Saving? You mean I can actually do this?

The other day I was asked a question of what would encourage a person to save. And I fluffed the answer entirely. I went home and I thought about it. And then it came to me.

A crisis, that is what will cause most of us to save.

Life has the ability to smack us now and then but the smacks come with different degrees of pain. First it will smack us and we'll just shrug it off, and move on. Then life smacks us again, only this time we see stars. But still we just wipe the tears and move on. Then life smacks us so hard that we stumble, fall, crumble and pass out.

And then when you wake up, everything you've ever worked for has disappeared, and you have nothing left. And you have to start from scratch, with nothing, zero, zilch, nada.

This is usually the time that you also learn to appreciate and understand the value of money. Because it will be gone.

Then and only then as we start recovering from that financial disaster, do we start changing our ways. And then we start saving.

When we look in front of us all we see is this big mountain, and just as we want to take the first step to start climbing the mountain, the ground shakes again and we are going even deeper, to find ourselves in a hole. While we are crying in that hole, with seemingly no way out, we became aware of a tiny ant next to us.

The mountain is our debt; the hole, our emotions while we are struggling with debt; and the ant is our salary to cover our debt.

You are not alone. You will get through this.

Usually a crises bring about change. And it is possible to start saving in the midst of a mountain of debt. Taking that first step will empower you in a way that you can not imagine. Once you realise the power of saving, you will realise that you can conquer your debt as well. One step at a time. One day at a time. One goal at a time.

Comments

The problem with love

The problem with love is that we want to wrap in a nice package and put a little bow on it and say, "There, that is love," only to find that for most of our lives we have no clue what love is and how to find it. There is no problem with love, except the ones we create. We watch romantic movies with annoying and ridiculous scripts, written by people who are even more clueless about love than we are, and we think love is drama, break up and make up, and all those other unnecessary things in between. But what is love after all? It's not grand gestures and continuous big moments. In the beginning of a new relationship, there are butterflies in your stomach, increased heart rates, the excitement, the bliss and the magic of a new found love. You literally feel as if you're walking on air. You're being wined and dined and taken to exciting places and introduce to new experiences. The world looks beautiful and rosy and perfect; and you're discovering new words for hap...

Rest in Peace, Celeste Phillips

Thursday the first of July started like any other ordinary day. I was planning my radio program that was already very close to the deadline. I was cooking that long-anticipated beef stew and enjoying the smells wafting from my kitchen. The day felt good. And then I went on Facebook. Not even halfway through to check up on the status of friends, the status on Nikki Coward's page stopped me in my tracks and ripped through my heart. Celeste Phillips has died. For a long moment, I stopped breathing as I tried to absorb this heartbreaking news. Have you ever experienced one of those moments where you can't think and your mind is left completely blank because what you're reading is so incomprehensible? Celeste has died. I can not accept that she's gone. Celeste was too full of life and love. It feels impossible that someone who gave so much and loved so hard could just be gone. It doesn't feel right that I'm talking about her in the past tense. Nothing about this fe...

Do you see the future?

In the previous century, we could tell our children to go to school, study hard and get a job. And it worked out exactly that way. But that approach is no longer working. Now we must teach our children to become problem solvers and independent thinkers. The challenge is how do we as parents move away from our last century thinking to teach our children how to survive in the twenty-first century ? Our children are growing up in a world that's vastly different from the one that we grew up in. We didn't have internet and cellphones, there was no Google, Facebook, or WhatsApp. We didn't have to deal with cyberbullies. We had to deal with the real flesh and blood bully who would beat you up and terrorise you, and that was bad enough. But he or she had a name and a face. We definitely didn't have to deal with Covid19 and people close to you and across the world dying. We also could find a job much easier. All we had to do was read and write, send our CV off an...

Olivia's world

Search This Blog