Spoiled for Life

Been thinking about money and resources lately, and I realized I've been spoiled for life by what I've learnt in recent years, and what I've grown up knowing.

You see, I find it hard to justify spending a few hundred thousand bucks on a car, when you can get a very decent one for a whole lot less - and then use the cash you would have spent to help someone else. Or taking a round-the-world cruise that costs the earth, instead of supporting a charity or giving to a needy family. Or spending thousands every year on a golf club membership, just because it's the best golf club around.

I was brought up during the war in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Things were tight, sanctions came, you made do. You parked your car in the queue for petrol, and walked until petrol arrived. You made your own peanut butter. You had to have "contacts" to buy oil and sugar - and then used them sparingly. That's the culture I grew up in, and what has influenced me forever. I find it hard to pay astronomical amounts for something I can make myself for less (fancy foods, cushion covers, curtains, and home-grown veggies for example). I unconsciously drive in a way that uses less petrol than others do (drifting down hills in neutral instead of pedal to the floor). I turn off lights if I don't need them, and shut down computers at the end of the day. I'm constantly on "use aware" mode. It's not something I can just change.

It really grates me when I see someone dropping litter casually, or leaving a tap dripping water, or not recycling their paper, or wasting anything. Makes me want to deliberately go in front of them and pick up the litter, turn off the tap, recycle the paper - and bless them with a dirty look!:)

I live in the third world. 50% unemployment. Sprawling squatter camps oozing hopelessness. Crime high, moral responsibility low. Many are trapped in a life they can't change, dreaming of just enough to make ends meet. I'm one of the privileged few. I have a job, a house, electricity and running water. My son attends a private school. I drive a car. I can afford food.

This weekend I watched the live lotto draw and wondered what the winner of 10 million bucks would be doing with their cash. Would any of it end up helping someone who so desperately needs it, or would it all be blown on a fancy car, a house, those things the media tells us we are not "real people" without?

What would I do if I won it?

With a potential career change, and consequently needing to find new accommodation when it happens, thoughts of trying to buy a house nearby have once again surfaced. Trouble is, this is a fancy town, a rich town, rapidly growing and expanding - and you'd be lucky to find a house under a million. A MILLION?! Yes - and I'd find it pretty hard to justify spending/going into debt for that amount of cash when just down the road there are kids starving. I don't know how others do it. Do they just not notice? Is it a "me first" thing? Not only do they have a fancy house, but they drive a fancy car - or two.

I tell you, I'm spoiled for life. I can't get out of this frugal, social justice, environmentally aware thought spiral if you paid me - and if you did pay me it might end up being given away anyway.

Is that a good thing?

(BeneDiction has a post on Trade that puts things in perspective with a few statistics)