The Simplicity!

We are in a habit of making our lives complicated, tough and hard by continuously following the on going traditions, styles and trends. In doing so we have to bear a huge expense and we make our domestic budget non-workable at times.

We have become class and brand conscious, which has made us complexed people. We target the life style of a higher class and try to be like them in terms of general living and and their out look. In order to do so, we would love to wear the brands they like or the brands which are considered in style, we would go for interior decor of the house, we would spend our life saving on a latest model car which is considered as "cool" car to have by the gentry. We would send our kids to the schools where only elites could afford to send their kids and confusing our kids with excellent facilities at school and less attractive home as compared to the school. Ladies would love to buy the in trend ready made garments of an expensive label and would try n match that with equally expensive jewellery and shoes. We strive to achieve an artificial life style in which media is playing a vital role. With the facilitation of the government in last 4-5 years, a lot of new channels are being operational which use their air time to show glamour and artificial life style to make the people wish for things which they can not afford at all.

Now how would they get it, the first thing would be coming in to trap of getting a credit card with a good limit and then keep on getting the credit the new cards from different banks every month. By the time a year ends, they will get at least 6-7 different cards and are spending heavily through each of these. This story never ends here, when they are under heavy debt cause of the interest and principle amount still not paid, they indulge themselves in to illegal ways of earning money that includes bribes, frauds etc. Thus to cut short, they make their life a living hell in a matter of 2-3 years which other wise would have been lot easier and simple if they had managed to survive with in their means of earning and that too legal.

I can understand that it is a birth right of every person to pursue the dreams and go higher and higher in life in terms of success in the careers and life. But it should be at the expense of making ones life miserable and difficult along with its family as the race of jumping from class to higher elite class of the society is a never ending story. We spend our life time to pay back the loans etc we had taken un-necessary in our life as we wanted to have the confidence in moving in the circle of elites. We would love to go there in their parties wearing HSY, Armani or Gucci in a latest Sedan driven by a chauffeur and then brag about it when sitting in the people who actually belong to the same class of society as we are, but those people are sensible and never ran after an artificial life.

Its easy to adopt a simple living style and enjoy most of it using the available source of income we have to get a smooth sailing in family and professional life. Life can be difficult as there are so many attractions coming our way to tempt us to spend far beyond our earning means. We want more and more in our life, first we strive for one thing in our life when we achieve it then we want to grow limitless in terms of enjoying luxuries of life, it starts a vicious circle of loans, credit cards, debts etc and we get financially fully exhausted in a mere two years time and struggle like any thing to get out of these loan payments but we cant get out of it.

This clash of the classes has made life close to miserable of so many people around. Due to excessive spending and burrowing, such people do not normally have any kind of saving at all for the any un-foreseen bad patch in life and we see them becoming patients of depression and stress at a very young age.

Our religion Islam tells us to spend according to our means of earning and highly condemns getting loans against interest. The interest is considered as going for an all out war against The Almighty Allah. But unfortunately our whole economy is based on a system which does not support interest free banking at all. The division that deals ordinary people like us in any bank is called consumer banking. This division has got many ways to attract people with the advertisement campaigns of getting cars on lease, home loans, home improvement loans, house hold goods on lease, educational loans and send us regularly a list of 100's of attractive things which we might get on installments using our credit card.

I sincerely wish and hope that all of us limit our spending to less than what we earn and influence our family members to go for savings every month by try to lead a very simple but a happy life. We are running blindly after the things which we don't really need, if we can live two suits reserved for party wearing and on weddings etc, why to go for a new suit on every function that we attend. Secondly there is no point wearing the international brands and labels when we can not afford those, we spend millions every year on our out look just to be seen distinguished and branded from head to toe just to hear comments like " Oh my God, you look stunning! what is it? Oh Hugo Boss my Gosh"

This is an artificial way of life and suits only to those who earn 100 times more than what they spend, no matter their earnings are through fair means or not. Its not not us at all, we have to save our selves from the on slought of International brands and labels in Pakistan. We tend to get hold of these if we can not afford these, we buy readily available fake imitations of Rolex watches, Armani and Boss Suiting's and shirts, M&S garments, LV and Gucci ladies hand bags etc.

This thing is making every thing seems like fake even the relations of love and trust as people tend not to settle with one life partner and strive for the better options all the times.

All of us to do a self assessment of our spending patterns and refrain our self from undue and un-necessary spending just ot show off and impress people around us. The reality bites and bites very hard when we utilise all available resources one day and look for support and help from others which may or may not come forward at the hour of our need.