Fourteen year-old Saisha says, “I want to be a novelist when I grow up. I want to write a best selling novel. I am going to save all my ‘dakshina’ money this Dashain and my ‘bhailo’ and ‘deusi’ money’ this Tihar and buy some story books and novels.” She may not know much about finance and economics, but understands the promises of savings - a thrifty beginning for her future prosperity.

There is no dispute as to the necessity for saving as it is the savings of individuals which compose the wealth of every nation. Everybody recommends it but in practice prodigality is much more natural to man than thrift.

As a consequence, urban Nepalese society suffers far more from waste of money than from want of money. Let no one say that this is an exaggerated picture. Look round in any neighborhood, and see how much is spent and how little is saved; what a large proportion of earnings goes for alcohol, drugs, fashion, dance bars, casinos, and how little to the savings bank or to benefit the society.

Is it possible for a person working for small wages to save anything? There are few people who could not contrive to save a few rupees weekly because they are too poor and there are those who may say that savings is a painful virtue as it requires them to deny themselves the pleasures of life. Whatever the excuses, beginning has to be made. It is not what a man gets that constitutes his wealth, but his manner of spending. “Not to have a mania for buying is to possess revenue,” said Cicero. Most of us are carried away by the habit of buying things without which no harm would come along. “Here is something wonderfully cheap: let us buy it.” “Have you any use for it?” Ask this question and you will arrive at a revelation.

Thrift is no longer correlated with greed and selfishness. How selfish is it for an average earning person to spend the whole earnings, and lay nothing by. When we hear a man, who has been in the receipt of a good salary, has died and left nothing behind him for his wife and little children - we cannot but regard it as the most selfish thriftlessness. Hence, practice thrift - the mantra of prosperity. Thrift requires that money should be used and not abused - that it should be genuinely earned and economically employed for the glorious privilege of being independent.