Yes, I am money concious.

My friend “Angad” and I were together for a dinner at Angad’s home. He is a good cook and I never cook. For the home made food, his place was the default location. As usual, the dinner time talk kept on moving from one point to another. During that Anagad told me his view about a particular aspect of his friend, Lokesh. Lokesh has special buying style. When he goes to market, he picks up the store based on the item and its price he is going to buy. He moves to a different shop, even if there is a difference of few pennies in two stores for the same item. Angad finds this behaviour of keeping track of every penny strange. His view is that if a man is earning good, he should not be that miser at least about the “bare necessities of life”. Isn’t it a good idea to keep simple, relaxed and comfortable, by not going into that much details? I agree with it.

This topic was being considered while Angad was preparing another tasty food item. He definitely has some skills and patience for it. He just keeps on talking and you find that in a matter of minutes the dish is ready. Well, he does some experiments also at times :). I have been part of some unsuccessful ones :(. Well that is what experiment is after all, isn’t it?. Why were we at his place for dinner? The main idea is that we need to satisfy our hunger and the rats playing football in our stomach. When we planned for this dinner, there was also an option to simply go to a nearby restaurant and have easy and relaxed food. No effort, no thought, just 5 min walk, look at menu and order something you like. Then why this simple option was not selected? For the simple reason, that Angad found it outrageous to spent huge amount of money on restaurant food than the good home made dinner. It would be a waste of money, as for the same price for restaurant food for one dinner, it is possible to have multiple dinners. Yes, it is, but for me that is OK. As I am fine with food, quick and easy.

A month or so ago, I had started playing badminton with few of my colleagues. I hurt my ankle due to loose ruining shoes. I bought Yonex SHB-101MX for my games. They are really good and helped a lot. I found after some games that, shoe size is little small for badminton. As I lunge and move, it hurt my toe. Luckily at the same time my brother was planning to visit me from UK. I found another pair of good shoes ASICS Gel Blade 2 in local stores. It was a good one. I was looking for a racket bag too. I searched the local market and surfed the Internet. I found out that, that prices are cheap in UK than in Switzerland. I asked my brother to buy the shoes and other stuff for me. Isn’t it a good deal, when you get all the items for lesser price than a single item locally!!! I definitely agree with it, even if it involves additional effort to check local stores and online search etc.

In all these three scenarios one thing is common, money consciousness. Three of us thought about “how much” before making the decision. It is just that the level at each one of thought is different. Standing at different levels, one can say I am no money conscious. But that would only mean relatively. I am sure all humans; beggars to richest man in the world; in this world are money conscious. One simply needs to find the level for each individuals. The measures could be different though. Sometimes it is money vs comfort, at time it could be about the value of the item and sometimes about the pocket size. Different reasons, different circumstances make everyone money conscious.

After reading the above words, I can easily say, ” I am money conscious”. But this does not stop me from smiling or laughing. Luckily there is no price tag my smiling yet, so keep smiling.

Love

Arundeep