Want to Save More? Curb your Greed!

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Greed! Greed!! Greed!!!

Why are you Greedy?

Yes, I am talking to you reading this post.

_{(answer in the comment section)}

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☆ MAN IS INSATIABLE

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You know, we Humans are insatiable beings; we always want more. We are never satisfied with the little we have; in fact, we’ve already termed it "little" because to us, we should have more. You know, right?

The desire to live comfortable lives, purchase exotic homes, more cars, more babes (sorry, mistake), and accumulate more property has continually driven our quest to make more money.

Yes, to make more money, so that we spend more money.

The more money we make, the more money we spend, and the circle keeps going on. At the end of the day, we’ll realize that we keep on struggling to earn more in order to spend more.

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☆ GREED: THE DOUBLE AGENT

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But, you know, “Greed” isn’t all that bad. The truth is, “Greed” itself has a negative connotation, however, in some cases, it could bring about something positive.

In Savings, Greed can motivate us to save aggressively in order to accumulate wealth with the purpose of achieving financial security. It can do this in many ways:

• It can push us to set high goals. Goals that look impossible prima facie, but because of how high we have set the goals, we strive hard to achieve them.
• It can also motivate us to seek for multiple ways to increase our income. By this, we’d want to learn ways by which we increase our streams of income. Luckily for us, on Hive, there are multiple ways to do this, and we can add this to other streams of income that we have.

I am sure that you will agree with me that Greed can be seen as a saint in these instances.

In the same way, as Greed can lead us to aggressively accumulate wealth, this wealth that we have acquired, can also be channeled into something productive and beneficial to us, and others. In this way, we can say that Greed is somewhat a good agent or motivator in Savings and Spending.

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☆ BUT GREED CAN BE EXTREMELY BAD

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In as much as we have tried to paint Greed in a good image, the truth is that the negative aspect of Greed is more popular because there are more subscribers of this “package,” and less of the positive “package.”

_{Are you a Subscriber of the Negative Package or Subscriber of the Positive Package of Greed?}

Yes, Greed can be bad, extremely bad.

Greed can motivate us to accumulate and hoard more wealth than we or our 10th generations will ever need. Many government officials in Nigeria exhibit this behavior; and it will surprise you that till today, the Nigerian Government hasn’t recovered the full amount of money looted by the past President of Nigeria, Gen. Sani Abacha (1993 – 1998). Over $3 billion dollars have been recovered, yet we (Nigerians) know that there is still more, because these Government officials loot recklessly and embezzle extravagantly without fulfilling their responsibilities.

Greed can also lead us to engage in high-risk investment or quick money scheme without considering the risks and long term consequences. I remember the year 2016/2017 when Ponzi Schemes were prevalent in Nigeria with the likes of MMM (Mavrodi Mondial Moneybox), Ultimate Cycler, Loom and Claritas, among many others. Greed motivated many people to invest in these projects because of the massive returns that they promised, but after a while they all collapsed leaving many people with huge financial loss.

Greed can also lead us to explore all means available to amass wealth including illegal and unethical ways. This is one of the reasons why we have lots of hackers and scammers today. They aren’t bothered about the means of wealth acquisition, rather they are interested in the end product, “Money Must Be Made.”

While we can see the substantial way how Greed can be bad in savings, it can also be bad in spending such that we overspend at will, buying things impulsively whether they are necessary or unnecessary.

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☆ CURBING GREED TO SAVE MORE

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As people who earn using ethical means, it is important that we learn how to curb or reduce our greed so that we can save more. This is because, if we overspend or buy things impulsively, then we would also spend what we are meant to save for the future. To curb greed, it is important that we identify our core values, prioritize our needs over our wants, set a tentative budget and simplify our lifestyle.

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IDENTIFY YOUR VALUES

Everyone is unique and different in their own way; We have different ideologies, different worldviews and different things we consider as our core values. It is important that we identify our core values, and things that really matters to us, and make our priorities following these things. Hence, when we spend, we spend accordingly.

If we choose to rely on others, we may lose out while trying to imitate them, thereby spending so much before we truly realize our own unique values.

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PRIORITIZE YOUR NEEDS OVER WANTS

When we have identified our core values, then it is time for us to separate our wants from our needs.

We can consider our needs as things that are essential to living a healthy life or fulfilling dreams/passion. However, our wants are things we can do without if we do not have them. Thus, if we focus more on our needs, it will give us better results; because we will spend less and still live healthy life + achieve our goals in life.

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SET A BUDGET

After this, we can go ahead to set a tentative budget to highlight the cost of whatever we need. Budget can help us reduce the excessive or impulsive spendings we make, thereby we try to limit our purchases to only items or products that qualify as our needs. However, once in a while we can try to satisfy our wants and other desires.

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SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFESTYLE

When we make our budgets and keep to it, then we have made serious and conscious effort to simplify our lifestyle. In other words, we won’t spend recklessly, neither would we make impulsive purchases. But our needs would be met.

This doesn’t mean that we should live a poor life. No! We can live a simple life in an exotic home, you know! That’s what I mean (lol).

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• Logo Collage property of: Hive Learners, Ecency, Leofinance, Hive, 3speak and Ksam.
• Thumbnail was edited via Canva

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I AM KSAM

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_{I may not be your favourite author, but you can journey with me to help me develop my writing skills. I am always open to criticism, correction and learning 🥰.}