So I’m broke. Like, actually, truly broke. I’m so broke that last night I had pretzel sticks for dinner. That was partially because I was lazy and because my kitchen is too dirty to improvise an actual meal (cough dishes cough), but it was mostly because I’m really really broke. Not having much money has made me much more conscious of my own spending, and so to make sure I have enough money to survive while I’m in Spain, I made myself a budget.
I’m not going to tell you exactly how much money I have (spoiler alert: it’s not much), but here’s kind of how I’ve been analyzing my cash flow so that I won’t starve overseas or mooch entirely off of my friends.
First, I wrote out my current account balance. Then I calculated how much I’ll likely make from my tutoring job for April and May. Then I subtracted the cost of the hotel Kelly, Margaret, and I are staying at since we’re getting to Spain a few days early, the cost of 5 more visits to Maggies before I go home, and the cost of food per day and souvenirs overall in Spain. I decided that I was going to live off of $35, or €26, per day for food while in Spain, and then $100, or €75, for souvenirs and incidentals. That’s not a lot of money, so my inflexible funds might actually become the framing for my travel essay/video from Spain.
Making a budget is kind of fun, but also kind of terrifying when you don’t have a steady income. I’m excited for next semester, when all the money I’ll have made during the summer won’t go directly to Spain costs but rather directly to food/fun, and all the money I’ll make next semester with the CDC will go towards the same. I’m justifying it by recognizing that I won’t be able to afford travel for the next fifteen years, so I might as well do it now.
But yeah. Oh and if you want to maybe help out with my travel expenses, maybe possibly consider donating to my Indiegogo campaign? You can get cool stuff like a post card or a skype date or a copy of the anthology we’re making of our writing after Spain. 😀
