GOLDEN RULES
Trim your spending on wants Build your savings
Increase your money skills
include somewhere to live, enough food to stay healthy, clothes to wear, and essential healthcare.
Wants are things that individually we canlive without. Often they are luxuries like takeaways, Sky TV, cigarettes, and alcohol.
I have done without three of these things for as long as I can remember. The want of them has not killed me yet. Hence, they are wants not needs.
But here’s the thing. People need to participate in their society. Yes, need.
Starve a person of that participation, and you’re denying their humanity.
Spending money on wants is often the cost of participating.
It can be a trip to Burger King. It can be a donation to a church. It can be a treat for the kids. It can be beers in the fridge for when the father-in-law comes around. It can be chipping in with money at a tangi.
We can live without each particular want, but nobody can live without any wants at all.
Life has got tougher for lowincome families in Auckland. They are being bled dry by the cost of needs, primarily by high rents. It means there is less and less money to spend on wants.
The worst aspect of Wood’s report was the terrible worry these women’s ‘‘crisis mode’’ of living led to.
Nine in ten of the women were worried about the future.
The majority had no savings. Many had debts, often incurred to buy necessities. What these women need is savings.
Unless a person earns more, the only way to save is to spend less on wants, and find cheaper ways to supply the needs.
One of the ‘‘Pushpa Pocketbook’’ spending diaries would find a useful place in the