I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the interrelations between different indices of deprivation and minority groups. In particularly, finances have been on my mind as I listen to ‘The Deficit Myth‘ by Stephanie Kelton – I’ll be coming back to concepts in the book in later entries, but it is so very good I have to recommend now.

For today’s entry, I wanted to reflect on some thoughts after reviewing my spending yesterday. I highly recommend doing this regularly if you don’t already: understanding your finances can make a huge difference to mental well-being by giving you certainty. Sometimes there are also easy ways to improve your financial well-being, though only some of these ‘easy’ ways are available to everyone equally.

Over the course of the afternoon, I managed to accumulate a good number of savings from cancelling and suspending subscriptions, to switching to annual payments and changing suppliers entirely. It reminded me of this truth: everything becomes cheaper once you have money. For example, you can save £20 with an annual £100 subscription instead of paying £10 per month. Of course, you need to have the available cash to pay a one-off £100 first…

This is true everywhere in our society – buy one tin of soup for 75p or get 4 for £2.50. Get 4 toilet rolls for £3 or 9 for £5. So it goes on. And in these circumstances, it’s not only about having the money to buy the multi-pack, it’s also whether you have a means of transport to enable you to bulk-buy. If you don’t have a car and need to get the bus, your ability to lift your shopping might preclude you from accessing value deals.

I know that none of this is news. We live in a capitalist society. Ours is a consumer culture. Each individual is trying to get as much as possible for minimum cost. Most companies are driven by creating profit in order to pay their shareholders. Bulk value deals are in everyone’s interests when it results in increased revenue and proportionally reduced overheads.

But this points to a core societal value of wealth accumulation, and I don’t think that’s anywhere near so clear cut anymore. Increasingly, people are not only recognising that their core values are actually about human decency, care, compassion, kindness, and much more, but they’re voicing this as a demand.

And companies are investing in response, because they know consumers will take business elsewhere if not. Being green, treating employees well, embracing the diversity and inclusion agenda, etc., are all areas businesses want to proclaim credentials. They matter.

I think there’s still tension between that consumer culture and our human decency agenda, and I think there is opportunity for individuals to go further.

I’ve mentioned the quote ‘take what you need in order to give what you can’ a few times. I’ve mainly talked about the ‘give’ component, and a bit about ‘take’ in the context of self-care. There is also an understanding of taking only what you need and no more. It’d certainly help if more people thought about that when panic shopping started.

Seeing the news articles recently about free school meals, I had a ‘what if?’ moment.

What if… our core value was that every person should be able to get what they need. Isn’t that what the NHS and our benefits system stand for? Is it enough to blame politicians if we know it’s not perfect?

What if… instead of making it easier for affluent people to get more affluent from value deals, it was more expensive for people to buy more than they need? An economy geared toward ensuring everyone got their share, but not regulated by rations and quotas.

I’m neither a politician nor an economist, though my ‘what if?’ makes me think I need to read up on how some far left economic models work. I’m also not advocating for overthrowing capitalism when it has attributes like competition driving innovation and quality. My ‘what if?’ was around how we behave as individuals in a society. How do we move from a sense of being entitled – that we deserve to have x, y and z, and it’s the job of ‘the Government’ or ‘business’ to help others – to a focus on taking only what we need and giving what we can to others.

Right now, its 2 months until Christmas and, in some families, people are trying to pay bills – food, utilities, rent – that will be at least the same as last year with only a furloughed proportion of their income (assuming they didn’t get made redundant). For those who were already more deprived, their ability to get value savings just got further away. The divide between those who ‘have’ and those who ‘have not’ is getting wider.

After having achieved my savings yesterday and reflecting on this widening gap, I saw two messages on Facebook and LinkedIn respectively. One highlighted the need people might be facing and made an offer to their friends: ‘if this is you, private message me and I’ll help if I can’. The other showed a Morrison’s initiative where you can collect a carrier bag for a food bank at the store entrance and then pay and donate as you exit the tills. I don’t shop in Morrison’s but I know my core values and I’ll be looking out for that food bank option at the supermarket this week.