We are in an era of computing. 80% of my time in office goes into computing and 20% into thinking. The 80% I spend into computing I am generally not thinking much. The computer these days is so sophisticated; it does everything on a click of a button. I don’t remember the last time I multiplied two small numbers in my head and two big numbers on paper.
Interesting feature of this age are calculators. You name it and you have calculators for it. An old concept but I came to know of it a few weeks back – the Biorythms calculator. It bewares you of your mood on any day in future, it tells you how intellectually active you would feel on any date, and also highlights physical fitness. I tried using it for a few days and then realised that I was getting affected by it. If it said that on a Monday I would be physically unfit, then however much physically healthy I might be, I would still crave my bed on that Monday. There is a science behind it I am told, but then I guess I would like to keep the future uncertain and live life the way it comes.
I came across the personal inflation calculator. This calculator asks you various figures. Monthly expenditure on food, meals out, alcohol, phone, internet, clothing and footwear, heating and lighting, chemist, house rent, travelling (including foreign) etc. It din’t take long for me to plug in the values. I have been paying bills myself, making budgets from my salary and planning holidays myself, so was aware of all the questions being asked to the best precision. The outcome was interesting. When I was back in India I would crib in my conversations with the rickshaw pullers and the bus conductors about the inability of the government to prevent inflation which was around 9%. I would mercilessly say that we are incompetent enough to control the ‘badhti mehangai’ (increasing inflation) and I would go to the extent of informing them that in developed countries like the UK the inflation is just near 2% and so probably they do not get so affected by it also.
The personal inflation calculator shows me that my cost of living in London goes up by 5.4% a year compared to an overall national inflation rate of 4.5% per year (November RPI figure). I guess that indicates that my expenditure is also some notch higher that the average in this country, which sounds exciting to me, as I am yet to live a lavish lifestyle here. I wonder where my personal inflation would be then! This means if my annual expenditure is £25000 this year, then other things remaining unchanged I would expect an expenditure of £26350 the next year merely due to inflation. It means for no fault of mine, I would have to work harder to earn that extra bit of money I lost. That means for no fault of mine, it would take longer for me to get into a lavish lifestyle that I aspire for.
My lavish lifestyle is a lifestyle where I don’t have any reason to think twice before doing charity. I don’t need to hold back. I have enough to give. I feel for a cause and I endorse it both financially and manually. There is so much that anything is too less to be given away. How wonderful that will be!
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