In case you hadn’t guessed by my title, today I’m blogging about money. That’s from a song that was on the film Empire Records but I couldn’t tell you who sang it. It’s appropriate though!
That picture is from a Newsweek article by Sharon Begley, who questions whether money really does buy happiness. In short, the answer she arrives at is no – unless it brings someone from absolute poverty (e.g. homelessness). Psychology studies show that when a cross-section of people from countries all over the world were asked to rate their happiness and satisfaction with their lives – 1 being “not at all” and 7 being “very” - slum-dwellers of Calcutta (officially one rung above homeless people) rated themselves at 4.5, compared to 2.9 of homeless people. That’s only one example, but these studies also showed things like someone earning £25,000 p.a. were much happier than someone earning £10,000 p.a., but someone earning millions was not much happier than someone earning approximately £100,000 p.a.
Why is that? Well, according to Begley it’s because the more “stuff” you can buy with your vast amounts of money, the less satisfying each purchase is. If you want the latest iPhone or gaming laptop and have to save a lot for it, your satisfaction when you buy is very high. But if all you have to do is whip out the Mastercard, there’s isn’t the same sense of earning your reward.
Interesting.
As a student I am, typically, broke a lot of the time. When I graduate I will have a student loan of about £10,000 to repay, but only once I reach a per annum salary of over £20,000 and the repayments are pretty low. I currently have an interest free overdraft with a limit of £1500, that extends to £2000 in September, £914.26 of which I am using for the moment.
A lot of numbers I agree. There’s lots of other numbers as well like tax payments, national insurance, tax money I’m due back from the Inland Revenue (our good old UK IRS), the rising prices of utilities, food and fuel. More student related prices include the ridiculous amount we’re charged for textbooks (and we always seem to need 17 a year), the supplies we need, costs of printing, costs of our own blood, sweat and tears…
I some times wonder how the human mind ever evolved to juggle so many numbers all at once. I can understand why so many people have breakdowns or worse over money. It may not buy happiness, but it sure as hell helps. My dad always taught me to be careful with money, and to always try to save whenever possible. This is both a blessing and a curse, but mostly the former. It means that while I do indulge myself, I don’t blithely spend money without a pause for thought. Indulgences are normally (about 95% of the time) carefully balanced in to the budget. But it does mean that when I’m in debt, as I am now, I can get a bit panicky about it.
With Inland Revenue payments, wages, and student loan income I’ll be getting over £1000 put into my account in the next 34 days (i.e. to September 30th). Nice for me, but as a student, I will still be considerably into my overdraft because of my considerable outgoings. Add a boyfriend and two cats into the mix and they get added to even more.
Now, surprisingly, I’m not throwing numbers at you for no reason. I genuinely wonder how some students manage. I am very lucky in that my parents are well enough off to help me out if I get seriously in debt. I would hate to ask them, but it’s very nice to know that safety net is there. To make my boyfriend and I sound even more spoilt my parents own the flat that we live in, and we don’t pay them rent because we’re both students (of course that will change when we get full-time employment). But we do pay everything else.
But can you imagine what it would be like to live of Tesco Value produce, or beans, or having to choose 
between heating and eating? According to the British government that’s a choice a lot of people will have to be making this winter. Isn’t that nice? It seems to be that so-called “fuel crisis”+”credit crunch” = various people starving and/or freezing.
Of course, media hype always make things seem worse, but when I look at my financial situation which isn’t even close to as bad as it could be, because I know I’ll be back in the black eventually I wonder how seriously skint students feel. If I’m worried, how are they coping with the knowledge the won’t be eating this week because they have to pay their rent, or their share of the bills. How do they choose between the textbooks people keep telling them they need, how do they afford prescriptions or dentist bills? Do they? I think it’s a bit of a worrying situation.
Perhaps we should all consider that next time we take the piss out of the “easy” life of students.
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