How Should We Spend What We Earn?
We think hard about how to earn, and much less about how to spend. Madhyasth Darshan says spending well is the whole purpose of earning, and that waste is the only real loss. Here are its three good uses of what we have, what it calls waste, and a way to plan with both.
Most of us put a great deal of thought into earning: what to study, which job, how to ask for more. We put much less into spending. Money comes in, and it goes out, on whatever seemed necessary or tempting that month.
Madhyasth Darshan turns this around. It treats spending as the point of the whole exercise.
This may sound like saying nobody should ever spend on enjoyment. It doesn’t. Food, rest, music and a celebration with family can all be use or good use. The test is what the spending serves, not whether it is pleasant.
Spending well is the purpose of earning
In Manav Vyavahar Darshan (मानव व्यवहार दर्शन), Shri A. Nagraj puts it in a few short lines. When we earn, we don’t lose. When we lose, we don’t earn. Spending well (सद्व्यय) is the purpose of earning, and waste (अपव्यय) is the only real loss. A person who has a fair income is successful and happy only by spending it well. Otherwise, the book says, they are unsuccessful and unhappy.
The same page adds something easy to miss: what we spend is always body, mind and wealth. Time, energy and attention are spent just as money is, and the same questions apply to them.
“Spending well is the purpose of earning, and waste is the only real loss.”
Three good uses
Manav Karm Darshan (मानव कर्म दर्शन) describes three ways of using body, mind and wealth well. Together it calls them generosity:
- Use (उपयोगिता): nourishing and protecting the body, and keeping society running. Food, shelter, clothing, health, tools for work.
- Good use (सदुपयोगिता): giving within relationships, as part of one undivided society. The Paribhasha Sanhita defines good use as offering body, mind and wealth in human relationships and their values.
- Purposeful use (प्रयोजनीयता): taking part, of one’s own accord, in the wider order that serves everyone.
What waste is
The Paribhasha Sanhita defines waste precisely. It is body, mind and wealth spent in, from or for three things:
- dependence (दीनता), which it describes as looking to others to take one’s own sorrow away;
- betrayal (हीनता), the breaking of trust;
- cruelty (क्रूरता), forcing oneself forward by trying to erase someone else.
As we read it, dependence here does not mean relying on others, receiving help or paying for support, which every life involves. It means looking to others to take away a sorrow we could work on ourselves.
So waste isn’t simply spending a lot, or spending on something we later regret. It is spending that comes from, or feeds, one of these. And Manav Vyavahar Darshan names its root: waste comes from a lack of discernment (अविवेक).
Step 1: Know what is yours to spend
The book distinguishes own wealth (स्वधन) from others’ wealth (परधन). Own wealth is what comes as a fair return for work, as a gift, or as a prize. Anything else, including wealth gained by exploitation, is others’ wealth. The book says plainly that income gained by exploitation makes no one happy. Spending well starts with earning fairly, which we look at in How Should Things Be Priced?
Step 2: Cover use first
Start with what the body and the family need: food, shelter, clothing, health, the tools of the family’s work. This is use, and it is the foundation. A family that knows its needs can see clearly when this part is covered. We set out how to work it out in How to Calculate Enough for a Family.
Step 3: Then good use
Once needs are covered, look at what you give within your relationships: care for a parent, a child’s schooling, help for a sibling, a meal for a neighbour who is ill, a celebration that brings the family together. This is good use, and the book treats it as the fuller purpose of what we have. What each relationship asks is set out in What Does Each Relationship Ask of Us?
Step 4: Then wider purpose
Beyond the family, set aside something for the wider order: the village’s shared fund, a school, the upkeep of a common well or forest, time given to a committee. We describe what this can look like in How to Organise a Village So Every Family Has Enough.
Step 5: Check every spend for waste
Before spending, especially on anything large, ask the three waste questions. Is this a way of getting someone else to take my unhappiness away, instead of resolving it? Does it break anyone’s trust? Does it push someone else down? If the answer to any of them is yes, it is waste, however small. The six questions in How to Make a Good Decision help with larger choices.
An example
A family sits down at the start of the month with what it has earned. First, use: groceries, rent, school fees, medicine, the repair the farm pump needs. Then good use: a visit to the grandparents, a gift for a cousin’s graduation, help for a neighbour whose crop failed. Then wider purpose: the family’s share for the village fund, and two Saturdays given to repairing the school roof.
Then the waste check. A loan taken in secret, without telling the family, fails it: it breaks trust. Neither the loan nor what it buys may look like waste on a bank statement, but by the book’s definition it is. An expensive phone bought only to impress the neighbours is harder to place. It isn’t use, good use or wider purpose, and Manav Vyavahar Darshan lists a life of show (अभिमान) among the things that work against humane living. At the least, it deserves a second look.
And the planet?
The book applies the same idea to the earth’s wealth. Minerals and forests should be spent in proportion to what they produce, and spending more than that damages the earth. It also says that good use of natural wealth keeps the seasons in balance, and misuse unbalances them. A family that spends on use, good use and wider purpose, and refuses waste, simply buys less of what the earth can’t replace. We look at the earth’s side of this in How Much Should We Take from the Earth?
And our happiness?
The book’s claim is direct: a fair income makes a person happy only through spending it well. Many of us know the opposite feeling, of earning more each year and feeling no better. The darshan’s answer is that the happiness was never in the earning. It was meant to come from what the earning makes possible: a family that is looked after, relationships that are fulfilled, and a place in a wider order that works.
A protocol to try
Take last month’s spending, money and time both. Sort it into four columns: use (looking after the body and keeping life running), good use (giving within relationships), wider purpose (taking part in the wider order), and waste. Waste, as the essay uses it, means spending that comes from or feeds dependence, betrayal or cruelty; receiving help or paying for support is not waste in this sense. An item can sit in more than one column.
Notice which column is fullest and which is emptiest. Then choose one change for next month.
Limitations
- Use, good use and purposeful use are the books’ categories. Sorting a family’s spending into them, and the order of the steps, are our own.
- The Paribhasha Sanhita’s definition of waste names dependence, betrayal and cruelty. Our short glosses of those three words are approximations, and the book’s meaning may be wider.
- The book says that wealth is in society, from society and for society. That is not a licence to take what someone else has earned. The same book calls wealth gained by exploitation “others’ wealth” (परधन).
- This post doesn’t cover saving, debt or investment, and it isn’t financial advice.
- We haven’t yet tested these steps.
References
- Shri A. Nagraj, Manav Vyavahar Darshan (मानव व्यवहार दर्शन), p. 95 (earning and losing; spending well is the purpose of earning; only body, mind and wealth are spent; income from exploitation makes no one happy), p. 100 (own wealth and others’ wealth; good use of nature and the balance of the seasons), p. 103 (wealth is in, from and for society), p. 146 (a life of show; natural wealth spent in proportion to what it produces), p. 169 (waste comes from lack of discernment)
- Shri A. Nagraj, Manav Karm Darshan (मानव कर्म दर्शन), p. 96 (generosity as use, good use and purposeful use of body, mind and wealth)
- Madhyasth Darshan Paribhasha Sanhita, अपव्यय (waste), p. 20; सदुपयोग (good use), p. 184; दीनता, p. 90; हीनता, p. 221; क्रूरता, p. 63
