Money Matters
Money - Something that only a few wise people could admit of having enough! Others like me would jump into the future and think about an emergency that is not manageable with the present fiscal health or go back to the past and wonder if we keep repeating the same mistakes as our parents. "Enough" is something we are scared of admitting even to ourselves and what if we are going to jinx it by saying it out aloud? It is a complicated relationship.
My sister recently got a steady job at the age of 29 and she bought an iPhone on EMI even before getting her first salary. It’s something that I did not even consider in my decade-long IT career. She is much like my father and I am like my mother. Life was traumatic living with such opposing mindsets and that too without any steady income.
I became aware of my scarcity mindset when I went through the first iteration of The Artist Way and quit the journey in the week where we had to explore the relationship with money. A year later, I went back and completed the entire course. Although I was knee-deep in debt my father had accumulated, was struggling to pay back everybody who helped me in those times and living paycheck to paycheck, I started giving away a portion of my salary to the organizations I believed in. Then the initial lockdown came and my heart broke at the sight of labourers walking across the country. There is no stability and security in this world. I understood that I was craving for a non-existent thing.
I cut off every personal expense in those pandemic years as I wanted to be debt-free as early as possible. I did not like that heavy feeling in my chest. I also decided that even if I had to stay in a rented house all through my life, I was never going to take another loan in this lifetime. The trauma of an education loan, personal loans and the harassment I had to face from bank officers because of my socio-economic status - I had endured ENOUGH for many lifetimes!
I paid off every debt by the middle of 2021 and had saved up a little bit for emergency expenses. Work became increasingly soul-crushing in those months and in a moment of impulsivity after a one-on-one with my manager, I quit my job. Although the offers I got were lucrative for someone with my background, I knew that it would not make me feel better. My material needs were nil compared to all my peers. So I decided a few months' rest was the most important thing above everything else.
I completed two years of unemployment last month. I ran out of savings and had to withdraw my PF last year and have no spouse or family to rely on. I am exploring what I would have chased in this life if my younger self was not entirely focused on surviving alone. Considering my deteriorating physical health, I know a million things can go wrong at any moment. But I am willing to take the chance now. For someone who grew up in a family with no steady income or any generational wealth and has lost the count of rented houses we stayed, I am being utterly foolish or brave. Maybe I am foolishly brave?
