DOHA: Many Qatari and expat families are finding it hard to manage their finances as Ramadan, summer break and Eid Al Fitr are coinciding this year.
Many families, even if their income is limited, travel overseas during the summer holidays.
And only a little after they return, there will be back-to-school time for their children and barely weeks later, it would be Eid Al Adha.
While all these occasions are heartily welcome, they are being held over a span of just four months and all entail expenses, said Rashid Abdullah, a citizen.
He told Al Arab daily in comments published yesterday that families are under financial pressure and don’t know how to cope with the rising expenditure.
These are all occasions when you must spend and the expenses are not budgeted for, said Abdullah.
Most families tend to exhaust nearly 80 percent of their yearly budgets in the first half of the year.
This prompts them to approach banks for loan and fall in a vicious trap of having to repay the loan in installments. The loan is topped off as time passes by and so the trap never ends.
Ramadan is a month when families must spend a lot of money on food since they must invite relatives, friends and neighbours to dinner.
Another national, Mohamed Al Anzi, said what makes the situation more challenging for families is that prices have always been showing an upward trend.
“We have never seen prices come down once they have gone up,” Al Anzi said.
This makes families struggle financially and many default in repaying bank loan installments.
An effective solution to the problem is that families, especially those in limited-income brackets, should cancel overseas travel plans this year since that also call for heavy expenses, said Al Anzi.
“We cannot afford to ignore our Ramadan-related customs and traditions but we can easily decide not to travel for fun,” he said.
“We have highest salaries in the region and probably in the world, but the irony is that we also have a high cost of living,” he said.
Yet another citizen, Mohamed Al Rasheedi, said limited-income families would do better not to take bank loans to splurge on overseas trips.
“We must stop imitating and competing with others,” he added.
The Peninsula
