Americans are renowned for being reckless and wasteful spenders, living beyond their means, spending all that they earn and drowning in debt.

But that’s not an accurate characterization, asserts investment manager Ken Fisher, author of "The Only Three Questions That Count.” Americans are the world’s best and most consistent savers, but you’d never know it from looking at the country’s official saving rate.

The U.S.’s official saving rate — "diss-saving” — not only doesn’t reflect reality, opines Fisher, but the negative rate could actually be good.

Consider the following, Fisher suggests: America’s personal saving rate has been declining for 20 years. Still, household net worth has increased over the same period.

Story Continues Below

How can that be?

The problem isn’t profligacy, Fisher states, it’s the rate methodology. For starters, the formula used to calculate official saving doesn’t include capital gains, even though that’s one important way Americans save.

What’s more, money contributed by an employer to employees’ pension or other retirement plans is also not included. Distributions from those plans don’t count as saving going in, but they reduce saving coming out.

It’s not about spending profligately, asserts Fisher, but about saving in a new and better way and boosting productivity.

So, a negative saving rate can be good, he says.

Editor's note:
The 3 Best Income Stocks in the World
How to Turn $50,000 into $1.25 Million
Learn the Money-Making Secrets of the World`s Four Most Successful Investors