N. Raghuraman’s Column – Saving money is the greatest skill in an era of ostentation.

N. Raghuraman, Management Guru

There is a wedding in my family on 28th August. The venue is Kumbakonam, 300 km from Chennai. All relatives have been informed two months in advance. So that they can secure train tickets in time. But things started going wrong when the mathematics of long time and budget started colliding with each other. The train journey from Mumbai to there is 35 hours. For the elderly, such a long journey is no less than a struggle.

Therefore, most of them decided to take a flight to the nearest airport Tiruchirappalli. But the real drama started when the wedding card appeared on the family WhatsApp group. As soon as the card arrived, instead of congratulatory messages, the group started bickering over the fact that the ticket from Mumbai to Tiruchirapalli was Rs 16,000.

Now understand the total expenditure of the guest – flight of sixteen thousand, taxi of Rs 2,500 from the airport to the venue, stay of two days in a budget hotel of four thousand and other minor expenses of two thousand. On top of all this, Shagun is different.

The result was that these expenses suppressed the happiness of marriage. Most of the relatives in the group have not yet agreed to come. In today’s times, the average cost of attending a wedding for the middle class has increased so much that it is preventing them from attending.

If seen, marriages have become the biggest currency of social responsibility in our Indian society. If you don’t go to a family wedding, you are taking the risk of a ‘social boycott’ from elders who don’t talk to you for six months. There is a ledger running in the mind of our relatives, in which the complete account of who attended whose wedding and who gave how much Shagun is kept for decades.

The problem today is that hosts are chasing the ‘fairytale wedding’ that looks perfect on Instagram, but the guests are having to pay the price. Due to this fear of defamation, many elderly people are forced to travel through tiring routes by putting physical pain so that they do not become the subject of gossip.

Management Tip: Don’t waste your budget to be a part of the fragrance of Mogra flowers and pictures on social media. The biggest asset management is to save your pocket and mental peace in the age of show off. Instead of going to the wedding yourself, send useful gifts that will be useful to the new couple and keep your self-respect safe.

Make Dainik Bhaskar your favorite source on Google ➔