Living with Nat

It was in the August of 2018 that me and Nat moved in together. After a string of unsuccessful viewings, we found a great studio in Wapping for £1600 a month. It would have cost almost 30% of both our take home pays and neither of us wanted it. To think now, it wasn't that we couldn't afford it, we just were not used to paying so much for anything let alone renting. We were so used to paying less for lesser living standards comparable to what we had home that we didn’t feel the need to change it.

Instances like that reminded me that spending more to improve one's lifestyle is a deliberate choice one needs to actively make. The fact that I would get richer on paper by saving that cost prevented me from improving my life, defeating the whole purpose of making money. Money is useful only when used. Even though my heart wanted it, my brain avoided it. That's when I realised affluence is a psychological concept and my Indian way of thinking prevented me from crossing that invisible mental barrier. When I knew that I could just continue living the same old lifestyle for cheap, I just couldn't pay a bit more for a better lifestyle.

Eventually, we moved to Dalston, sharing the house with 2 others. We paid £1000 a month paying a premium for a renovated double room in near the high street with good train and bus connections to work. We loved this place and used to frequent this Turkish restaurant there called Cirrik. It was so good that what started off as a weekly date night almost became a daily affair. It was there I met Cum for the first time, the owner of that restaurant. I remember how he taught us how to use the cutlery to take the bones off the Sea Bass dish. One of my favourite dishes there is the Tavuk Shish Yogurtlu with the Pomegrenate sauce and chargrilled onions and pepper.

Financially, I was improving my savings by giving up comfort for money. I wasn't investing it, just saving it. Not knowing about the ISA allowance in the UK was a trick I missed.

My health started to take a hit thanks to smoking coupled with a sedentary lifestyle. It was an age I worked hard on my Career neglecting everything else. I had a group of friends I played Cricket with on weekends recreationally. One fine weekend, I injured my right ankle trying to play a hook shot and losing balance, the very ankle I had a knack of injuring over the years and leaving it to heal on its own, except this time, it had other plans.