If you could take the habit of noting down your monthly expenses and start to categorise them into essential & non-essential, you would be able to have a clear picture of your expense trends. This will further equip you to know whether you are in a safe zone, whether you should take corrective measures or if you have the leisure to spend some more to please yourself or to save. I have started this practice for a few years now & believe me it is really helpful.

The reason to do this if you are amongst those who don’t have huge salaries & bank balances, then you should pay attention to where your hard-earned money is going. Logically, the greatest part of any population is in the upper middle and lower section in terms of earning whereas the top earners are a small percentage of the population. Modern society is evolving at a too rapid pace & everybody is pressured to adapt. When it is said that we live in a world of consumption, that is exactly how you must see it. And to consume the modern world gives us two options: either we pay with our own funds or we borrow. Many times, families or individuals go against their normal spendings just to follow the trends & the monthly budget becomes tight.

The result is that the earners start to feel pressured whether they shall be able to sustain their financial commitments. And because new products arrive continuously or friends & relatives are doing better materially, then the pressure increases more. The need to copy & match other’s lifestyles becomes the ultimate paradigm. I have been observing this for several years & I can tell you that along with whatever that has been modernised, poverty also has become modern. Some of the poor today possess a smartphone, are buying fast food regularly, are buying cheap cars, etc. The trend is here & it is unfortunately called development.

Compared to twenty years ago, the monthly consumption basket has been topped up with several items such as wi-fi connection, mobile data, at least one mobile phone per family member, at least one sim card per family member, satellite television, fast food, restaurant bills, CCTV camera surveillance, Internet shopping, bottled water, soda drinks, gym subscriptions, drugs, cars, travelling, paid holidays, etc. What happens is that in each layer of society, everybody is trying to imitate the standard of living of the next upper layer of society- it is an urge which is also being promoted & facilitated by business leaders & politicians in a view to “develop” their respective countries. The more developed a nation is, the wider the possibilities of consumption.

Modern development is actually a two-sided coin but unfortunately, the whole world is blind to the reverse side of the coin. It is only forward progress which is given attention in the media & tabloids. Only when the drawbacks of modern development become serious, then some attention is devoted to them, without commitments to bring about appropriate corrective measures. The process of development was in the beginning a westernisation model coming primarily from the USA. Now, development is happening worldwide and even the Eastern more spiritual nations are being drawn into the currents of modernisation. Such is the power of materialism. There needs to be a deep thinking of where we have reached & at what price and also to know exactly of what the future on Earth will be. This should be some kind of serious Council of Earth. It is time for such a reality now.