Money, or the eternal student struggle.

As I first signed up for this hobo/wanderlust/artist kind of live when I left my little baguette country to study a few months in Vienna, I had no clue of how much of a struggle money would be. I’ve worked my way through it and have proudly eaten something else than pasta at least 3 times a month since then. So now I know… Or do I? No.

First thing to know about me is that I love complaining about how life is painful and how much I would love being a cat and having as only struggle to find an other place to nap for the rest of the day. Truth is, I don’t have much to complain about, I have supportive friends and parents that really help me through that shitty time before retirement that I have to keep busy.

While I was staying in France, 2h from my parents, I was actually doing pretty fine. Budget queen, empress of independence.

So now that that title is set up, how do I tell my parents that even with the loads of money they are spending on me I can hardly face the smallest mishap?

We are here to get true about those nonsense situations we’re brought to trying to: act like everything is fine (example: “Yes I can afford to go out tonight!” while whipping tears of our mascara every time we spend one dollar), have a social life, treat ourselves once in a while, still wear clothes that don’t have unintentional holes.

Nonsense number one would be to trust our abilities in actually paying for food, gas and bills with those $50 we have left for the next 2 weeks.

3 days after that, nonsense number three, dead broke we try some other options. For example, picking one expense to suppress. As we might have to go places and call or text, sometimes the solution appears to be eating pasta for the rest of the month, or corn, cause we have some box of corn from that time we wanted to do a chili but didn’t. This won’t work either, for we all know that decision will last at most 4 days and then in a crave of eating something that doesn’t taste like the bitter failure our life is, we treat ourselves like never and like we’ve been dreaming of for the last 3,5 days, $5 dollars are now remaining on your bank account and 10 more days to go.

The problem is we see it coming, every month we are riche as Croesus, for 15 golden days. And broke for 15 long and unfortunate 15 other days (if not 16, every other months).

But where would be the fun if we all had our shit together, going to Florida would have been fine without getting ripped off repairing my car, but that was a lot of fun living a hobo life for a day too. Travel shapes youth, as the saying goes. I would say than badly handling a budget is also part of it. There’s a time for bad life decisions, and that is now!

 

Here I am! Stirring my good 2 pounds of lenses (from that time I wanted to do Moroccan style lenses but forgot the onions) haunted by the voice of my dad asking why I’m cooking so much of it and why I’m going to eat that for the rest of the week , his tone is sarcastic and judgmental. How funny can it be dad? My car broke down, the one you said I didn’t need so I’m eating lenses until the 1^st of the Month hits my bank account.