Apologies!!! Aunty Scroogey has not been able to write as frequently as she wanted to these 2 months, because of tax filings, work commitments and such. It was just about 2 days ago that she managed to catch her breath a little from running a backlog of errands.

8th March was International Women’s Day. To commemorate this day (even though it has passed), Aunty is for once, going to write about a woman-related topic – The Oxygen Theory. What is The Oxygen Theory?

I’m sure you must have watched over and over again, when you’re in the plane just before take off, the demonstrations given by the air crew, of what you have to do in case of emergency – where to exit, how to brace, how to put on the oxygen mask and etc. And you might have noticed too, that the instructions if you have an accompanying child, is to attend to yourself first then to your child. The reason is simple: if you are not able to last long, you won’t be able to take care of your child well.

As women, we often place the needs of our family before that of our own. Aunty Scroogey herself is guilty of this too sometimes.  Which is why, it is important that we plan our finances well, which brings us once again back to the topic of adequate financial planning. While setting aside for the children’s education, we also need to make sure that we have enough to fall back on during the later years, amidst inflation and escalating medical costs.  Indeed, it’s not easy being a woman trying to juggle so many things together. Give yourself a pat on the back, sisters!

Applying the Oxygen Theory closer to home, let Aunty Scroogey ask you something, and let yourself answer the question with 100% honesty. How often do you feel that getting rich is evil and wanting to have more money is dirty and greedy? The fact is, The Aunty herself used to think that way too. Until one day, she realized that there is a limit as to how much you can help the poor when you remain poor yourself.  Granted, there are people out there such as Mother Teresa who are poor and are still able to help the poor. But not many of us are like her, with no dependents nor possess the ability to ignore retirement plans. If your money doesn’t come from ill gotten gains, and it wasn’t obtained at the expense of some other people, I do not see anything wrong with wanting to have more so that in turn, many more unfortunate people benefit from your generosity. This too, is an application of the Oxygen Theory.

Live well,

Aunty Scroogey