Engineer's Finance

I read an article about the needs and wants. It was an interesting article. The author explains the difference between a need and a want. This is what I understood. A need is something that you can’t live without say Food and a want is something that you can afford but that is not necessary say eating at a very posh restaurant.

I had my own interpretation of the wants. As time changes wants are becoming needs. Ten years back having a mobile was a want now it has become a need. In future the present wants might become necessity. But for now there are many wants that I badly want which I know is a want and I think it is a need. There are many instances to quote. I went to shop for a watch the other day with my friend. I have enough money to afford a nice watch. The necessity to have a watch is know the time. If I get a million dollar watch or Rs. 100 watch the purpose is served but if I wear the million dollar watch then I get the attention and this is what I crave for.

The needs are for the self satisfaction and wants are for satisfying the prying eyes of others just to make sure that others consider us as important. If you want to live the life of, catching up with the joneses then I guess wants matter most. No matter what is the situation, the wants keep increasing. You might question me that whether wants needs won’t increase? I think it won’t. Even if it does then I am sure that you can afford it. But not every want can be fulfilled and it is not good to fulfill all the wants. There should be some wants that are not fulfilled.

If you fulfill all the wants then I am sure you will be in deep financial trouble. The wants are just money eating machines. You can feed how much ever you want to that machine and I am sure it can eat up all that and it will be hungrily waiting for more. This is my experience. You can argue that you will work hard to have all the wants. But the thing is, the wants keep growing and it is very difficult to satisfy all the wants. For example, assume I have a nice house. I don’t need another house but I wish to have a villa. Now to have villa, I work hard. Once I have villa, I wish to have a nice interior design for it. I spend lavishly to decorate it. I get expensive stuff from different parts of the world to decorate it; still there is always a room for making things better. I see something that is nice say a carpet. I will be having a carpet at my villa but the one I saw is better than the one at villa so I buy it. This is not a need but a want. So the needs are already met but the wants keep growing and the expenses keep growing.

Learn to live with your needs and try to have a control over the wants. If your wants keep growing then I am sure the financial trouble awaits you. Be careful.