INTRODUCTION

Saving is income not spent, or deferred consumption. Methods of saving include putting money
aside in, for example, a deposit account, a pension account, an saving fund, or as cash. Saving
also involves reducing expenditures, such as recurring costs. In terms of personal finance, saving
generally specifies low-risk preservation of money, as in a deposit account, versus saving,
wherein risk is a lot higher; in economics more broadly, it refers to any income not used for
immediate consumption.
Saving differs from savings. The former refers to the act of increasing one's assets, whereas the
latter refers to one part of one's assets, usually deposits in savings accounts, or to all of one's
assets. Saving refers to an activity occurring over time, a flow variable, whereas savings refers to
something that exists at any one time, a stock variable. This distinction is often misunderstood,
and even professional economists and saving professionals will often refer to "saving" as
"savings".
In different contexts there can be subtle differences in 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.
Saving is closely related to physical saving, in that the former provides a source of funds for the
latter. By not using income to buy consumer goods and services, it is possible for resources to
instead be invested by being used to produce fixed capital, such as factories and machinery.
Saving can therefore be vital to increase the amount of fixed capital available, which contributes
to economic growth.
However, increased saving does not always correspond to increased saving. If savings are not
deposited into a financial intermediary such as a bank, there is no chance for those savings to be
recycled as saving by business. This means that saving may increase without increasing saving,
possibly causing a short-fall of demand (a pile-up of inventories, a cut-back of production,
employment, and income, and thus a recession) rather than to economic growth. In the short
term, if saving falls below saving, it can lead to a growth of aggregate demand and an economic
boom. In the long term if saving falls below saving it eventually reduces saving and detracts
from future growth. Future growth is made possible by foregoing present consumption to
increase saving. However savings not deposited into a financial intermediary amount to an
(interest-free) loan to the government or central bank, who can recycle this loan.

OBJECTIVE
Saving is one of the foremost concerns of every individual investor as their small savings of
today are to meet the expenses of tomorrow. to analyse the saving pattern, saving objective and
preferences of individual investors for various saving options available in India. For the purpose
of the study, parametric and non-parametric statistical methods have been employed. The study
used a structured questionnaire in which potential investors were asked for their reactions to
some specific situations. The result shows that, objective to saving is significantly influenced by
demographic factors such as age, occupation and the income level of investors. The study
exhibits the saving habit of retail investors across the different income levels. Savings is a habit
specially embodied into women. It was found that female investors tend to save more in a
disciplined way than the male investors. Paper attempts to explore whether dichotomy of the
popular believes that men are more pro-risk than women. It was observed that women are risk
averse indeed but save more than the male counterparts as the income level rises. From the
research point of view, such a study will help in developing and expanding knowledge in this
field of personal finance and saving.

DETAILS

In India savings based on a legislative framework of Government banks has a history of nearly
130 years. Some historians, trace the genesis of the savings movement to 1834, when the first
savings bank was established in Calcutta by the Government. However, the Government Savings
Bank Act was passed in 1873, and it was in 1882 that the Post Office Savings Bank of India
came into existence. In 1886 The Government District Savings Banks were merged with the Post
Office Savings Bank (POSB). While under British Rule, the Government of India had also set up
the National Savings Central Bureau with the objectives of promoting thrift, containing
inflationary trends in the economy caused by the Second World War, and mobilizing funds to
finance the war. It is said, however that this drive did not gain momentum as the people were not
enthusiastic about funding an alien war effort.

After independence, in 1947, it was felt that more of an impetus has to be given to the savings
movement and the National Savings Organisation NSO (now NSI) was created in 1948. The
words of the then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru signify the crucial role envisaged for
the national savings movement in the context of domestic savings as a force for national
development.

I attach great importance to the movement of National Savings. It is important not only because
we want people to save and to apply these savings for our development plans, but also because it
reaches a large number of people. It is not enough merely to make appeals. There must be
organization behind it also so as to reach every village. Every person who participates in this
campaign and adds to the savings not only helps in the fulfillment of our Second Five Year Plan
but also becomes in a sense a sharer in it. I wish this campaign every success... '

Small savings were considered a priority concern of the Government. The Constitution of India,
adopted in 1949, lists the Post Office Savings Bank in its Seventh Schedule, Item No. 39.
Utilizing the Government Savings Certificates Act of 1959 and the Public Provident Fund Act of
1968, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) framed numerous small savings plans under these acts.
The primary objectives of the small savings programme has been to promote the habit of thrift
and savings among citizens of the country. The emphasis, as the words small savings suggest,
is to bring the small depositor into the fold of the savings movement. The Post Office Savings
Bank has been the main vehicle for these plans across the length and breadth of India since its
establishment 123 years ago. Post Office Savings Banks were opened in 1882. Some of the samll
savings schemes i.e. Public Provicent Fund and Senior Citizen's Savings Scheme are also
operated through designated branches of nationalised banks and 4 private banks i.e. ICICI, IDBI,
HDFC and UTI Bank.