Pauper Town

I started writing this post a few days ago, but I wanted to start out with an image of a hobo or pauper. So I Googled "hobo" and there were a bunch of pictures of hobo bags, and then I remembered I want a very specifically designed and shaped hobo bag for my Munich trip, and that led to a never ending Google shopping quest for the perfect Hobo bag, which of course led me to forget that I was going to write a blog on how I can't afford anything anymore, like online shopping, and I was all:



Despair.

 

This is, perhaps, the first worldiest of first world cash-poor-despair, ever: super broke because I'm paying off 2 years of wreckless spending on my credit cards. In a unheard of extremely fortunate turn of events, I was granted a way to pay off my credit card debt in 6 months. The only down side to it is I have to live on like, $200-$300 a month until the beginning of September.

 

I know this isn't world crashing news. I know most people live on far less every month. But it does run out fast:

$300

-170 for student loans

$130

-70 for car insurance

$60

-45 for one tank of gas

$15

-10 for lunch once a month

$5

-Bill Purray litter

($20)

 

When  you're faced with a strict, can't fuck around with cash budget, a lot of fun things get tossed to the way side: The occasional pick me up from Starbucks. Movies in the theater. Anything vaguely resembling shopping. Going out for food. Anything that's more than 30 miles away, or requires paid parking or a metro pass. Craft supplies. Hair cuts. Any bottle of wine that costs more than $5.

 

This morning, I thought to myself, "But you only made $500 a month in college, and you spent close to $200 a month just in gas. How the hell did you take all those trips, do all that shopping and do all those fun things?

 

ohhh, right. I had credit cards."

 

A strict, can't fuck around with budget is also really hard to adjust to. I made it 4 days before I mooched a pay-day loan off my mom (I'll go ahead and toss "all nighter at a bar" on the list of Things You Can No Longer Enjoy). Although I do feel like a big, bloated asshole for being 28 and still in my parent's basement (holy shit, it's been over a year, hasn't it? big, bloated asshole winner.) I do feel immeasurably fortunate for their continued support. Otherwise, I'd be digging myself out of this hole for the next few years.  

 

And I am diggin my way out. All of this will be worth it. This will just be 6 months of Audrey basically scraping nickels and dimes together for anything fun that I get to do.

hey, that leaves me with more time to write*!

Here's to First World Hobo Livin!

Oh, in unrelated news, I changed my blog header again, and this one just might be my favorite. Thanks to the lovely Joel Westworth for donating the photo!

And in further unrelated news, happy 32nd birthday today to my brother Josh, King of Cats, He Who Would Not Be Happy With Me Putting His Picture On My Blog But I'm Doing it Anyway:

Happy Wednesday, everyone! See you tomorrow with some new fiction.
/baitedbreath

*sleep