Five Lame Excuses for Not Saving Money

Why aren't we saving more money?

According to a Harris Poll released early this month, 27% of Americans have no personal savings and 34% have nothing saved for retirement.

Of course, not all the news is bad. As a country, we're beginning to spend more than we did just a year ago when we were in the grips of the Great Recession, as The New York Times recently pointed out.

According to the same article, we were also saving more last year (in the second quarter of 2009, Americans socked away 7% of their disposable income, versus only 5.3% in December of 2010), the question is, why aren't we still saving? Clearly, we all can -- we just don't. Here are some of the excuses we typically offer up to explain why we don't save more. Let's see if we can't debunk them.