From luxury to a level down

What are we going to go through as our financial budgets are getting tighter and tighter? I guess the answer is simple. The living standards of many will drop down by one level at least and despite how many may downplay our financial situation, the simple fact remains to be that we have all been affected one way or another and have to look at our lifestyles in a more analytical manner.

People have started looking more closely at what they possess and how their financial status can assure that they can maintain the lifestyles they have had. We have lived all our lives in a country that has provided education and health services for free and as GCC citizens we can say that we have always been pampered and spoiled and we eventually learned to take a lot of things for granted. One cannot deny that the middle class of the society lived a life of luxury. We changed cars every few years and travelled at least two to three times a year with our families.

We suddenly woke up one day with a slap on our faces when we realised that many of the financial privileges we had we may be deprived of.

For the higher middle-class families, no household would not have at least two housemaids, a driver and a cook.  Let’s not forget the gardener and I’m one the people who have lived with this package that I look at today and wonder if that is something we need to look at as everyone cuts down on living costs and considers saving more cash for the future. 

Could we have survived without a cook, housekeepers, a driver and a gardener and could we have managed without them? I believe we could’ve to a certain limit.

Of course, it couldn’t have been easy since women became equal partners to men, the moment they stepped out of the house and to earn income started working too. This opened the door for having nannies. We then felt that the nanny can’t handle both the house and the children during our absence so we employed a housekeeper. And because we both worked, we couldn’t drop our children to their schools so we required a driver and all three became an essential part of our lives, not as a lifestyle but as a necessity. So the help in addition to a gardener became an acceptable part of our expenses until the salaries of all reached BD 600 a month. Add to that the food expenses and other requirements and it would at least add up to 1000 dinars a month. So you cant just look at this figure and completely ignore it with the financial situation around us. We have concerns about what the future will bring our children and the job opportunities they may not have in their own country. Therefore financial security has become more important today than it ever was. Yes, when it comes to lifestyle, many will have to change their approach and when it comes to living standards, unfortunately, the middle and lower class will be most affected.

Therefore our mind-set needs to change because in the days and years to come, we can foresee what the future will bring and the life of luxury needs to be seriously looked into.