At the start of the year, I made a goal to be fiscally responsible and cut back on my spending. This was not a sudden outburst of austerity, restraint or greed. It so happens that the company I work for will pay me twenty percent less starting in January. I thought then: if I’m going to earn less, I should spend less. There are certain expenses that, unfortunately, I cannot reduce: my daughter’s school, health and car insurance, income and property taxes, food and drinks at the supermarket, household electric bills, telephone, water, garbage and newspapers. I could try to spend less in restaurants and cafes, which I go to every day, but I am not willing to negotiate the happiness I find eating on the street, given that no one cooks at home. That being the case, I decided to lower the salaries of the staff who work with me. I thought: if I’m going to earn twenty percent less from January, my employees will also earn twenty percent less. It’s only fair, I told myself. I didn’t want to fire anyone. If I hadn’t been fired, I didn’t want to fire anyone either. Because, furthermore, the people who work with me have earned my respect and my affection. It was not easy, therefore, to tell them that I should reduce their salary. Before implementing my severe budget austerity plan, one of my daughters wrote me an email, lovingly asking me for two airline tickets for her and her boyfriend, since they wanted to attend soon. to a wedding on a Caribbean island. I thought about telling him: I can’t help you with the tickets, my love, because my salary has been lowered and I’m in a recession and I’m forced to spend less. I didn’t have the manliness or courage to tell him: I apologize, but this time I can’t give you the airline tickets. I didn’t tell him that my fees had been reduced. I bought the tickets for him. Of course, I paid for business class seats, because that’s what she and her boyfriend deserve. My austerity program is off to a bad start, I thought. If you don’t know how to say no, you’re screwed, I told myself. Then I decided to announce to the gardener that I would lower his salary. My plan was to tell him: instead of working every day from Monday to Friday, come three times a week and I will pay you twenty percent less. It seemed reasonable to me. But, at the moment of truth, when I had to summon the courage and tell him the unpleasant news, I didn’t know how to do it, I couldn’t do it. It was the first working day of January, the boy was watering the garden and I approached him to tell him that I could not continue paying him what I have paid him in recent years. However, I was kind enough to ask him how things were going, before giving him the bad news. I asked him if he was saving. He told me no. I asked him why, since I pay him very well. He told me he owes a lot of money. I asked him how much money he owes. He told me twenty thousand dollars. I asked him who he owes so much money to. He told me that it was the people who brought him hidden in trucks from his country. Then he told me that the journey was an odyssey, that the truck trips lasted twenty or thirty hours, that he had to hide under some rugs and that he couldn’t breathe and was suffocating. He told me that the guys who brought him in hidden are now charging him twenty thousand dollars, in addition to usury interest. He told me that every month he has to pay them. If he stops doing so, they would retaliate against him and his family. After listening to him, I couldn’t tell him, I have come to tell you that you will earn less money starting this month. I was moved to hear his story. He told me that in two years he will finish paying the bandits who transported him furtively from his country of origin to this country. Shortly after, I told my wife: I failed, I couldn’t lower his salary, he needs the money much more than I do. Then I tried to lower the salary of the lady who takes care of our dog. She comes at eight in the morning, takes the dog and brings him back at five in the afternoon. He lives in a house with a large garden, where he gathers twenty or thirty dogs every day. She was born to take care of dogs: dogs love her. It’s not an easy job: you have to keep them from fighting or mounting or running away. He does it with superior talent, as if he were born to practice that job. Afraid to talk to her, because she has a strong character, I wrote her a note telling her a thousand apologies, they have lowered my salary, I have to pay you less, thank you for your understanding. I immediately wrote her a check for an amount twenty percent less than the stipend I was accustomed to receiving. But when my wife gave her the check and note, the dog sitter protested. He said if we paid him less, then he wouldn’t take our dog on the weekends. Their argument was reasonable: if they pay me less, I will work less. In the end, my wife and I decided that, for the sake of our dog, whom we love like a son, we will not lower the salary of his caregiver, who also does a great job. Next, I told my three editors that starting in January they would earn twenty percent less, a cut that represented no small savings for me. He had to be strong and execute the austerity program. But the publishers begged me not to take a hit on their income. They are very talented and assist me both on the television channel and on the program I record at home. They work, like me, seven days a week. They work on Christmas and New Year. They work on their birthdays and mine. They are really good. And each one has a different situation: one has just sent his son to university, which forces him to spend more; another has a sick mother; and the last one has had to move because the building he lives in is poorly built and is sinking. Don’t worry, I told them, I won’t lower your salary. Apparently, my fiscal austerity program was easy to design, but difficult to execute. I remembered what we already know: it is easy to spend money, but much more difficult to earn it honestly. You don’t need any talent to spend more money than you earn. After successive defeats in the exercise of my dwindling personal finances, I was still able to make some cuts in the emoluments of two domestic employees who are part of our family: one is my driver. youngest daughter, and the other, younger one, cleans the house. I gathered them in the kitchen, I gathered my courage, I told myself, don’t be faint-hearted, tell them the truth, they will understand. But when I told them the bad news, they both burst into tears. The woman who acts as the driver claimed that she needs the money because her mother lives far away and her daughter lives even further away and she supports them both. The youngest, sobbing, confessed to me that her parents have lost their jobs and she pays their bills by sending them remittances. As it was, I hugged them, cried with them and told them that they would continue to earn the same, and that I would figure out how to cut money in other areas of my budget. I have not been able to reduce any of the salaries I pay monthly. I have failed in the whole line. I have not even tried to lower the salary of the noble lady who takes care of a property for me in the city where I was born. I have told my wife: my love, I am a disaster, I am a failure, I have not been able to lower anyone’s salary. She told me: you are identical to your mother. Since I have not been able to reduce the salaries of my domestic staff and my technical team, I will have no choice but to spend less in restaurants and on trips. Will I have enough character to tell my wife that from now on we will eat at home and not travel to the beach or the snow? I highly doubt it. I suspect we will continue to eat delicious food and travel to beautiful places. That is, I will continue spending more than I should. That is to say, when the company I work for finally fires me, I will have to apply a fiscal policy not of moderate austerity, but of brutal shock: always eat at home, travel in economy class and do the gardening and cleaning work myself. landlady and transportation service for our daughter. I see it very clearly: I will die poor.
#die #poor
