On Growth Track

This week the Business Week magazine has posted an interesting cover story which can be summed up as Being Poor is Costly, Frugality and Discipline paves the way out.

It has a lot of examples of how poor people continue to remain poor. One can blame the industry, but still a real person is making choices (uninformed in most cases).
Why does it cost so much to be poor, its more complicated than we think.

• Lack of access to affordable financial products and services. Any time there is a credit check, either financial service is denied to poor people or comes at very high price. This is true for getting any loan, mortgage, insurance and credit cards.
• Feel rich quick marketing. This really gets people into trouble as the initial cost for financing the so desired stuff seems less but the total cost of ownership is can be as much as twice when compared with someone who has good credit.
• Another aspect of feel rich quick marketing is that it pushes a lot of stuff to people which is something they never need. It takes a discipline, thinking through and accepting frugality as a virtue to say no to stuff one does not need.
• Not Shopping around enough. Shopping the right thing takes effort as well as discipline, its also requires doing homework collecting information and analysing ahead of purchasing. The more one does such kind of homework the better one gets at it. But before one can undertake such a homework people need to know this is indeed possible to do than just relying on the first offer they see jump in excitement.

What is the way out? Its simple but takes time, patience and discipline to follow.
Embracing frugality and appropriateness, discipline of doing the homework and analyzing the details can help one stay out of financial trouble. But these virtues are equally applicable in other aspects of personal growth, may be in slightly different ways. As one gets on the growth track with patience and discipline, moving ahead on the track becomes easier, one finds more opportunities to continue on the growth track and it becomes self sustaining and nurturing as out self-discipline and habits improve.

When we make the correct choice, we move on the growth track.

PN

BusinessWeek

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