At What Point Do We Start Living for Ourselves? Laetitia Mugerwa on Bills, Burnout, and the Cost of Keeping Up

There is a particular kind of tiredness that adults know well—one that sleep cannot fix. You wake up, glance at your phone, and before your feet touch the floor, life has already presented you with a bill. This is adulthood: work hard, pay bills, care for everyone, and keep moving. And if you are exhausted? “Everybody is tired.” If you complain? “At least you have a job.” If you want to leave a situation that makes you unhappy? “But how will you survive?”

It raises a question: are our bills bullying us, or have we grown so accustomed to misery that we accept it as part of being an adult? There is something odd about a life where you can afford your responsibilities but cannot afford yourself. You can pay everyone’s bills but cannot take a weekend off. You can provide for your children but haven’t done anything for yourself in years. You can maintain the house, the car, the family, and the lifestyle, yet somehow you are disappearing inside all of it. And everyone applauds you. “What a responsible person,” they say.

Yet we are always waiting for next year. Next year I will travel. Next year I will start the business. Next year I will go back to school. Next year I will exercise. Next year I will leave that relationship. Next year I will save. Next year I will finally breathe. But next year arrives with new bills. And suddenly you are forty or fifty. There, you realise you have spent twenty years preparing for a life you never actually lived.

That thought is frightening. Bills are never going to disappear completely. There will always be something. A child needs something. A parent needs something. The house needs something. The car needs something. Your body needs something. Your business needs something. Life will not suddenly send you an email saying, “Congratulations. You have paid all your bills. You may now enjoy your existence.” So, when do we start living?

The Cost of Living Can Swallow an Entire Salary

The cost of living can consume a whole salary. A person can work hard and still not have enough. A parent can make every responsible decision and still be overwhelmed. A family can be one emergency away from financial disaster, and telling such people to “just enjoy life” is not advice. It is privilege disguised as wisdom. You cannot positive-think your way out of unpaid rent; you cannot manifest school fees; and you cannot tell someone choosing between food and electricity that they simply need to change their mindset. Sometimes life really is difficult.

Sometimes We Pay for Things Nobody Asked Us to Buy

But there is another side to this conversation that we don’t like to discuss: sometimes we are paying for things nobody actually asked us to buy. We desire the bigger house because everyone around us seems to have one. We want the expensive car so that others don’t think we’re failing. We buy designer clothes to project an of success, and we plan lavish weddings to ensure our photographs impress. We upgrade to the latest phone because having an older model makes us feel inadequate. We adopt an expensive lifestyle because, somewhere along the way, we confused looking successful with being financially secure. Then, we spend the next five years complaining about how expensive life has become. Perhaps some of our bills aren’t just the cost of living; perhaps some are the cost of trying to keep up with others.

Social media has intensified this pressure. We see someone in Dubai, someone else in Paris, someone celebrating a new house, another being surprised with a new car, children attending expensive schools, and birthdays celebrated on yachts. Suddenly, your perfectly ordinary life can feel embarrassing. So, you stretch your limits. Eventually, you are working a job you hate to maintain a lifestyle that is probably not yours.

What Financial Freedom Really Means

To me, financial freedom is not having a lot of money to buy everything. It is having enough money to make choices. Enough savings to leave a bad job. Enough independence to leave a bad relationship. Enough income to say no to things that destroy your peace. Enough money to rest occasionally without panicking. Enough discipline to live below your means and enough courage to admit that you don’t need everything you are being sold.

This allows you to really take care of yourself. To remember yourself before or after spending on others. You want to be responsible, I know. Being responsible is admirable. But being responsible should not require you to abandon yourself.

You deserve to laugh. You deserve rest. You deserve love. You deserve it, even if the holiday is simply sitting somewhere beautiful with your phone switched off. You deserve to pursue a dream that has nothing to do with paying a bill. You deserve to wake up sometimes and think, “Today, I am not just surviving. I am living.”