There are thirteen days left in the month of February and I only have R134,45 remaining of my R1000 budget for the month. It’s not quite as bad as it sounds. I bought groceries earlier this week and those should last me another 3 – 4 days, but this experiment is turning out to be harder than I thought it would be.
This is what I have spent so far:
One thing that really zapped my budget was this past weekend - Podge (CT), Katie (Joburg), Ben (Joburg), Meghan (Lesotho), Hasmin (Lesotho) and Jess (Port Elizabeth) all visited Kim! Their visit was totally worth it though; we visited the Big Hole, cooked some fantastic meals and took them to Changes (a night club) for a night of dancing. It was a blast!
But now that the weekend is over, I am really taking a hard look at my budget and one thing I am realizing is the extent to which living off of a meager budget forces one to reclassify things as needs or wants. For example, I am almost out of shampoo, soap and toilet paper and honestly I don’t know if I’m going to restock when I run out. I will probably wait until March (unless things get really bad). But this brings up another point – if I was living off of R1000 every month (and not just February) would I ever buy these hygiene products? I know that most coaches don’t buy toilet paper at home and I wonder what other “necessities” they choose not to buy.
 |
| Interns at the Big Hole! We all failed to throw rocks into the hole... and our guide assured us it was impossible to throw a rock into the hole. |
But now that the weekend is over, I am really taking a hard look at my budget and one thing I am realizing is the extent to which living off of a meager budget forces one to reclassify things as needs or wants. For example, I am almost out of shampoo, soap and toilet paper and honestly I don’t know if I’m going to restock when I run out. I will probably wait until March (unless things get really bad). But this brings up another point – if I was living off of R1000 every month (and not just February) would I ever buy these hygiene products? I know that most coaches don’t buy toilet paper at home and I wonder what other “necessities” they choose not to buy.
Another thing that I’m having difficulty with are cravings. I just want something chocolate so bad! And I’m realizing that for most of our coaches even the smallest treats – chocolate bars, cookies, going out to eat, going to the movies – are things that they don’t even consider.
And if they don’t even consider those small luxuries, then there is no way they contemplate bigger things such as a weekend trip to Lesotho, a vacation to Namibia and Botswana or a plane flight across the Atlantic. It’ll be interesting to see what else I discover during the last two weeks of this experiment.
 |
| Picnic we had with the interns when they visited. I'm so glad other interns visited Kim, but it definitely took a good chunk of my budget. |
No comments:
Post a Comment