Has anyone found this balance — the survival of today and tomorrow?
Kudos to fellow Medium writers who constantly harmer on reading books. Reading books, they recommend is a source of tremendous resources to keep us afloat as writers.
I receive their advice with open heart, highly commended, and instructive.
However, it won’t be out of place to quickly interject that my primary reading list and topics come from my fellow Medium writers and not books per se.
The Reading Processes.
In addition to reading the articles, I enjoy reading the comments as well. In fact, I’m now addicted to going through the articles and choosing a number of them to read and also perusing the comments section to get other people’s views on the main subject.
While reading one of such comments, the reader’s reply in the commentary section drew my attention. She asked a question soliciting an answer from the author of the article.
The person said she struggles to find a balance between saving for tomorrow and living for today. I shook my head and said, “wow, this issue of saving affects virtually everybody no matter which class one belongs in society.”
How Do We Handle These "Twin Sisters" Saving for Tomorrow and Living For Today?
No doubt, this knotty but quite important life issue would likely be handled in different ways just as different faces we have.
Her question piqued my interest immediately. The reason is that everybody, regardless of class in society, thinks daily about what I will call the “twin sisters”: the survival of today and tomorrow — the balance between saving for tomorrow and living for today —.
This is a logic I found quite fascinating and decided to write about it. Believing that the write-up would be an element of help to some people even if it would mean just brushing and refreshing their memory. Here we go.
How are we sure the tomorrow we’re saving for would ever come?
Without being pessimistic but trying to be realistic and practical, is it necessary to think about tomorrow that we don’t know about?
Conversely, should we simply leave our fate to faith that cannot always be visible and understood? No wonder some people live their lives day by day as it comes. I think the saying, live and let’s live; tomorrow will take care of itself is the best way to go about this imaginary life concept. Or what do you think?
Analysis:
The whole thing of saving (postponing today’s consumption for tomorrow) and living for today (spending right away) will depend on various factors, such as:
· How healthy is one financially — wealthy enough and prepared to set aside a reasonable portion of saving and investments for the rainy day?
· The will to save — No wealthy enough but have the willingness to save despite a hard time.
· The broken middle class — can they look forward to the brighter days despite swimming against the tide of government unfavorable policies that have left them behind?
· Those at the bottom of the ladder/earning structure — to be more specific, workers who live paycheck to paycheck. Would they think at all to save when their earnings hardly meet their needs?
Saving As a Habit.
The contradiction surprisingly is the order of the day.
Saving is a habit and most of the time it doesn’t depend on how much one has or how much one earns. In a nutshell, if you’re accustomed to saving when you have little, you will do the same or even more when you have a surplus and vice versa.
How much are we talking about that can be reasonably sufficient to save for tomorrow and live a better life for today?
Final thought, always making an effort to put something aside is good. It’s better to get something when you badly need it. What a great relief that can be! That’s called being proactive which isn’t a bad idea. Avoid being open to ridicule and life regret.
Thanks for reading!