Living Beyond Your Means

I’ve read somewhere about those seven signs when you are seriously broke. Seriously, I don’t think there are just those  seven signs for you to realize that you really don’t have enough to tide you over until the next pay-day or until your next pension.

My goodness, there must be something wrong with people who try to live beyond their means. Nowadays,  gadgets are always updated almost every six months and there are people who just can’t help themselves, they need to buy the newest and latest model of cellphones, tabs, lap tap or what have you maxing out their credit card limits in the process.

Since I started working at the bank back in 1978, I also started keeping a small notebook of  my daily expenses religiously updating it at the end of the day. Why, even a twenty-five cents worth of candies was written there. I kept a tab of my monthly budget and summarized it yearly when my two kids were still at university. I had several envelopes marked for marketing, for groceries, miscellaneous, Nissa’s and Josef’s allowances and for small indulgences now and then. That only stopped  a few years after my optional retirement from the bank where I worked for more than twenty-one years. Since then, I’ve been conscious of how and  where to spend wisely.Sometimes though, I am an impulsive buyer too. There are those things that we just want but don’t really need. Economists always tell us, save first before you spend. That seldom happens though. By the time the 15th or the end of the month is near, you are using your credit card to buy things.

I learned a lot while I was working at Bank of PI. You learn to save money the right way, you learn to invest in some funds the right way. They will teach you how. You will learn to curtail a little of those unnecessary expenses. You will learn to handle money. Money  per se is not evil, it’s how we handle it. There  are people who think money is their  God, the more they have, the happier they are.  You are rich when you have enough but you are richer when you have peace of mind, you can get up in the morning without worrying,  when you could admire simple things that give you happiness.

Is living beyond your means an ideal set-up? I don’t think so.  It would probably gives you more problems than you presently have.