Someone please tell me how to deal with my finances
By MOLLY THOMPSON – mmtthompson@ucdavis.edu
I was apprehensive about living off campus. I loved my dorm, I loved my roommates, I loved being on campus and not having to bike more than seven minutes to any of my classes, I loved the mischief and tomfoolery that occurs in dorm halls and I loved not having to clean the bathroom.
Turns out, I love my apartment even more. Having couches and a TV is so nice, I’m so glad I don’t have to wear shower shoes or carry my shampoo into the bathroom every night, I like being able to cook my own food and buy my own groceries, my roommates make every day feel like an episode of “New Girl” and the 10-minute bike ride to campus is way easier than I thought it would be.
But living in the dorms is a little simpler for a few reasons: it’s similar to a stepping stone between living at home with your parents and living alone at your own place. With the dining hall at your fingertips, you don’t have to worry about planning and sourcing meals or budgeting grocery money. You also don’t have to think about rationing your gas and electricity usage, splitting rent in a way that makes sense for your household or paying rent on time. Granted, in a dorm you still have to source your own snacks and often meals on the weekend, but moving into an apartment or a rental house comes with a lot more responsibilities than most of us have ever had to juggle before.
It’s commonly acknowledged that our elementary education system does a pretty insufficient job of teaching us how to manage our finances, but that is truly evident when we’re suddenly faced with a whole avalanche of new monetary hurdles to jump over. Of course, this isn’t true for everyone, but I can at least speak for myself when I say that I’ve been incredibly intimidated by the task of organizing all of my bills for the first time — it’s hard to know how to line everything up so it falls properly into place.
I think what gets me the most is not having a clear model to base my strategies off of. Everytime I feel unsure about my approach, I end up wishing there was a clear norm or outline for me to follow. But the thing about finances is that it’s incredibly individual; no single plan is going to work for everyone. I can’t follow what works for someone else because it’s likely not going to work for me. We all have different starting points, different sources of income, different needs and different values, so we’re all going to need different monetary plans.
Money is such a taboo in our society that it’s no wonder that a lot of us struggle to figure out exactly how to organize our bank accounts. We don’t discuss it very often, so, naturally, we feel like we’re in the dark.
In some ways, it’s a process of trial and error — a lot of things during this period of life are. At the end of the day, all we can do is our best. I have a system right now, but who knows if it’ll be practical in the long run. I try to log my purchases and keep track of my spending, but it’s easy to lose the thread and miscalculate. I try to compartmentalize everything I have to cover, but it shifts and sometimes I forget to account for one thing or another. Some weeks I spend more than I want to, and some weeks I learn that I actually do need something I tried to skip out on for the sake of my budget. Like everything in life, this is a work in progress — there’s always a learning curve.
Written by: Molly Thompson — mmtthompson@ucdavis.edu
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie
