SAVE MONEY- 3 WAYS TO SAVE MONEY FOR STUDENTS..

LIFE of students is indeed difficult yet the way we spend these years decide our path for the future. These years of dependence on parents teach us lessons that mould us into people who we are going to be in the future. Most of us in our youth do not focus on saving money. Our energies and social commitments are high during these years. There is immense pressure on maintaining a certain standard of dressing and accessories so that one is well recognised in his/her peer group. This leads to financial stress and leaves no room for savings. Apart from this, the added cost of clubbing and partying in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities drain resources in the name of enjoyment.

Clothing, accessories, latest tech are all craze when we are a student. To be really honest these things do define one's image. They make a person matter in a group. But all this recognition does not do any good. This false image and its maintenance robs away one's chances to have a strong hold on finances. When this habit remains, it manifests and can lead one to financial problems in the future with his/her hard earned money this time. 

For these following techniques of saving money to prove beneficial, one must first let go of all the above false notions and practises that in reality does no good. Once this is accomplished here are the ways you can start saving money and take steps for a financially independent future.

                1.SAVE FIRST, SPEND LATER..

This is more of a habit than a technique. As the words mean, one has to keep money aside first as a saving and then decide on the spending part. One has to inculcate this as a habit. Students have limited finances which they are very eager to spend. This step ensures that one remains in check by fixing a certain amount to be kept aside each month and carry on with all the remaining. This limits the chances of over spending. Once the money starts accumulating in the savings, this habit becomes sustainable. It's basic human nature. 

For doing this one can use the famous 50:30:20 rule. This rule states that 50 percent of the money should be used for needs. 30 percent for wants and the remaining 20 percent should be saved away. This technique is not only for students but also for adults who struggle with finances. This ensures that an individual learns to differentiate between needs and wants effectively.

It is also equally important that the saved money is not touched for wants generated during immediate burst of emotions. It is preferable that the money is tucked away in a good old and reliable savings account. It can also be invested so that one can not obtain access to it easily. But that I will discuss it later in a separate blog.

                              2. ROUNDING OFF.. 

This is a very beneficial habit. Although the amount seems to be very small but when it accumulates, it can be pretty amazing. According to this method one has to round off the money one has at the end of each day and save that rounding off amount. For example, if at the end of a day you have 126 rupees in your purse, then you have to round it off to 120 rupees and save the 6 rupees away. Thus you will have 6 rupees savings at the end of the day. This process needs to be repeated daily and at the end of the month this amount will grow into an inspiring sum.

Not only hard cash, this should also be done for amount in one's bank account. The cash can be kept away in a piggy bank where as the sum from the bank account can be transferred to the account designated for savings as mentioned in step number one. I have been using this method for years now and the result has been great. Almost every time I ended up saving away the amount accumulated through this method at the end of a month. This has taught me a great deal of self control which has helped me and my finances.

         3. CONSCIOUSNESS REWARDS TO ONESELF..

This is a pretty interesting technique. This helps one to decide between needs and wants. It also teaches a great deal of self consciousness. This technique can be best explained with an example. Suppose you went to a shopping mall just to wander about. But you fell in love with a dress and you immediately pick that up. Just before paying for the dress your consciousness kicks in. You realise that the dress isn't a need rather a want. You leave the dress and come back. As per this technique you need to be rewarded for your consciousness. Thus you save away the entire price of that dress in your savings account. You not buying the dress saved you money, you just give it the literal sense of savings.

This technique is really for the ones who have mastered the above two techniques. It requires a great deal of self control to achieve this feat. You need not save away the entire money if it feels like a torture. You can save half of the money and the remaining half you can use to treat yourself with something you like. This will boost yourself to carry this on in the future.



All of the techniques that I have talked about have been practised by me for more than 4 years now. One can mould the above techniques as per ones financial liabilities. But these moulding should not change the actual meaning of such techniques. Being true to one shelf is very important and it's advisable that one learns this trait early in life. A penny saved is definitely a penny earned. Jump start your journey towards financial wellbeing by following these steps.

Do comment and share some more of the practises that you follow for saving money..

 Here are some more important reads for you to dive in next..

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/12/delayed-gratitude.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/12/ideal-education.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/12/let-actions-speak.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/09/being-down-to-earth.html


   
  

BLIND TRUST AND ITS PERILS..

As humans we are drawn towards social relationships. This urge to bond between people is what makes this world so complicated yet is responsible for its movement ahead. Humans are not the only organisms that show such complex bonds. There are others in the animal kingdom who show complex social behaviours. But the extreme of this interdependence is exclusive to human race which we term as blind faith.

After every night there is a day. This is an example of blind faith our ancestors had placed on nature which got ratified by modern science in later years. Sadly, humans are not that trustworthy. People change, circumstances compel them to act in ways that were not expected of them by individuals who had blindly trusted them. We are living in a highly dynamic world. Everything in this world changes including the people around us. This is the ultimate truth. It is beneficial for one to get this fact accepted. Living in denial of this fact can bring elemental damage. This denial is the cause behind increasing hatred, growing piles of cases in judicial bodies, decreasing longevity of relationships and many others.

When a person trusts an individual to the extreme that all of his/her faults seem to filter away then we can call that as blind faith. In Indian societies it is very common. People blindly trust one another because that is what our society has been like for centuries. This has also been the most prominent cause of our society being so pathetic. It is no new thing. The rapes mostly are caused by people upon whom the victim had blind trust. This blind trust is also responsible for so many crimes going unreported.

In all its sense, blind faith in someone can put you in grave peril. This is not only confined to social crimes but also economic crimes. The cases of corruption go unnoticed because the authorities have blind faith on their employees. In India we see this to its extreme. Here people try to sort out the crime internally because in most cases reporting such crimes can put their reputation at peril not to forget the chances of them getting involved and convicted. 

We have put corruption in a narrow crime bracket of accepting and giving bribes. In reality corruption is like an Octopus with tentacles in each sector. Blind trust of people feeds this Octopus and its hold grows stronger. From the education sector to governance, nothing has been left out. We are advised to become more and more conscious by elders not only to help us take informed decisions but also to avoid placing our trust on bad individuals blindly.

There are bad people and there are very bad people. We are surrounded by dark sided individuals who show off their bright side. It is upon us to avoid the tinted glasses of their false personality and seek the truth behind the face. No one is more foolish in this world than those who keep such dark sided individuals in their life and place blind trust in them knowing the person is not worthy of their trust. The culture of burying the crimes is plaguing our society. A society whose learned individuals keep to themselves even after coming across crimes is destined for decay. Sadly we are proudly topping that list. Power is mostly placed in such dark people by the public with tinted glasses of blind trust and hence the loop sided development . This must stop if we are to save our very existence. No one but us can stop it and the first step is to kill the instinct of BLIND TRUST completely.

Here are some other topics for you to read next-

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-value-of-time.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/12/delayed-gratitude.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/07/life.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/09/being-down-to-earth.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/09/value-of-failures.html

ZERO WASTE SHOPPING IN INDIA..

This blog will be a continuation of my sustainable living and zero waste lifestyle series. If you have not read those blogs, the links to them are given below.
https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-baby-steps.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/12/choosing-sustainability.html

In today's blog I will be specifically mentioning the scenario surrounding zero waste shopping in India. It's actually very easy to lead this lifestyle with in our country. Most of the people who live in developed countries and want to lead this kind of lifestyle throng to farmer's market to get their greens. Greens in such countries are a part of shopping mall culture and are vacuum packed  in plastic to increase their shelf life. The localities that have farmer's markets can easily sustain such a lifestyle but those which lack, it comes down to the people. They need to become conscious consumers. As for our country, greens are primarily sold in daily green markets. In some areas weekly haats are also seen. It's easy to go zero waste just by carrying a reusable shopping bag because produce are rarely packaged in plastic and are usually fresh from the fields.

From greens now let's move to sea foods and meat. Unfortunately this is an area where going zero waste becomes tricky. It's not that it can not be done, it's just a bit difficult. In India sea foods and meat are usually given in single use plastic bags because paper bags can not yet serve the purpose. To avoid these plastic bags we can carry reusable containers and ask the shopkeeper to fill them instead of a plastic bag. There are some areas mostly in the eastern and central India where these kind of purchases are wrapped in leaves and tied with coir which makes them waterproof and easy to carry. Lotus leaves, Saal leaves etc are used for this purpose. This method if adopted pan India can really curb out single use plastics from our daily shopping.

India is primarily a vegetarian country. Any discussion would be incomplete unless we review their side too. Cottage cheese or paneer  forms an important part of vegetarian diet enriching it with the required protein. Unfortunately they come in vacuum packed plastic bags. Milk too comes in plastic packaging. But there are ways to do away with this too. The stratified Indian society has assigned some people with cow milking activities. Consumers can easily buy fresh milk from them which they get delivered directly to their homes and without any packaging. These people also make products such as ghee, paneer(cottage cheese), butter and sell them. Just ask them for their products and you can get them delivered home without any packaging to worry about.

The daily shopping section is where consumers generate the most waste. But when one decides to deal with problems of our lifestyle and choose to become conscious we can impact our surrounding in a positive way. I will continue this discussion further in another blog. Till then take time to reflect on your lifestyle and adopt the changes that you can.
Here are some topics for you to indulge next:

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2020/01/habit-of-reading.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/12/ideal-education.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/09/reducing-waste.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/09/caring-for-environment.html

HABIT OF READING..

Knowledge is vast. It is not possible for an individual to come across every bit of information out there in a single lifetime. This applies for life's lessons and other  knowledge about life. Life is indeed a great teacher. But human lifespan is not long enough to learn everything that life has to offer. To solve these problems books come to our aid.

Humans have inhabited this planet for more than 2.5 million years now. But the habit of documenting one's life is not that old. Still we have thousands of years of history documented. To better put this, we have thousand of years of life's teachings documented. Thus books are no less than treasures. They can reveal great secrets and aid us with experiences of our ancestors.

In this era of social media, reading a books has become very scarce. Terms like bookworm and others mock youth who are into the habit of reading. This kind of peer pressure and social indifference is a negative trend. People who read are destined to accumulate knowledge of diverse kind in a single lifetime. That amount of knowledge is not possible to learn organically in a single lifetime.

Every bit of information is a gem. We may not find significance of that knowledge now but in the long run the picture becomes clear. Life really has unique ways to humble people. Knowledge builds a person's character. A person who is humbled by knowledge has a character which everyone appreciates and get drawn towards.

Having some kind of reading habit is very crucial. Being knowledge poor in this modern data driven society is the worst kind of poverty. A person who is in this situation can not excuse him/herself thanks to the internet. Every bit of information, wisdom, secrets of living are just a click away. Its high time that we cut the habit of mindless content consumption and focus on content that can add value to our life. 

Speaking of valuable content, you can click on the links below to enrich yourself with ideas and knowledge that will surely help you in your life..

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/10/connecting-dots.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/09/economic-growth-is-means-to-achieve-end.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/09/being-down-to-earth.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/08/power-over-life.html

Do follow my blog for more such content..Keep reading and keep growing..

THE VALUE OF TIME..

In my previous blog I talked about how our life can be driven in a better way by knowledge. Well this life teaches us a very important aspect of living. We get to value it and treasure it like never before. That aspect is TIME. And it really is man's most valuable asset.

What makes time so valuable? According to me it's the fact that we have no control over it passing.Time treats no one in a partial manner. The same 24 hours is distributed to each and every atom in this universe.Humans with all their scientific development can not tame time. What we can do is mould ourselves based on time. This will help us harness the power of time which is invisible to almost everyone.

A life driven by search for knowledge pushes us to use time to its optimum. This when becomes a habit we succeed. It is rightfully said that success is the amalgamation of daily habits. When knowledge leads and time is well managed an individual can be catapulted to fame and riches. History has many evidences which brings out how humans who have been able to mould themselves as per time and have been able to achieve remarkable feats. When you treat time with respect you get that back multiplied many folds.

Humans are mortal beings. The quicker this realisation seeks in the quicker one gets the result. People who succeed are not different from common folks in any way. But their habits greatly differs from the masses. They respect time and use it to their advantage. This small daily habit adds up and shows as result. People often realise the importance of time later in life. Thus success and riches are achieved by people mostly in their 40's. Imagine the benefit one can get when this understanding seeps in early. Then one would also get the added benefit of higher metabolism which will enable greater productivity. Thus it's not wrong to consider time as our most valuable asset. It really is ,only when it's given the value that it deserves. Individuals come on this planet with one thing in their possession i.e limited time. Thus TIME is the only possession we have. Everything else is an illusion.

Want to read more? Here are some sort listed blogs for you to read next.. 

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/12/let-actions-speak.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/09/value-of-failures.html

https://archishmansardar.blogspot.com/2019/12/when-search-for-knowledge-drives-life.html