Money

I am at the fantastic age of 23, and have, last week, got told what my raise will be. Ostensibly it is generous, because it is (slightly) above market average. In effect, it is nothing all that impressive, and doesn't amount to anything at all significant over the course of the year.

I don't want to consider myself as excessively obsessed with money, but my financial state is definitely a concern of mine. I don't exactly care for being super ultra mega rich, but I definitely would like enough money so that I don't have to care about money. I'd still end up caring about money - but currently for instance I budget and I try to avoid spending so much to actually have savings, which are then to get put towards a house for instance. I'd like enough money to be able to buy a decent house, and be able to pay off the mortgage without having to worry too much.

As a result though, I end up feeling like I don't have enough, and like I want more, more. I end up feeling greedy for money. Really, I don't want the money, I want the security that the money would bring.

In my every day life, it is not as though it majorly affects me. I still do of course buy things, though not a great deal, and do "live my life", but the shadow of financial insecurity always looms over my head. Especially considering I am still living at home, and am benefitting from the fairly generous rent that I have from my at-home-living, I am every month in the green, but of course still realise that things like buying a house are simply not possible. Renting a place, or maybe getting a mortgage on the absolute cheapest-of-the-cheap property one can find would be possible, but still a mighty challenge.

As a result, the money that I want is just enough to buy me a home, basically. I'm fine to live on bread and oil frankly, as long as I've the security of a home.

That's a bit rambly, but hopefully elucidates the problem. In the pursuit of a good thing (stability) I desire money and end up almost vicious about it.

In essence, I feel as if my life at the moment is echoed by the sentiment of Keynes:

I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue—that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin.

But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.