Investing is overrated. Save more.

Saving can be the difference between crying and sighing after an adverse event.

You can't save money if you spend all of it on groceries, transportation, and rent. When I was at college, I saved money to afford protein-less soup and pork as stiff as pavement from the restaurant in front of my university. But if you have money after covering your needs, like I now do, save.

When you save money on a bank, piggy, or a safe, you protect yourself from life's unpredictable events. Job layoffs, urgent medical treatments, and decreases in market returns are less stressful for those with savings to fund their rise in the cost of living. Are these ideal situations? No. But 

you can save to mitigate or avoid their impact.

For simplicity, we'll place the people who don't put money aside for no reason, even if they can, into two groups. 

First, there are the people that maximize short-term pleasure. These are Type 1 non-savers. They spend most of their money traveling, eating, and on clothes. Eventually, they spend the rest of their income on something useless, like an umbrella with built-in electric fans. 

Some Type 1 non-savers grow old and never face expenses they can't cover, making them assume anyone can live lavishly without consequences. Others find that life is indeed short when you can't fund medicines or move during a war because they die.

The second type of non-savers invest all the money left after covering basic needs. For them, saving is useless, as investing in the stock market, real estate, or startups might give them more returns. The key word is "might," which these people read as "assured." They'll look at an asset's historical returns, run forecasting software, say "Warren Buffett" three times in front of a mirror at 3 am, and "predict" they'll be rich. Out of these assumptions, Warren's is the least crazy. Everyone knows it's fake. But people genuinely believe they can predict investment returns based on past data, which is delusional.

Black Swans are unpredictable outlier events with an extreme impact on markets and ourselves. The Dot-com bubble and the 2008 financial crisis are events we could never predict based on historical data. If you invested all your money in the industries these outliers affected, you likely moved below the nearest moldless bridge.

Ironically, people obsessed with investing and forecasting earnings often learn the wrong lessons from Black Swans. They believe their prediction model failed one time when, in reality, they never worked—they just made lucky guesses. Others cannot see that you can't predict the future based on history and "prepare" to avoid events like previous Black Swans. 

Failure to acknowledge life's unpredictability creates a destructive cycle. First, you experience an impactful event. Then, you think you can predict events with these characteristics, so you don't save for unexpected ones that don't exist yet. You study its "causes" and believe no event will ever affect your wellbeing. Finally, a Black Swan arises—like someone drinking bat soup for lunch, causing a world pandemic—and you lose more money or health.

Salaries, real estate returns, and stock performance mostly go up. But what if they go down? Most of us won't have illnesses with a significant death rate. But what if we do? If you didn't save money to fund your Ischemic heart disease treatment because your heart has never failed, prepare to order a Chai Latte in the Afterlife's cafeteria.

Save, even if you earn over 99% of the population. Don't overthink where you should do it. Open a bank account with an interest rate high enough to cover (or almost cover) the annual rise in market prices, and then don't do anything. Sit still, drink a beer or two. Your ability to withdraw money at any moment raises your odds of surviving unpredictable events. 

A friend's brother saves money on a safe under his mattress. I wouldn't keep money there, as I get nervous when I have more than enough for an Uber drive in my pockets. Plus, bed bugs and the monster under the bed could steal it. But, if a dreadful event happened, he would have the money he needed to overcome it. His saving method is unconventional, but it works.

If you have never saved before, start small—like saving 5% of your post-tax income—not to feel you are not enjoying what you earn. As you get more comfortable saving, raise the percentage. 

You can also reduce your living expenses and save a percentage of your net available income. I save around 90% of my income while living in my hometown, 70% traveling across Colombia, and 60% abroad. 

My savings rate is feasible because I live in Latin America but earn like a US citizen. The lower food, rent, and transportation costs allow me to eat at elegant restaurants, travel, and buy overpriced t-shirts made in Taiwan —but sold—in Paris without affecting my savings rate. Like the millions of first-world remote workers living in affordable countries, you can reduce your cost of living to increase your savings rate.

Once you save regularly, invest some of your stored money. Index funds, stocks, and crypto are all options, and I won't convince you to pick one over the other. Pick the one you like the most and just save. Saving can be the difference between crying and sighing after an adverse event.