Beautifully Balanced out

Today I happened to read an article on Yahoo.com. It was about a person who earned only $40,000/- a year and he had an amazing way of splitting his earnings. He and his wife made a roughly sketched out plan about starting a family in few years down the road and till that time spend one salary and save the other. While reducing the existing debt they had planned to save up some money so that when they start a family they could survive with one person doing the job.

Once they decided to get along with this principal of spending they had to tie up their wishes and rethink of impulsive buying habits and argue with one’self for final decision of buying something. This principal where helped them go through an equation of earn and spend they had to bear the so called peer pressure. But o matter who says what they kept on sticking along and eventually today they are a perfect example of balanced spending nature.

This didn’t stop here but they inculcated the same principal in their young daughter. Told her how she can earn money while doing household chores (to begin with). The best part of this entire story is that once their daughter would have a weekly earnings of $10 she would split it into three parts. 10% for Give away, 25% for saving and the remaining for spending (all of these categories were kept in three separate jars) . Whenever she would accompany her parents to a store and want to buy something she was told that they will have to look into her spending jar how much money she has and also for the saving part so that she can buy her things. She also helped people in her own kiddi way with the help of her Give away money. She bought a gift for an orphan kid at her father’s school, helped a family get some groceries (just to name a few)

In our language we use a term ‘Meezan’, quite elaborative in meanings. In Islam the basic principal of spending is somewhat very similar. Let’s not get into hard core mathematical division and percentage but the base line is so similar. Once you get your income divide it into portions for helping other, saving and then spend the rest of it. But I was amazed to read this article in the western world and hoping to see an example in our so called hardcore Islamic societies.