Joy Mukherjee

Start Saving: “Stop Leakage of Money”:

Few years back one of my favorite pastime was visiting Electronic Stores and asking prices of Laptops and their installment schemes. Returning home first thing I used to do is take a pen and paper and calculate a monthly budget if somehow I can afford the EMI of a Laptop. After couple of years I bought a Laptop and now I do the same enquiry in those Electronic Stores for I Pad. This is how your requirement keeps on changing day by day. You are never satisfied with what you have but always weep for what you want to have. This makes you greedy day by day and you become frustrated with yourself.

It’s the era of advertisement. The hoardings, the newspaper ads all scream and say “Buy the product else you are missing a lifetime opportunity” and you fall in the trap. You run to get a LCD television exchanging your 21 inch CRT running in good condition. After 6 months the same ad where you have seen the easy affordable LCD is replaced by a Plasma TV ad which says “Why compromise with a LCD TV when you can get a Plasma TV for a Low EMI”. You again become tempted and put your head in the slaughter. Again you will run for next up gradation and un-knowingly the monthly expenses increase by a handsome amount.
We have forgotten the local grocery shops and instead we prefer big departmental stores in shopping malls. They claim that they sell products at a lower price and their products come with plenty of offers. Yes that’s true. But as soon as you enter the stores you are psychologically driven out with the wide range of products and end up shopping more and exceeding your budget. Once I had an opportunity to meet with one of the senior officials of a company which runs big departmental stores across multiple cities. I asked him why they don’t have a website with e-purchase facility so that we don’t need to visit their store every time. There can be a catalog from where we can choose the products and pay online and get a home delivery. He smiled and said that is something which they won’t do. They want us to come to the stores and spend more. The arrangements of products, the posters, the offer prices all are inviting to go out of your pocket. So more you visit these malls, more is your expenditure.

Other two money sucking elements are Credit Cards and Loans. They unknowingly extract money from you and when you look back you realize that you have bought something in a wrong time when your budget was not within your limit or you have made some loans and finally paying 50% more than the original price.

It’s time we should start thinking. This is not applicable for the high earning people for whom these do not make any difference. But for Medium Income group and Low Income Group this is going to be dangerous. If the trend continues they will end up in deep soup as a time will come when they are without any money and investments. They compromise with the “must –to-do” things like Insurance, Long Term Savings and Investments on assets for these short span improvements in lifestyle. The family members also play a role in this drainage of money. Actually what they see all around, they need to own those, forgetting if it is viable at that point of time or not. The coats are no longer cut according to the cloth and so you end up undressed in desire of a coat.

What we need is a proper financial mentor. Else we will continue to fall in trap of advertisements and social pressure and go for overspending. A proper awareness is needed on savings and if your salary is “X”, what percent of it you can afford for improving your lifestyle. I feel our ancestors were more calculative and since they did not had these temptations they did quite well in terms of savings and property even with a lower salary and more family members to support.

Let’s see how you put your views and if we can have a solution for this dangerous trend. I am sure if this is not controlled it will have a fatal end.

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