The rich will only get richer and the poor, poorer
I am privileged to have come from an upper middle income family, so I never had to worry about food, shelter or even my school fees (I’m highly thankful for that).
From young, my parents have always stressed the importance of saving up and not overspending, so my siblings and I have learnt the important of money management.
Recently my online friend of 2 years (we only game together and have never met) revealed to me that she was not doing well financially and she always rants to us about how even grocery money is tight and she’s surviving on her bursary to pay the water bills, etc.
It sounded like she was really struggling to get by. But at the same time, she’ll also ask me things like “Should I get this $200 wireless earbuds?” Which I asked back ‘oh your old one spoiled?’ And she’ll say nope and the next moment she really bought it.
Or I’ll see her whacking $50 on lottery and buying tons of in-game cash items. When I see her spending like that, I get really worried and also kind of confused. Not to say that you can’t get nice stuff when you’re not doing well, but I seriously don’t think these frequent spendings are justified??
Sometimes I want to lightly advise her to rethink her spending choices but I’d hold myself back because I feel like such advice will only feel like it’s from higher moral grounds.
I’ve never faced the same issues as her so who am I to judge or advise her, right? Interestingly, there’s also a theory about savings and impulse to spend.
For eg., if you only had $1000 savings, you would think twice about spending $200. But if you’re already in a -$1000 debt, spending $200 would not mean much to you as you’re already in debt.
Similarly, if you’d never had much expandable money in the first place, it’s hard to learn about money management which results in even more impulse spendings. It’s a vicious cycle.
At the end of the day, this whole thing is online and doesn’t impact my life but I feel some sort of guilt over being more privileged than others. Yet at the same time, there is no way around this other than being thankful and trying to contribute back to society.