The hidden cost of belonging in Oman

I thought I had cracked the code this month, as I carefully followed the advice of economists on managing my monthly income and expenses almost like a company would. Everything was going perfectly well until my emergency fund — meant for a broken car or an unexpected hospital visit — somehow became my social obligations fund. That was when I realised that all those financial rules I had been happily learning from international economists do not quite work the same way in Oman.

It is not because life is particularly expensive here, In fact, inflation has remained relatively moderate compared with global levels and neighbouring countries, staying below 3 per cent according to the latest figures in July. The problem is simply that these perfect calculations for managing your income do not always take into account the size of your social circle or the price of belonging to it.

When an American economist, for example, tells you to set aside a little money for a friend’s birthday, it sounds simple enough. But social circles look a little different in Oman. The average Omani household has around seven members, compared with just 2.5 in the US. And that is only the people under one roof, before we add grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews and friends. And remember, we are still only talking about birthday gifts. The cost of belonging goes much further than that.

Belonging makes us happier, so perhaps all this spending is an investment of some kind. But how much does it cost? To be an active member of Omani society, your wallet needs to show up almost as often as you do. There are the two Eids, family gatherings, friends and colleagues. If you are lucky, the family meets at your grandparents’ house and you only bring dessert. But social media has upgraded the experience: rented farms, catering and a share that can easily reach RO50. Then come weddings — sometimes three celebrations, each needing an outfit and perhaps a gift — followed by graduations, newborns and even gender reveals, which Instagram seems to have made socially necessary! By my very unofficial math, even a quiet social year could cost around RO670. However one enthusiastic wedding season could ruin the calculation.

And unfortunately, you may have to trust my math on this one, because there are no precise statistics tracking what Omani households spend on social obligations. As the closest official indicator comes from the 2020 Household Expenditure and Income Survey, which found that Omani households spent an average of RO757.2 a month, including RO10.5 in “paid cash transfers”, or about RO126 a year. But the real cost of belonging is much harder to capture, as it is scattered across gifts, food, clothes, transport, hospitality and countless occasions

I know these social expenses exist everywhere, but in Oman, our large families and wide social circles can make them harder to escape. Yet we have also created collective solutions. Many families have shared funds to help with weddings, gatherings, funerals and other needs — our own “belonging funds”, perhaps rooted in the same spirit of zakat and charity: the community supporting the community.

The cost of belonging may surprise your budget, as it did mine this month, but it is also an investment in relationships and wellbeing. Perhaps the answer is not to spend less on belonging, but to plan for it better while resisting the extra celebrations created mainly for show or social media. Hopefully, that part is just a bubble waiting to burst.