MWAMISI: Why living within one’s means matters in age of illusions

Economists often describe national progress through five broad stages of development, beginning with traditional society and culminating in the era of high mass consumption.

These stages are not rigid, yet they help us understand why citizens in different countries experience life so differently. The United Kingdom reached the final stage long ago, based on the strength of durable institutions, deep industrial capacity and a fairly predictable social safety net.

Kenya occupies a middle stage, shaping its take-off, building capacity and widening opportunity, but it is not yet anchored in the kind of economic maturity that sustains widespread disposable income. This contrast explains much of the confusion and misplaced expectation that surrounds our youth today.

To understand this better, picture yourself stepping out of Heathrow on a grey London morning, the air a mix of drizzle and determination. The journey seems simple enough.

You approach the ticket machine at the Underground, only for the digits to glare back with an unmistakable message. A single ride into the city costs the equivalent of several cross-town trips in Nairobi. A quiet shock settles in your chest. It is the first reminder that London is a polished metropolis but not a forgiving one, especially for those unacquainted with its economic tempo.

The train glides through the suburbs as you consider the fare again, converting pounds to shillings because your mind refuses to accept such numbers as ordinary.

When you enter Victoria Station, the city awakens in full chorus. You go for a coffee, imagining a modest treat after the long flight. Instead, the price startles you. That one drink can purchase two hearty meals in Nairobi. You take it anyway, telling yourself that this is London, yet knowing the city is teaching you a lesson before you even begin exploring it.

The hotel room you had booked with optimism appears clean but startlingly compact. You realise that many young Londoners, even those in steady employment, live in similar spaces indefinitely. They are not indulging in luxury. They are navigating an unforgiving housing market with discipline and grit.

As you walk through Oxford Street in the evening, lights shimmering against windows dressed in temptation, you observe the youth of London moving with purpose. Some wear the latest fashion, but many do not.

Snippets of conversation reveal concerns about rent, energy bills and overtime shifts. These are not characters performing a life of affluence. They are simply surviving in a mature economy where the cost of comfort is relentlessly high.

This reality punctures a widespread illusion at home. While Kenya has made impressive strides, from digital innovation to infrastructural expansion, the country does not yet inhabit the economic terrain that makes high mass consumption sustainable.

Young people in Nairobi often mirror lifestyles they see online, imagining that their counterparts abroad glide through life with ease. Yet on that London street, observing the quiet anxieties of young workers in one of the world’s richest societies, you recognise how inaccurate that assumption is.

Londoners live with restraint because their environment demands it. Kenyans must live with even greater restraint because the structural cushion available to British youth is absent at home.

Nairobi’s young professionals, students and early career workers often feel pressured to demonstrate a standard of living that has little connection to their earnings or to Kenya’s current stage of development.

The pursuit of appearance over stability has become an unspoken race. Yet the UK’s example offers a sobering insight. Even in a country that has crossed every developmental threshold, many young people make deliberate choices to control their spending, to share cramped living spaces, to endure long commutes and to sacrifice comfort for the sake of financial survival. It is not a failure. It is an expression of maturity.

Kenya will one day reach that final stage of development where a broader share of the population enjoys stable incomes, predictable services and the freedom to consume without fear of financial collapse.

But that journey requires a generation that chooses prudence over performance. The country needs youth who understand that progress is not measured by what one wears, drives or posts online, but by how one manages scarcity with dignity and invests patiently in one’s future.

As you settle into that tiny London hotel room, listening to the distant hum of buses on the narrow street below, the message becomes unmistakable. Real growth, whether personal or national, is never accelerated by imitation.

It is secured by sober judgement, disciplined choices and an honest acceptance of one’s economic context. For Kenyan youth searching for footing in an uncertain world, there is no shame in modest living. There is wisdom in it, and there is strength.

London teaches you this quietly and without apology. The train fare, the costly coffee, the cramped room and the hurried conversations of young workers are not inconveniences.

They are lessons. They reveal that even in the heart of a global financial centre, people survive by living within their means. Nairobi’s youth must do the same, with even greater clarity, because their country is still constructing the foundation that others built long before.

The future belongs to those who understand this truth early. Those who pace their lives according to reality, not illusions, will build the most. Those who resist the pressure to pretend will rise the farthest. And those who learn from London’s hidden discipline will become the adults who eventually usher Kenya into its own age of mass prosperity.