My parents always managed to make ends meet, even though my mother was a stay-at-home mom and my father worked in a factory! Neither my sibling nor I did things like tuition and that kind of income supplementing stuff.
Virtually every family I know either has both parents working full time or one of the partners earning a really huge income – surely upwards of 100 times what their fathers made! The idea that one parent can work a typical factory/bank/government job while the other parent stays at home is a historic idea. Very rarely do you find somebody who can lead a simple life!
Obviously, there cannot be just one reason that has caused this change. People will point to inflation – how things were cheap in the 1970s and even in the 1980s. They will tell you about the increasing cost of petrol, housing, food grains and housing prices that have gone up since the 1970s without a similar increase in wages. Others will point to food prices or the cost of education. Actually, in the 1970s too you had movies complaining about inflation. Today’s movies do not – the hero and heroine seem to be from a different planet with different problems.
The change is in the number of bills – and the amount per bill – that a ‘normal’ family has. My parents, for example, had their mortgage payment, electricity, and phone service. There was of course the newspaper and the ‘society charges’ which included the mortgage. That was all. We had an antenna on our roof to watch television. Entertainment was restricted to an occasional movie – twice a year in our case, a little more frequently for some cousins. We would eat out on birthdays – however, that was not ‘obligatory’. An annual vacation meant a stay at a cousin’s place. It was okay to share bathrooms.
Compare this to our situation. We now have many more bills – education loans, personal loans, wedding loans, mortgages, life insurance, pension plans, cable, mobile phones, net... This is a guess – but I think every 5 years we add one item of expense which we did not know existed, but after 5 years wonder ‘how could mankind live without this’!This adds up to thousands of rupees a month for services that my parents simply didn’t have or need. We have it as a habit. What can be done about this? The first thing to look at is whether or not these bills are actually required, or if they just seem to be.
Do we need internet access at home? Do we need cable? Not really - we could spend more family time. My neighbour lives without cable. Do we need a cell phone? In Indian conditions, it is cheaper than a landline phone. How much does R40 a day for 30 years become in an index fund? Well, about R200 million (R2 crore). Not bad, right?
What does this mean for us?
Well, we have chosen our lifestyles, let us not crib about it. Having made our choices, we should not blame our bills! If you get stuck with bills, sit back and relax. See what expenses have been committed in a weak movement and you are pretending that you cannot live without it. If you did not know where your next meal would come from, would you still have it? What would your parents have done in similar circumstances?
Control your actions, the reactions are not in your control. – Bhagavad Gita.