Dear You,
you might have read about the huge budget crisis into which our German government now slithered when our cheeky Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (the one who can't remember which part he played in the Cum-Ex-Scandal) planned to put not-used Corona-crisis money - only wimpish 60 billions Euro - into other pots, e.g. climate protection measures.
The independent Federal Constitutional Court rendered a verdict against that shenanigans, so now our politicians are looking desperately for new interesting ways to find that money. By the way: our money, paid by us, the taxpayers. (The 137.000 euros we taxpayers have to give for annual make-up and hairdresser of our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, are only ridiculous flyspeck compared to those 60 billions euro).
I am a modest expert in the handling of money - in my book Home Basics, 10.000 of the over 60.000 books sold were bought from a Swiss building association which gave it to every young person who opened a savings account there. They liked my chapter on money and how to use it wisely.
Well: the Kakebo above is a housekeeping book from Japan, invented by the Avantgarde-thinker Hani Motoko in 1904. She was the first female journalist of Japan.
The books helps you to control your money, be disciplined and evaluate your data, and the best of it: you set yourself goals, see where you spend unnecessarily money on - in short: you see very clearly the results of your actions.
If our politicians don't have 38,7 billions for Bürgergeld they must reduce it and NOT raise it for 2024 for 12%. Bürgergeld is a good thing for people who have lost their job - but when you don't have to try to find work to get it that might be one reason why so many migrants want to come especially to Germany - and from the Ukraine refugees in Germany only 18% are in work, while in other European countries two thirds have found a job.
It might help if our politicians used the Kakebo.
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure 19 pounds nineteen and six, result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery."
Mr. Micawber (Charles Dickens: Great Expectations)
The sad thing is: it is our money and thus our misery. And sorry to say: most of us don't have any "Great Expectations" at the moment.
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