As me and most of my friends cross their 30 mark reluctantly and realize it more reluctantly, we now face the question of what our social security will be couple of decades from now. While we earn handsomely and enjoy the best healthcare and environment currently, all of us working in private sector and increasingly now even in public sector have this constant fear of uncertainty. Of course our jobs are not safe, but we know we can keep up with times and ensure that we continue enjoying our current standard of living for quite sometime. However what after that. When our bodies become frail and number of health issues increase, will we have enough with us to take care of us. This fear gets compounded as we look at our parents and their bodies and reflect it on ourselves. While most of us are taking care of our parents, we definitely know that as our society goes through the transformation to modernity, more and more from our generation and the next generation would value their individual independence more than responsibilities. Moral compulsions are very few and excuses umpteen to continue enjoying your life than taking care of someone old. Gone are the times when children could be depended on for the old times. As a friend put it perfectly, children were the fixed deposit which you could wait to mature in your old age and then enjoy the benefits. As families become “nuclear”, connection between parents and children are already very very limited and transactional.
While we see individuals breaking away from their family now, much before this, we saw families completely move away from their communities. The sense of association with any community was only seen as unnecessary responsibility and distraction from the race of growing in your career and life. This breakage is also one more reason why there has been so much pressure on family ties. Everything good or bad is now just limited to the nuclear family and has pressure mounts, the bad times take over the good making it impossible for the family to survive as one unit.
There are two reactions to this conundrum. Many people when faced with this, choose to live like there is no tomorrow. They indulge in everything that is possible to make them forget these realities. Some push the accelerator on their work, devoting almost all their time in chasing their work goals, taking more and more responsibilities. The inhuman corporate structure loves this, when a human has decided to work as a machine, there is always enough work to keep the machine occupied. For others, there is an industry which has come up to keep them indulged to forget from these realities. The spiritual industry, the activists industry, the gypsy travelers industry and many more. All recently mushroomed such that you get some or other experiences which can keep you away from thinking about the future and your life down the road. This seems to work for many.
Then, there is the second reaction. The ones who decide to come up with a plan, a plan to develop assets, a plan to save and invest, a plan to live for the future. Naturally, most in this group continue to invest in children, hoping against hope that indeed their child will turn to be different than others. They invest in some assets, land, apartments with long term prospects. I believe, I am personally from this group and this has been my reaction. However, as I look at this problem, I believe an important aspect of investing for the future is investing in community, not just family. It is important that we ensure that we put enough efforts to create a community that cares for everyone irrespective of whether they are part of family or not. A community that cares for humans and believes that all humans have the right to live with good standard of living. In investment planning, there is a concept of diversifying your portfolio. In normal parlance, it is described as not putting all your eggs in one basket. I believe the same needs to be done when we are planning for the future. While we continue to invest in our children, invest in our family by developing assets, it is important that we invest in other children, other humans, especially those who are not being invested on by their families. Maybe a better education for the children, maybe ways to give better nutrition to infants, doing some things consistently such that the disadvantaged have little better in their lives than what they currently have. I believe that this is an important aspect of investing for the future. What use will all the assets be when even staying safe at home becomes a big issue? If each and every individuals are forced to only think about their short term gains, they have very little to help anyone around them. With everyone around struggling for food, struggling for their own life, will there be any question of social security for yourself even with money in your hands.
As I propound this idea, it is purely in our selfish interests. It is important that we understand that the human civilization evolved with different social concepts purely with selfish interests and to keeping that individual’s interest in mind. Investing in community, investing in people around you is investing on yourself for the future. We need to continue working on giving every individual a better life such that they in turn contribute in improving lives of everyone around them.
