I read a hadith today. There is a great secret of life in this hadith. مَا عَالَ مَنِ اقْتَصَدَ (Musnad Ahmad 4269) A person who spends money carefully will not experience poverty. Iqtasada means to manage. One who knows the art of money management will never face poverty. He will never have to take loan.

How is that? Those who take loan and face problems lack something. They have discontentment. They are not content with their earning. They want more and more. This is why they take loan. They make great jumps. Then they have to face difficulties. The art of money management is necessary, and not earning more money. Earning a lot of money is not essential. The art of money management is essential. The art of money management is to know how to spend less of available money.

A person once came to me. He was from Rampur. He came with a box of sweets. He said it was special sweet made only in Rampur. He said: I take this sweet to elders and scholars when I go to meet them. During conversation, I came to know that he had to give back loan he had taken. He gave me a packet of sweets and asked me to pray so that he could repay his loan. I returned the packet of sweets to him. I asked him if he had to repay loan, why did he buy sweets? He replied that he brought it because he wanted to. I told him that this was a wrong habit. I told him to not give gifts to anyone when he had to repay his loan. I hammered him a lot and explained that taking a loan was very bad. Among the permissible things, I consider taking loan the worst. If you have less money, spend less. I told him to not bring gifts for me. He should not have spent his money unnecessarily on sweets. The money he spent in travelling by bus, scooter or taxi was also wrongly spent.

I told him to not come to meet me unless he had repaid the loan. I told him to not spend money on new clothes on Eid. No need to spend money unnecessarily on Eid. The children in his house could spend Eid with clothes from previous year. They can wear the clothes they already have. I told him to make this promise. This person accepted my advice. He followed what I said. He stopped spending money unnecessarily. He didn't make new clothes for children on Eid. Soon he could repay all his loan. Then he called to give me this news. I asked me to be thankful to God. I advised him to continue to save money from unnecessary expenditure. His house was not proper and faced problems during the rainy season. I told him to not waste money until he didn't get a better house. This is art of money management. Your expenditure should be less than the money you have.