Having too much

I come from a country that doesn't have the best living standard in the world but it definitely isn't that bad to live in. While paychecks are lower for more then half of what you get in Denmark, you can get by if you are just moderately careful with money. Main difference that I can notice in spending is mostly on fluff stuff. You still have plenty of money to buy and have everything you need to live a normal life like: place to live, food and other basic necessities. What you will lack after you pay all that is for other things. You will have less to spend money on things you do not need, like candy, rice cookers, carrot peeler, newest versions of smartphones etc. As an acquaintance from the Croatian ghetto said : "We have everything the Danes have, the main difference is that in Croatia it will take you 3 paychecks to buy new iPhone and in Denmark 1/3 of the paycheck." After living in Denmark for some time I started wondering are there any detrimental sideffects of high living standard? I think there are.

Higher living standard entails greater buying power and greater buying power leads to couple of not so great consequences.

First one is that you can pay your way out of a lot of things. Often people will choose to pay for some things rather then do it themselves. Even though they are perfectly capable of doing it and they have the time to do it but they have money so they can pay to somebody else to do it instead of them. While that on it's own doesn't sound bad, but it can lead to complete incompetence in executing some everyday tasks that I would never even consider outsourcing to somebody else, like cleaning the apartment or painting the walls or cooking.

I think this is one bad consequence of living in a first world country. The excess of money basically leads to people going into a very narrow specializations in life that makes them very depended on others in every single aspect of their lives. Literary for everything other then what they do for a living, they kinda become idiot savants that are great at what they are doing but can't do anything else.

Second bad consequence of having too much money is that people just become too trigger happy at spending it. It seems to me that is one of the causes of an obesity epidemic running wild in Denmark. If you have much more money that you need and you like munching candy and chugging down sodas, there is nothing to stop you from doing that, because you don't need to think if you are going to have enough or not. So you can just stuff your face with it all you want, so latter you can start crying how you have gotten fat and spend money on gyms, spinners, dieticians, slimming food supplements, healthy food, personal trainers etc. But none of that helps anymore 'cause you can't control yourself anymore but it doesn't matter anyways you have more than enough so why not?

Third bad consequence of too much buying power is excess! And you can see it everywhere. Articles that are on offering in the normal stores, number of stores like Offertisima or Pepco that sell useless shit that no one needs, number and type of a wide variety of different hobby stores which are obviously thriving. You can also tell about excess in peoples needs and wants. In stuff that are considered necessary for normal everyday life (cheese cutters, potato peelers, rice cookers etc), having a pot and a knife just doesn't cut it anymore. 

You can also see it in the people criteria for the adequate size of the living space. Newest example that I saw was when we visited a friend. He just moved in to a new house with his girlfriend. The house is huge: two bathrooms, 3 bedrooms, one huge living room plus kitchen. That is a house for 4 people but not more! I grew up with my parents in a 30 square meters apartment with one room, kitchen, bathroom and hallway. While I was a kid it was ok but in this apartment you could have 4 children and parents.

I must say that after I moved here I see what does it mean to live above the level of what is actually needed. I think that people could live with much less and be happy, but consumerism and modern economy is taking it's toll and there is no way back which may not be the best thing in the long run but that is a topic for another entry.

Counting coppers

While living in Croatia in one aspect I had a bad reputation. A lot of people thought I was a cheapskate that is counting coppers and is flipping every kuna (Croatian currency) three times over. I will admit, I am guilty as charged on that count. I always liked to have control over my money. I like to know how much I am earning and what are my living expenses. I also like to know what are my needs and what is fluff, what is the stuff I can live without.

It is not surprising that with my take on money I was considered a cheapskate. This take on money definitely isn't a cultural default in Croatia. As with a lot of other things, Croatians are relaxed with money. When you have money, you spend it, don't fuss about the future too much. When it runs out, we will somehow find a way. Live a little or why are you denying yourself so much was just some of things I would hear often. I was even keeping the budget, keeping track of my expenses and income and when people would see it, I would get a bewildering giggles about it.

When my ex-wife and me went on our own I started to run the budget. At first she was a bit reluctant but she went with it. But then, six years later when Croatia hit me on the head and I lost the job, she realized how useful it was, because we had savings and money wasn't an issue. Doing budget of course isn't something Croatians usually do as well. 

Another thing Croatians don't usually do is talk about money among family or friends or ever, except when they go bankrupt. Then they start but then is too little to late. In Denmark is quite the opposite. Starting position is that people are doing budget and talk about money. That way they know how much are they earning and where is the money going. Benefit of it is that it is much more difficult to find yourself in the situation where money just magically vanishes, a situation not that uncommon in my native country. But, of course these are cultural defaults, there are Danes who couldn't hold on to 1 krona if their life depended on it and Croatians who are careful with their kunas.

At first I was a bit surprised with this cultural difference. At first I was thinking, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that Croatians will be more careful with money since they have less and it is harder to come by? But then I realized that my reasoning is going in the wrong direction. One of the reasons why Danes have more money is because they are much more careful with their spending, both on the individual level and the level of the state. Government debt in Denmark is around 35% of the GDP and in Croatia around 75% of the GDP.

I must say that in this aspect I fell more at home in Denmark then I ever did in Croatia where I was considered just as a cheapskate weirdo. My habit of "counting coppers" is taken as a given in Denmark. As my girlfriend told me: "Of course it is normal, what other way could we keep track of our money."

I will finish this entry with one Croatian proverb that goes: "It is easy to spend other people money." maybe that on it own says enough about the way an average Croatian take on money and the state of public finances in Croatia.