Wants and Needs

What is “want” and what is “need”? Many of us (that includes me as well) seem to have confusion between the wants and the needs.

For me personally, I would classify “want” and “need” as below:

WANT – Something we want to have but not necessary to have.  For example, I have a normal TV at home but I want a nice 100” plasma or LCD TV.  It is not required that I should have it for having to conduct my routine life.

NEED – Something I definitely need in my day-to-day life.  For example, like a large family we are, we need good amount of furniture in our living room as against very simple couple of chairs.  This is a need as we spend a lot of time with friends and relatives in the living room and it should be comfortable for both the guests and the hosts.

Lot of us, most of the time, confuse ourselves between wants and needs and end-up spending a lot of money on things that we do not need.

When we get ourselves confused between wants and needs, that’s a thin line between being ‘needy’ and ‘greedy’ and in many cases, we have the greed factor settling in.  My personal line about greed is “greed takes you to grave”…

I look at my own stuff quite regularly to see where I did misunderstand ‘want’ as ‘need’.  I have so many gadgets and others items with me, which are not used by me regularly.  At some stage I thought I NEED them but it was really a ‘want’ and I ended up buying, which was of no or very little use after some time.  A classic example many of us can relate to ourselves will be mobile phones.  When we see some new make/model, we feel we need it and end up buying the phone, which in essence is of same use as our previous phone.

At some stage, as a human being, if we want something and keep thinking about it, in our mind it becomes we ‘need’ it… So, if we can’t afford, we may end-up buying it on credit card or we may end up working a lot more than normal in order to earn money so that we can afford what we ‘want’…

Before we let our mind thinking something we ‘want’ as we ‘need’ it, why not analyze and decide whether we really need it or is it just another item we want which may or may not be really useful to us?

For people who are fortunate to have a lot of wealth to spend on, these do not apply.  The lifestyle itself becomes different for people who are rich… So, having more than one car is a need for them.  We are talking here only about average middle class family (which is the larger society in India).

Recently I was talking with a friend about this and she gave me an example.  A friend of her works so that she can earn more money and support her husband and live a little comfortable life.  I was told that she earns about $2,500 per month.  But the money she spends on babysitting to take care of her kid and the play school she has to put the school since she cannot be with the kid was around $2,000 a month.

With above being said, why should she work?  If she’s spending $2,000 out of her $2,500 on taking care of kid, she will definitely have more expenses to take care of few needs she will have as a working woman (e.g., nice dress to be presentable, some conveyance needs, occasional eating-out expenses, etc.).  Probably, the additional $500 she has with her is not enough to meet these expenses.

Now, if we talk to her, she may say, “nice dress, nice shoes, baby sitting, play school” are all needs for which she is working.  So, as a human being we all tend to forget why we have some “needs” for which we are struggling to make the ends meet.

I started updating this blog after my recent conversation with a friend (with above example).  But currently we see so many people in many metros of India who are confused between ‘need’ and ‘want’ and struggle to make ends meet.

Having a car (Maruti is no longer the style… We need Honda, Toyota or some other foreign name), having a good big apartment/house, outing every weekend – including parties at pubs/bars, are all becoming ‘needs’ which were not needs till sometime ago.

Also, I believe the concept of ‘want’ and ‘need’ changes depending on the generations.  What our parents wanted has become need for us and probably our children will ‘need’ what we ‘want’ today.

Just because we have created some ‘needs’, we are all under stress to make more money and then run around… By the time we decide it is time to ‘call it quits’ and retire, we may realize all our life we have been running around making money (which never seems to be enough) to have various things that we may or may not need.  Is it really fair for us to run around so much to make more money to buy things, which we do not require?  Why not enjoy life and be content with what we have?

Also, our confusion between want and need are not just materialistic… This want and need can also be intangible between two individuals’ relationship.

 

Any thought processes from my friends on this?