next three years. His #2 Jasper Gundry-White marched me round to Jaeger in Regent Street and required me to buy a nice “whistle” and several expensive shirts and ties. I was immediately overdrawn . I have never blamed them for auto-enrolling me into penury!

I am very wary of underweight people as I suspect them of extreme parsimony. I fear they do not consider the Magnum option and financially educationalise their children from an early age. They are the Flanders and I will remain a financial Homer.

Financial Education has been abused by these parsimonious “thinnifers” who preach that we should not enrol the poor into pension plans (well not without the financial education they need to avoid buying Magnums at the same time).

I have recently joined the ever-swelling ranks of the “fattipuffs” who consider you can have your cake, eat it, have a mortgage and save for your retirement, so long as you are productive and good at what you do and stay honest.

The simple dictum – work hard- play hard, trumps all this silly saving nonsense. My appalling lifestyle decisions (I purchased a nice bottle of wine with the money I didn’t spend on Magnums) will result in my early demise. The CMA tables are full of fattipuffs like me and we will provide a solution to the longevity crisis yet!

I may not die thin, but I will die happy – and I’ll die solvent