There is a huge difference between saving and investing. Both saving money and investing money have a place in your life, but they play very different roles.
How you handle these two things can have big implications for your financial success, stress level, and how wealthy you ultimately become. It can even mean the difference between suffering through a recession or depression or sleeping soundly through the night knowing you have enough spare liquidity on hand.
Saving money is the process of parking cash in extremely safe accounts or securities that can be accessed or sold in a very short amount of time. Investing money, though, is the process of using your money or capital to buy an asset you think has a high probability of generating a safe and acceptable rate of return over time—even though it may decrease for years. Typically this means stocks, bonds, and real estate.