(no subject)

[minervasolo]

I'm having hissy fits at my accounts. Since the loans gone in I keep getting money out and it's just disappearing. I've done terribly at keeping track of where I'm spending it. Things like the cinema trip, buying milk, laundry, etc, I just forget to add. Hopefully, they'll be taking the loan money away soon, which ought to help, and I've been doing random maths all evening. I keep forgetting to write down what each number is, though, so it's reaching the point where I'm adding and subtracting complete nonsense. I think I've got it sorted, but there's this nasty -150 tacked on the end of the equations, to make it balance.

I've never wanted money to be taken away so much. Once it's gone I can jiggeryrig my nonsense numbers to look all nice and in the red again and actually work out whether I can afford to buy WK and Cowboy Bebop and so on. I also need to work out how much money I need to save to pay the rent over the summer, as a minimum.

Comments

[buzzylittleb.livejournal.com]

See, my parents don't realise how good I am. They just look at my teensy overdraft with horror, despite how many comparative tales I tell them.

I used to keep a spreadsheet on my computer, before I went all sick and incomprehensible.

[minervasolo.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of parents don't relise how competent a most students are with their money. You have to be, unless you want to be in real trouble. You can't live off the loan, in most cases, no matter how frugal you are (in the spring term my loan didn't even cover fees and accomodation). I know a few of people who took maximum overdraft, emptied it into a high interest savings account and lived off another current account entirely, with the intention of making money off it. On the other hand, I also know several people who've spent everything and keep spending, because they haven't actually got their heads around the fact that money isn't suddenly going to appear in their account again. And then they wonder why the bacnk is taking away yet more money, once they outrun the interest-free overdraft.

I figure as long as the bank isn't charging you loads of money, you're doing okay. It's when you've got less than no money and because of that you're losing yet more, which you've can't match in income, that you've mismanaged something somewhere along the line.

I think my spreadsheet is going to make me sick and incomprehensible. It already is.

[buzzylittleb.livejournal.com]

I think the last line cheered me up a little.

Fortunately, I don't pay my fees. Unfortunately, this translates as my parents really can't bail me out ever. And even the London rate loan disappears real fast once you figure in (university) accommodation. God knows what will hapen if they kick me up onto the streets, maybe I could find a well-appointed cardboard box.

Of course, the net result of the evil agency was that I ended up as a Saturday girl earning 4.19/hour and had to get the ALF to bail me out. Thankfully, being a DSA student helped there.