Budgets and the woes thereof
Sep. 10th, 2011 22:16![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_moonThere is this thing called budgeting. My budget, in this special circumstance of one heap'o'CSN and euros and whatnot, is what this post is
I'm decent at making a budget and preeetty good at holding it. Pretty - books tend to be my weakness. Though I haven't had to make one lately, because with low rent, literally no time to shop for clothes and a salary that is pretty much stable from month to month (excluding the odd sickday, extra hour etc) I could just buy regular "what I need" stuff (food and socks, basically) and still have money left over for books. Could I have saved more money last year? Darn right I could have, but considering that stress and lack of sleep was my biggest worries, I really couldn't be arsed. And it's not like I earned that much, had bout a regular student grant (+loan) leftover after tax.
Now, though, I suddenly find myself in immense need of my budgeting skills. The thing is that CSN, the great dispensers of student loans and grants, have thrown me my money for the German class. Great, fine. Then, three weeks before the regular term begins, they will throw me the money for the rest of the term. That's it, until February 2012 (+ the odd ten, twenty euro I'll get from work for writing an article).
And hey, I know myself. Being in Berlin, so much to shop, so much to do, free time for the first time in ages... Besides the neccessities of setting up a new life in a pretty bare room, I've already bought a theatre ticket (A Brecht play at Berliner Ensemble, I do like his stuff) and I'm planning several concerts and I want a new pair of shoes and I need at least one more pairs of trousers an' I wanna tablet an' a computeran' a pony...
Yeah, it's easy to get swept away. But while one can hold out the last week before salary on canned goods and dinners with grandma at home, that will be REALLY difficult here. There's months til the "next payment", grandma lives a two hours flight away and I'm really not interested in begging my mom for a handout.
I'm further a bit hobbled by the fact that Germany is still very much a cash culture. Whereas I can in Sweden practically follow where every penny goes by logging into my bank-account (and the cash withdravals are eaten as snacks, that's pretty much a given) here I do a few big withdrawals and - suddenly, no moniez in the wallet! Where's it all gone?
Experience helps - I was in exact this situation the last time, except then I didn't have to pay any rent and most of my food costs were also covered (host family, y'know). But I'd quite sensibly decided to split the CSN money evenly throughout the months, round them off a bit and take that for the first settling-in-month and count on extra expenses for Christmas to be paid back by received Christmas money.
Worked really well... except that, somehow, the months (not counting the very first month) I stood there with no money and several days left in the calender until my next planned withdrawal. Ooops. I got better, though, learned what cost what and how to travel tactically in Berlin*. It also helped that halfway through my year, they changed currency from the D-mark to the euro, so everything wasn't quite as "OHMYGOSH SO CHEAP!" and it got really simple to count back into crowns; multiply by 10 and you've got a fair estimate which includes withdrawal fees.
*As a sidenote, the bloody university won't give us our student tickets, so I've got a pretty big semi-unexpected cost until October first (was suspicous they'd be like this). I am not happy
So, budgeting it is. And saving every recipe, sorting them and trying to figure out how much I need each month to live one. The rent is higher too, a given since I'm living in the middle of the city, although it's far from painfully high.
Because when the big downpayment comes, I WILL know how much it costs to live in Berlin, how much I can use for fun every month and that's final!
This post brought to you by the four letters I got from the bank today and my argh-official-documents-in-German procrastination angst ;) Now I'm gonna be a good girl and actually open them!
I'm decent at making a budget and preeetty good at holding it. Pretty - books tend to be my weakness. Though I haven't had to make one lately, because with low rent, literally no time to shop for clothes and a salary that is pretty much stable from month to month (excluding the odd sickday, extra hour etc) I could just buy regular "what I need" stuff (food and socks, basically) and still have money left over for books. Could I have saved more money last year? Darn right I could have, but considering that stress and lack of sleep was my biggest worries, I really couldn't be arsed. And it's not like I earned that much, had bout a regular student grant (+loan) leftover after tax.
Now, though, I suddenly find myself in immense need of my budgeting skills. The thing is that CSN, the great dispensers of student loans and grants, have thrown me my money for the German class. Great, fine. Then, three weeks before the regular term begins, they will throw me the money for the rest of the term. That's it, until February 2012 (+ the odd ten, twenty euro I'll get from work for writing an article).
And hey, I know myself. Being in Berlin, so much to shop, so much to do, free time for the first time in ages... Besides the neccessities of setting up a new life in a pretty bare room, I've already bought a theatre ticket (A Brecht play at Berliner Ensemble, I do like his stuff) and I'm planning several concerts and I want a new pair of shoes and I need at least one more pairs of trousers an' I wanna tablet an' a computer
Yeah, it's easy to get swept away. But while one can hold out the last week before salary on canned goods and dinners with grandma at home, that will be REALLY difficult here. There's months til the "next payment", grandma lives a two hours flight away and I'm really not interested in begging my mom for a handout.
I'm further a bit hobbled by the fact that Germany is still very much a cash culture. Whereas I can in Sweden practically follow where every penny goes by logging into my bank-account (and the cash withdravals are eaten as snacks, that's pretty much a given) here I do a few big withdrawals and - suddenly, no moniez in the wallet! Where's it all gone?
Experience helps - I was in exact this situation the last time, except then I didn't have to pay any rent and most of my food costs were also covered (host family, y'know). But I'd quite sensibly decided to split the CSN money evenly throughout the months, round them off a bit and take that for the first settling-in-month and count on extra expenses for Christmas to be paid back by received Christmas money.
Worked really well... except that, somehow, the months (not counting the very first month) I stood there with no money and several days left in the calender until my next planned withdrawal. Ooops. I got better, though, learned what cost what and how to travel tactically in Berlin*. It also helped that halfway through my year, they changed currency from the D-mark to the euro, so everything wasn't quite as "OHMYGOSH SO CHEAP!" and it got really simple to count back into crowns; multiply by 10 and you've got a fair estimate which includes withdrawal fees.
*As a sidenote, the bloody university won't give us our student tickets, so I've got a pretty big semi-unexpected cost until October first (was suspicous they'd be like this). I am not happy
So, budgeting it is. And saving every recipe, sorting them and trying to figure out how much I need each month to live one. The rent is higher too, a given since I'm living in the middle of the city, although it's far from painfully high.
Because when the big downpayment comes, I WILL know how much it costs to live in Berlin, how much I can use for fun every month and that's final!
This post brought to you by the four letters I got from the bank today and my argh-official-documents-in-German procrastination angst ;) Now I'm gonna be a good girl and actually open them!
