IT’S a week until payday and in a delicate balancing act of restraint and thrift you’ve got cash left. Then this happens:
Friend’s birthday
Why did you make the mistake of being popular and having lots of mates to shell out for? Not only do you have to buy a present and a card, you also have to dig deep for drinks all evening. Why can’t they be happy with a cheap and cheerful ‘Happy birthday’ typed robotically onto their Facebook profile?
Date night
Dating apps are free but dates are anything but. First you have to take your one good shirt to the laundrette, and then you’ve got to cover the cost of a tense meal with a stranger judging your every conversational gambit. Staying alone and unloved forever is financially the smart move.
Bodily maintenance
The fleshy sack of organs you inhabit is always demanding something, whether that’s daily feeding or a terrible haircut. If you could bypass these expenses by selling your body off and living as a brain in a wallet-friendly jar of brine, you’d make huge savings.
Something breaking
It could be a lock, a washing machine or a bed, but yesterday it was working fine and now it’s broken and has to be fixed. So there goes anything between £50 and £500 just to restore your life to the shitty state of last Tuesday.
Needless impulse purchases
An occasional fancy coffee or book won’t doom you to bankruptcy, but you’re buying this crap five times a day and winning eBay auctions in the evening, it all started to add up a long time ago, and now your bank is better acquainting you with the words ‘final warning’ in red capitals.
Rent and utilities
Even the most cautious misers get blindsided by this shit, and the only way to get around them is to live under a bridge and invent cold fusion. You could always move back in with your parents, but you’d be better off under the bridge.
