My cousin thinks she is depressed—and confused. For the latter, I agree with her.
She is 30 years old living in the UK—unmarried and without a child. She currently works as an accountant, earning about £3,500 (28,000 GHS) a month.
But she says she is broke–she came to complain and to also ask me about how she can drastically increase her income since the amount she earns a month (£3,500) is not enough.
She is currently house sharing (renting) with her friend at North London, paying her share of £800 per month.
After about an hour of conversation, I told her that, the idea that one needs to increase her income or make more money to be able to be happy or obtain more things in life is a problem that she is not the only person confronted with.
Her problem is with the fact that after paying her rent and other expenses, she is left with a few pounds, almost nothing each month. But the solution does not lie in getting a second job (something she mentioned) or going to ask her boss for a pay increase.
There are two ways to increase your discretionary income.
The first is what my cousin is fixed on—to increase her income drastically—which is always not possible. Even if this is possible, it means you have to probably give up more of your already limited personal time to work, for the extra money you want.
The second which a lot of people don’t like but most plausible and easy to implement is to decrease your expenditure.
My cousin earns £3,500 pounds a month yet she feels that she is financially suffocated. What about the person who earns £1,700 in the same London and yet he is able to save about £600 a month?
My cousin spends a lot of her salary buying designer clothes and bags—to impress some people who follow her on social media. Her weaves are equally expensive and she has 2 of the latest iPhones.
As a single woman, she has a double door American fridge in a kitchen she does not cook anything in—because she is always eating out or spending on takeaways. She is also paying make-up artist and photographers to take photos—which she posts on Instagram for LIKES.
Why wouldn’t such a person be struggling financially, despite the relatively good money she earns each month?
Some people have an easy life but they complicate it by cluttering their world with many things which cost a lot of money to acquire—and then become depressed.
My cousin has almost every material thing that a lady may want to have and each month she buys more. Their spare room is like a refuse dump of new clothes and yet she is not happy about this.
She is complaining that she wants more money—and you can guess where this more money will go to even if she gets it.
I told her she does not need more money because she is earning enough—she just needs to cut down on her unending consumerism—that is the real problem and the source of her alleged depression.
Don’t be a fool to money.
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