He doesn't save enough, for starters. When he does manage to put a little something aside, he makes questionable choices among mutual funds and other investments - chasing past performance, failing to account carefully for risk, and paying too much in management fees.
More recently, the accusation has been lodged that he sometimes saves too much. He allows fund companies, with their retirement-income calculators and other marketing tools, to scare him into saving more for old age than he may ever need.
This gets to be a bit much. For one thing, the latest complaint contradicts the first. And as anyone who has paid any attention lately knows, all discussions of the subject sooner or later bog down in squabbling over how savings are measured in the first place.
A Google search on the topic ''low savings rate'' pulled up 11.8 million citations when I entered it on the weekend. This raises the distinct possibility that everything that can possibly be said on the subject has already been said, even though nothing has been resolved.
Well, maybe not quite yet. The bizarre notion of over- saving for retirement has added a provocative new twist to the discussion.
The argument has been advanced by, among others, Laurence Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University. It got a big push in January from a New York Times story headlined ''A Contrarian View: Save Less and Still Retire With Enough.''
''A small band of economists from universities, research institutions and the government are clearly expressing the blasphemy that many Americans could be saving less than they are being told to by the financial services industry - and spending more - while they are younger,'' the story said. ''Some, in fact, contend that financial firms have a pointed interest in persuading people to save much more than they need because the companies earn fees on managing that money.''
The reaction has been bubbling ever since. Many people, financial professionals and amateurs alike, saw the argument as a heresy. Aside from perhaps a few cases of obsession/compulsion, can there really be such a thing as saving too much?
''What truly puzzles me is the implication that the investment industry's gain is the investor's loss,'' Jack Brennan, chairman of Vanguard Group, said on the company's Web site last month. ''When you save, you forgo consumption today. But your opportunity to consume hasn't disappeared into the fund manager's pocket. You've simply deferred it. The money's still yours.''
Brennan concludes: ''There's no need to lead an ascetic lifestyle, but a sober-minded assessment suggests that 'over-saving' is pretty low on the list of things to worry about. As economists would say, the risks are asymmetric: Over-saving may impose unnecessary (but probably manageable) hardships, while under-saving can put you in a very tough spot when you're least able to respond.”
The intriguing thing to me in this whole debate, and indeed in most of the talk I encounter about saving, is what seldom gets mentioned: the virtue of saving money for its own sake.
Practically all public-policy incentives to saving pin a specific objective on it - retirement, most commonly, but also such things as paying for children's college tuition. The whole notion of a ''savings account'' is commonly defined as an emergency reserve against some unexpected ''rainy day,'' such as the loss of your job.
All this shies away from the elemental point that saving a dollar or a yen or a euro, just on general principle, is more often than not the best thing you can do with that money when it comes into your hands.
As Brennan says, you don't forfeit your right to spend it - you merely postpone the spending. In the meantime, if the money is invested it can be put to productive use by others. And you have increased your net worth.
Is simply amassing wealth an act of selfishness and greed? It certainly can be. But it also can be a way to provide for your own and your family's future in a socially responsible way.
Building net worth for its own sake can enhance your future ability to make meaningful contributions to charity. It may allow you to retire from a relatively high-paying job early to pursue a more idealistic vision later - say, as a teacher or clergy member, to cite two examples from personal acquaintances of mine.
The choice between saving and spending is a whole lot more than a matter of either/or. And saving for its own sake never needs an explanation or excuse.
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* CHET CURRIER is a Bloomberg News columnist. He can be reached at ccurrier@Bloomberg.net.
