People do not care about you. They only care about what you have to offer. The earlier to realize this the better. You will feed people, and offer your body for them to walk over, but at the end of the day, they will stop and ask if they asked you for it.
It is not easy to get yourself out of the shackles of black tax. For the visitors to the new Jerusalem, Black Tax is the situation where those close to you, by blood or friendship, feel that they are entitled to share with you whatever you have; mostly cash.
Black tax is common among family members. Where a family member feels because you are part of the family, you must support their venture such as paying for their school fees among others. But is it possible for one to beat Black Tax?
The truth is, if you cannot check on your Black Tax, it will have you dying poor because you will spend all your resources pleasing others as you wallow in poverty. And the same time, the same people who will take your money are the ones who will be asking why you went poor all of a sudden.
Black tax can be beaten in three ways:
The first one is to empower those close to you. If people are empowered, what happens is that instead of them depending on you, you will be uplifting each other.
The second and the most difficult one is to ignore. You cannot be available for everybody every time. Draw your boundaries and let others know what you stand for, and where you can and cannot help.
The third and the last one is to always have a budget and a plan for your money. Let what remains after your budget be the one that goes to black tax. This will not seem like an obligation but something that you will be willing to do in your free time. Like a hobby.
