To Be Continued...

I'd forgotten that the last post I did was about weddings. Hairier Half and I are engaged now. I should probably write about that at some stage.

But instead I'm gonna whine about money.

I have a job. It's not great, but it's ok.
I pay rent and my own bills.
I try to save €200 a month, because it's important to plan for the future.
I pay €60 a month for health insurance.

I don't have a car; I buy very few clothes- no Penneys spending sprees for me; I don't buy cigarettes or drugs; I don't go out often and when I do I'm a cheap date; I don't buy jewellery; I get two haircuts a year; I travel to the UK for my hobby (and go to friends' weddings) instead of having foreign holidays no matter how much I long for a week of sunshine.

I have one expensive hobby, LARP which I love and I do seven times a year. Sometimes (once every week or two,) I meet friends for coffee and buy coffee, and maybe even cake. Maybe once every month, I meet friends and we have dinner in a restaurant. When I'm out of the house and I get hungry, I get lunch somewhere. Usually somewhere cheap.

Do I have to give these things up? Do I have to stop meeting friends for coffee after work? Do I have to bring snacks from home (heavy to carry, boring to eat, have to find somewhere to sit and eat them) every time I leave the house? Do I stop LARPing, or cut down from the seven times a year I do it, even though it would be socially isolating?

Because I'm already not buying new work shoes this paycheque since I had to go to the doctor and get contraceptified, not going to the dentist because I need to sort out the shoes first, wondering whether I'll be able to get a decent winter coat this year and hoping it'll be mild like last year and not another icy one, wondering when I'll need a suit for work and hoping I manage to buy one before then.

I know I'm better off than many but I still feel so stressed about this all the time. If I feel like I'm barely coping now, how will HH and I manage when we move out of the houseshare? How will we manage if we ever own our own home? How will we cope when we have a kid and more than half my salary is gone on childcare, not to mention all the other expenses? How do other people do it?