BENGALURU : I don’t understand money. All I understand is that while the rupee comes, it goes faster than it comes. My income and expenditure never meet, however, hard I try. And I am not a spendthrift and my wants are simple.I realise that life is much more expensive today than it was for our parents, and our parents would have felt the same about their parents’ times. I remember the balcony ticket in a theatre would be just Rs 2, 1 kg of Basmati rice would cost Rs 5, and gold per gram Rs 95, some 50 years ago.
I remember there was an independent house for sale for Rs 16,000 in the heart of Bengaluru in the early 1970s. It was considered a huge sum those days. We didn’t have that kind of money to buy it. Today perhaps that amount looks laughable.
Once upon a time, a ‘lakhpati’ (one who possessed at least Rs 1 lakh) was considered rich. Accordingly, in movies, you would have the gang looting Rs 10,000 or holding a child for ransom for this princely sum. And the money on the kidnapper’s head would be Rs 1,000! Today, eating out costs much more.
I am not so naive as to think that the prices will remain the same. Buying a house, education, health – all have become expensive. And the fuel price hitting a century today is enough proof that prices are indeed going up very fast.
Everyone keeps saying prices have gone up – so from the laundry man to the grocery shop owner to the milk supplier to the clothes merchant – keep increasing the rates. But then, the salaried class is stuck in a time freeze... won’t get more pay even if they scream and say prices are going up.
While some prices have risen more drastically than others, one thing is clear: The cost of living has hit the roof. Is inflation the only cause?
Experts tell us that Rs 1 crore today will be worth only Rs 36 lakh in 15 years. So the number of zeroes is not going to help. Why, even a reality show has increased the prize money from Rs 1 crore to Rs 7 crore! That should tell us about how things are today.
But though income has been increasing, the real income has been falling. In the last one year, maybe because of the pandemic, my grocery bill has more than doubled. And because of the economic downturn, the light at the end of the tunnel seems to have been turned off.As someone said, the quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it in the purse!And the hardest thing is to understand the taxes. You earn money, you pay tax; you save money, yet, you pay tax. So you spend, and still you have to pay tax.Is money all that important? Yes, to survive, even if its value is going down every day. Someone once pompously said, “Money is not everything in life.” A wisecrack replied: “Make a lot of it before talking such nonsense.” Agree!