It'll be a while before we will get the full hang of the monetary system all around us.(Apologies for using big words)
Thing is, I am slightly extra touchy about cash. It must be my upbringing, my grandfather's strict adherence to 'not spending more than required' philosophy and a few more things, which I am.... currently.... unable to recollect. Both my parents work in the commercial sector. My father relentlessly instructs me to go through the news paper. Although he never does tell me to be much concerned about the economics stuff 'that emphatically' (probably because I start pestering him with questions on terms and things that fly right over my head like a jet plane), I look it up any way. I actually got a thing for prices of commodities like metals,currencies...and more of yak-nonsense about the writer later....
Few things struck me very hard recently.
I woke up this morning, a couple of days ago on a pretty high note( Ċ ). [Ċ is a 'Sa', or 'Do' in the musical scale. The dot on top indicates a higher pitch of the normal scale.]
That was all that was high about the day. And it came plummeting down like a MiG 21...
My mom told me to get some bread. She told me that if the shop had eggs, I buy a dozen. I ended up buying a dozen loaves of bread.....Jokes apart..
And yeah. She also told me to get milk. Here's the trouble. There's something called M.R.P. on all products. We all know the expansion of the term, hence I let it be. Now, no shop keeper gets to sell his stuff above the M.R.P. I go to buy milk. On the packet, the mentioned M.R.P. is Rs. 16. The shopkeeper asked for Rs. 17. I was like 'What the....'. I had 3 packets of milk to purchase. The fellow was adamant,and I was short on time. So I payed the extra 3 bucks and walked off. I hated myself for the time I have known myself ever since.
For most of us reading this, reading this, one may think " 3 buck?? Huh?? The fellow is a miser!! Cry-baby!"
Maybe you are right. Jussst mayyyybe. Or not so. For the fortunate ones,whom we are lucky to count ourselves in, that extra buck might not count, whereas it should!! I happened to have the fortune/misfortune of hearing these stories where a few not-so-fortunate parents muster every penny and dime to do their bet at giving their children the 'luxury' of milk. I don't like sounding like a social worker, but as an example of such a situation, look at our own Olympian Sushil Kumar. The guy's family had been in financial distress. His father was himself a wrestler. He gave up because the family couldn't support the demands of two wrestlers. In such a situation, that one buck that I decided to part with for the sake of convenience will matter. The example I took was something that came out into public. What about the ones that didn't? And when one among us decides to pay as per the seller's whim, he gets a chance to throw his weight around others. Maybe who are not so fortunate as I was to get away with it.
One thing very common is the usual association of price to value of a commodity. A might-not-be-exact example is "Oh!! The iPhone costs 40-odd grand!! It is very valuable!!" Those who buy it,..... Ahh, forget it! Thing is, they purchase the thing, go about flaunting it, then overtly worrying about it...then somewhere, a newer version comes in,and brings along with it 'insecurity'!!
I have seen this one case. This bloke is obsessed with brands. He went about buying an Android phone. Yes, aspirations are good, even better if you have the capacity to fulfill them. But if it blinds you, what's the point? So this chap and another one were upto downloading some song or something. The other fellow was about to download the song. This 'brand-y' fellow said: "अरे! मेरे फ़ोन से डाउनलोड कर लो , Android है, जल्दी डाउनलोड हो जाएगा "(Download the song from my Android phone, It'll be faster) The few of us who heard it...we were like "Hmm....".
We all love branded stuff! I very openly announce my 'thing' for brands.
I have my own story. Ever since I was a kid, I have been a big fan of shoes. Not so about getting the 'Jordan collection' or something, but I like the ads shoe companies bring out(Loved Zigtech!!)
When I was a kid, my dad kept from buying me the branded shoes(I actually thank him for it). He said that since I was growing, the extra money wouldn't be worth it. It was and sounded perfectly logical. But once, when I was about....12 or something, he let my shoe budget exceed a grand. I remember, it was a navy blue Nike!! And how I fell in love with it. Another reason why(I realized this a lot later) he kept from buying me the expensive stuff was to help me appreciate the difference in quality. How that Nike felt less than half the weight of the conventional ones I'd worn till then. My successive shoes that I purchased luckily were bought using the bonus coupons that my dad used to get as 'credit card reward points'...(more on that later!!) But the graph of my shoe price was sneaking higher every time. I had almost decided that I would progressively increase my shoe's budget. Then I got into running. Nothing professional, but I sort of took it as my birthright to get myself expensive shoes, specially since I didn't demand for much else.
Thankfully, someone threw a stone at me. It had a word embossed on it. It hit me on my head pretty hard. The embossed word turned out to be 'minimalism'. So with this stamp on my head, enlightenment struck me....without doing Yoga!!
I figured that the stuff that the branded fellows sold,the same stuff, if you searched enough, you could get for a third/lesser the price. Downsizing... something many around me saw as lowering one's standards, I just saw the upside. Yes, the status factor may go right out of the window. But who gives? As long as it keeps me running happily, what else??
Discounts, Privilege Cards, Special Combo OFFER!!, Sale, SEASON END SALE!! BALLS!!!
The ways sellers have figured out to trick the buyer into buying more stuff freak you out. Most of these schemes can be avoided pretty easily. I personally cannot claim that I have escaped all the tricks myself, but I am hoping I have,specially after looking around for stuff,de-cluttering my available options and doing all such fancy things...
These schemes,more often than not(if my observation is correct by far) catches those who aren't specific about the thing they are looking for. Hence 30% on purchase of one sounds worse than 40% on purchase of two(specially if one went about looking just for one.) Such things take you by surprise,specially with too many choices at hand. That is another thing that has come to the limelight...Choice. Lesser you have, easier to choose.
Season-end sales.... Goodness!! Ladies!!! Why would anyone sell their stuff for 50-60 % off??? True that this might be the best time to stock up the wardrobes, but why pile up stuff that was originally worth 40% of it's price?? Okay, after reading this one, many will curse me for not getting sleep after their recent SALE-binge.... Moving on...
Credit cards-The folks who devised this system were smart. They are so blatant about the amount of money they make that they actually 'incentivise' expensive purchase. I don't realize why, but folks are happy with the 'customer bonus points' or many such gimmicks they get as an added 'benefit'.
I'll (hopefully)soon have to wade through the same quick-sand as many of these folks are. Why 'hopefully'?? you say?
भाई साहब/देवीजी !! नौकरी आप दिलाएंगे ??(Dude/Lady, You're going to employ me??)
Now... If this gets read by some future employer, who by mistakenly decided to employ me in the first place....even he'll change his mind....
Now I see what studying engineering does to you......
Thing is, I am slightly extra touchy about cash. It must be my upbringing, my grandfather's strict adherence to 'not spending more than required' philosophy and a few more things, which I am.... currently.... unable to recollect. Both my parents work in the commercial sector. My father relentlessly instructs me to go through the news paper. Although he never does tell me to be much concerned about the economics stuff 'that emphatically' (probably because I start pestering him with questions on terms and things that fly right over my head like a jet plane), I look it up any way. I actually got a thing for prices of commodities like metals,currencies...and more of yak-nonsense about the writer later....
Few things struck me very hard recently.
I woke up this morning, a couple of days ago on a pretty high note( Ċ ). [Ċ is a 'Sa', or 'Do' in the musical scale. The dot on top indicates a higher pitch of the normal scale.]
That was all that was high about the day. And it came plummeting down like a MiG 21...
My mom told me to get some bread. She told me that if the shop had eggs, I buy a dozen. I ended up buying a dozen loaves of bread.....Jokes apart..
And yeah. She also told me to get milk. Here's the trouble. There's something called M.R.P. on all products. We all know the expansion of the term, hence I let it be. Now, no shop keeper gets to sell his stuff above the M.R.P. I go to buy milk. On the packet, the mentioned M.R.P. is Rs. 16. The shopkeeper asked for Rs. 17. I was like 'What the....'. I had 3 packets of milk to purchase. The fellow was adamant,and I was short on time. So I payed the extra 3 bucks and walked off. I hated myself for the time I have known myself ever since.
For most of us reading this, reading this, one may think " 3 buck?? Huh?? The fellow is a miser!! Cry-baby!"
Maybe you are right. Jussst mayyyybe. Or not so. For the fortunate ones,whom we are lucky to count ourselves in, that extra buck might not count, whereas it should!! I happened to have the fortune/misfortune of hearing these stories where a few not-so-fortunate parents muster every penny and dime to do their bet at giving their children the 'luxury' of milk. I don't like sounding like a social worker, but as an example of such a situation, look at our own Olympian Sushil Kumar. The guy's family had been in financial distress. His father was himself a wrestler. He gave up because the family couldn't support the demands of two wrestlers. In such a situation, that one buck that I decided to part with for the sake of convenience will matter. The example I took was something that came out into public. What about the ones that didn't? And when one among us decides to pay as per the seller's whim, he gets a chance to throw his weight around others. Maybe who are not so fortunate as I was to get away with it.
One thing very common is the usual association of price to value of a commodity. A might-not-be-exact example is "Oh!! The iPhone costs 40-odd grand!! It is very valuable!!" Those who buy it,..... Ahh, forget it! Thing is, they purchase the thing, go about flaunting it, then overtly worrying about it...then somewhere, a newer version comes in,and brings along with it 'insecurity'!!
I have seen this one case. This bloke is obsessed with brands. He went about buying an Android phone. Yes, aspirations are good, even better if you have the capacity to fulfill them. But if it blinds you, what's the point? So this chap and another one were upto downloading some song or something. The other fellow was about to download the song. This 'brand-y' fellow said: "अरे! मेरे फ़ोन से डाउनलोड कर लो , Android है, जल्दी डाउनलोड हो जाएगा "(Download the song from my Android phone, It'll be faster) The few of us who heard it...we were like "Hmm....".
We all love branded stuff! I very openly announce my 'thing' for brands.
I have my own story. Ever since I was a kid, I have been a big fan of shoes. Not so about getting the 'Jordan collection' or something, but I like the ads shoe companies bring out(Loved Zigtech!!)
When I was a kid, my dad kept from buying me the branded shoes(I actually thank him for it). He said that since I was growing, the extra money wouldn't be worth it. It was and sounded perfectly logical. But once, when I was about....12 or something, he let my shoe budget exceed a grand. I remember, it was a navy blue Nike!! And how I fell in love with it. Another reason why(I realized this a lot later) he kept from buying me the expensive stuff was to help me appreciate the difference in quality. How that Nike felt less than half the weight of the conventional ones I'd worn till then. My successive shoes that I purchased luckily were bought using the bonus coupons that my dad used to get as 'credit card reward points'...(more on that later!!) But the graph of my shoe price was sneaking higher every time. I had almost decided that I would progressively increase my shoe's budget. Then I got into running. Nothing professional, but I sort of took it as my birthright to get myself expensive shoes, specially since I didn't demand for much else.
Thankfully, someone threw a stone at me. It had a word embossed on it. It hit me on my head pretty hard. The embossed word turned out to be 'minimalism'. So with this stamp on my head, enlightenment struck me....without doing Yoga!!
I figured that the stuff that the branded fellows sold,the same stuff, if you searched enough, you could get for a third/lesser the price. Downsizing... something many around me saw as lowering one's standards, I just saw the upside. Yes, the status factor may go right out of the window. But who gives? As long as it keeps me running happily, what else??
Discounts, Privilege Cards, Special Combo OFFER!!, Sale, SEASON END SALE!! BALLS!!!
The ways sellers have figured out to trick the buyer into buying more stuff freak you out. Most of these schemes can be avoided pretty easily. I personally cannot claim that I have escaped all the tricks myself, but I am hoping I have,specially after looking around for stuff,de-cluttering my available options and doing all such fancy things...
These schemes,more often than not(if my observation is correct by far) catches those who aren't specific about the thing they are looking for. Hence 30% on purchase of one sounds worse than 40% on purchase of two(specially if one went about looking just for one.) Such things take you by surprise,specially with too many choices at hand. That is another thing that has come to the limelight...Choice. Lesser you have, easier to choose.
Season-end sales.... Goodness!! Ladies!!! Why would anyone sell their stuff for 50-60 % off??? True that this might be the best time to stock up the wardrobes, but why pile up stuff that was originally worth 40% of it's price?? Okay, after reading this one, many will curse me for not getting sleep after their recent SALE-binge.... Moving on...
Credit cards-The folks who devised this system were smart. They are so blatant about the amount of money they make that they actually 'incentivise' expensive purchase. I don't realize why, but folks are happy with the 'customer bonus points' or many such gimmicks they get as an added 'benefit'.
I'll (hopefully)soon have to wade through the same quick-sand as many of these folks are. Why 'hopefully'?? you say?
भाई साहब/देवीजी !! नौकरी आप दिलाएंगे ??(Dude/Lady, You're going to employ me??)
Now... If this gets read by some future employer, who by mistakenly decided to employ me in the first place....even he'll change his mind....
Now I see what studying engineering does to you......
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