Before you skip guiltily to the next article in anticipation of a lecture on your finances and how well (or not) you are managing them, stop right there. Even though you may need a wake-up call regarding income and expenditure, this is not a column about budgeting or cutting up your credit cards - those are issues that are essentially between you and your bank manager.
This is also not a lecture because we are all adults now and in positions of responsibility and therefore we should be able to think for and manage ourselves. Following, rather, are some observations about what it means to live beyond your means and the impact it has on others and yourself.
In writing this column, I spent some time contemplating what exactly "means" is. Although usually taken to mean monetary resources or wealth, when you look at it from a few different perspectives, "means" can take on a totally different significance. How you define "means" necessarily controls how you live beyond it and what the consequences are.
As with everything in this world, living beyond your means can be both positive and negative. In the most positive sense of the phrase, and without looking at it from a solely fiscal point of view, living beyond your means tells a story about people who have risen above their circumstances in order to make something of themselves or make a difference to others around them. History in general, and SA especially, is filled with people living beyond the constraints of their circumstances. All you need to do is look around you - inspiration is close at hand.
Living beyond your means can mean that you are living beyond your skills and abilities.
Jill Hamlyn, MD, The People Business
Taking a more matter-of-fact perspective for the rest of this column, living beyond your means has often had more of a negative association than a positive one. Living beyond your means can mean that you are living beyond your skills and abilities. The classic example here is the individual in the workplace who has worked hard and is then promoted to a position of management as a reward. Little thought is given to the skills and abilities needed to manage people and before long, the new manager is floundering. This is not because he or she is a bad person or a bad employee. This is simply because the task at hand is beyond a certain set of their capabilities at that point in time, and they have been put into a position in which they have had to take on more than they can handle.
In this sense, you have taken a position you have been given, but you do not own it yet. Owning it implies that you have taken responsibility for your position, the skills you need within it and the situations, issues and events that come as part of the territory. The buck stops with you.
Whatever the context, however, living beyond your means takes control of your ability to be independent. Although your salary may be covering those luxuries that have become necessities, you do not own yourself anymore.
It becomes less of a possibility to walk away from a bad job or a bad situation, and whose image are you trying to live up to anyway? By investing your soul in an image that is based purely on external gratification, on things, and on how other people perceive you, a situation is set up in which if loss of that image is ever threatened, you could stand to lose a lot more than you ever bargained for.
The questions to ask ourselves are: How much do I have in terms of myself? How well do I know myself? How much can I realistically invest in or spend on something that I may not even need or want? Am I prepared to take responsibility, face the consequences, and institute damage control if it all goes wrong?
Responsibility is the watchword because living beyond your means, in whatever sense of the word, starts and stops with you.
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