Money, money, money

No matter what the subject is, whether it is financial issues, relationship problems, family wise, job promotions, whatever I focus on it, the target keeps going far far away from me. And what I mean by far is something unachievable, impossible and imaginary.
Not sure if it always was like that or things changed since I started noticing. But I clearly remember when we still were in Iran and bought our first “chicken coop” as known as an apartment and we were experiencing tremendous financial shortage. We were stuck deep in mortgage up to our eyeballs. I could not spend money as always. Comparing to other girls I am not spending money that much but I like to treat myself in a way that be free to buy whatever seems reasonable to buy. Reasonable is a broad concept. For me it means price within the income budget excluding the life time expenses like mortgage, electricity bill, etc. Life was getting hard on us at the time. We did not even have a kid and we were just in the fist years of being a family of husband and wife.
I was telling one of the guys at work about our problem and I sounded very stingy I suppose. He told me try to keep my eyes on something else rather than on my financial problems for a while and wait for the miracle. I tried to do so. It sounded helpful at that moment at least because I would not feel bad about being flat broke by keep thinking about it. Did I tell you the guy was my boss? Anyway I focused on my job instead and worked as hard as I could. Staying long hours, working midnight shifts, extra extra extra hours, not asking for anything and not focusing on the financial problem. And miracle started to blossom. I know, I know that financial problems need money to be solved. But the clue is that I was not focusing on the problem but I was focusing on the solution. Working hard in a way not to have free time to spend! That is how the savings accumulate and that was how the mortgage paid off!
Now things are different. New place, new experiences and new life with new mortgage that increases every now and then and on top of that having a school boy with all the new munchables he wants to chew and new toys he wants us to buy. Well we do say no to most of his requests as we do not want to spoil him. But he deserves to be praised with something after all as we, as his parents do not have enough time to spend with him.
I was always thinking about the financial facts and figures since we settled down here. The full time jobs just pay our expenses and mortgage and that is it. No savings to pay extra payments off our greedy loan. And if we are not careful, I mean if Bahram is not careful and does not warn me, the spending rate will be much faster than the savings, if there is any savings left in the month! Want to know the reason? I blame these beautiful plastic gold and silver cards known as “credit” cards. They call them credit but they are actually counted as debts and liabilities in the banking systems. Having these cards available, people are encouraged to spend while feeling free to spend as they do not “see” and “feel” how much cash they are spending. The more the credit limit, the better you feel, the worse you might end up! That was good somehow that we did not have credit cards in Iran.
Well that is the life here what should I do to improve mine? I thought a couple of weeks ago maybe it will help if we put a small amount on investing. There are plenty of options available like buying an investment property, franchise, investment savings, stock market, etc. Even to buy lottery tickets as some people do in our office. Running a business needs an initial factor which is not available for us at the moment. So I started buying lottery tickets. What? Do you think I am not as lucky as that retiree won 4 million jackpots a couple of months ago? This is not an investments? What is it then? If I expect to win something tax free I should spend something as an investment. And do not start arguing with me about that “Halal” and “Haram” topics as for desperate people even telling a lie about the religious or easting snake’s meat is allowed!
Well lottery tickets are a tricky way of investment. You might win a small amount, which happened to me a couple of times. Or you might win a huge load of cash, which is a very rare phenomenon. But who knows? The only way to find out is to buy the ticket.
As it might not happen to me to be the winner that early, I started buying shares in stock market. I opened a broking account and started studying about ASX. Every thing seemed to be pretty normal and MBL was the best option among the others as it was getting better and higher every day. Even my broker suggested it to me as a good option to start. But things are not moving always in a way we want them to. AUD and USD exchange rate moved and gave ASX a big shock. Have you studied stock market changes recently? What happened to it you can blame me for! Since I bought the shares, every chart is heading down! And to my surprise MBL has the worse share free fall these weeks! What the fuck! Thanks God I just put a small amount in shares. Well I was always lucky in my life. Maybe 2007 is not my year. I still have my …. maybe I should finish here? I do not want to lose more!
Life, we keep on planning, keep on losing and keep on spending with the hope to earn more. We buy more to be happier. Eat more to feel better and pay more to "fitness" to shed the extra kilos off to look better. It is a vicious cycle and money has a strong role in this cycle nowadays. Being a migrant makes everything double difficult. But life is not predictable and it will never be. And that is the beauty of life. I am still hopeful, as always.