Savings

In common usage, saving generally means putting money aside, for example, by putting money in the bank or investing in a pension plan.

In a broader sense, saving is typically used to refer to economizing, cutting costs, or to rescuing someone or something.

In terms of personal finance, saving refers to preserving money for future use - typically by putting it on deposit - this is distinct from investment where there is an element of risk.

Saving differs from savings in that the first refers to the act of putting aside money for future use, whereas the second refers to the money itself once saved.

For example: you may decide to start saving 10% of your income; because you aim for your savings to grow into an amount sufficient to buy a car.

In economics, personal saving has been defined as personal disposable income minus personal consumption expenditure. In other words, income that is not consumed by immediately buying goods and services is saved. Other kinds of saving can occur, as with corporate retained earnings (profits minus dividend and tax payments) and a government budget surplus.

There is some disagreement about what counts as saving. For example, the part of a person`s income that is spent on mortgage loan repayments is not spent on present consumption and is therefore saving by the above definition, even though people do not always think of repaying a loan as saving. However, in the U.S. measurement of the numbers behind its gross national product (i.e., the National Income and Product Accounts), personal interest payments are not treated as saving unless the institutions and people who receive them save them.