How foolish I was growing
up. I really thought that when I was a
“serious musician” and “struggling for my art”, I would make ends meet and live
on barely any food and travel from place to place and it would be the most
wonderful life.
I now realise I would have hated it. Hated it. How could I have
wished for poverty, mess and disorder in my life? How could someone like me cope with that?
It’d be the worst thing I ever did.
Don’t get me wrong, I love
performing. I love travelling. I would tour across the US living in a van. I can “rough it”. But I’d have some money in my pocket. And
maybe it’s age now, that makes me shudder to think of living with nothing, but
there is also just too much pretty in the world; too many experiences that you
miss without a little cashflow.
Coming home from living
overseas at 19 to realise that I now had to figure real shit out was
scary. I had debt up to my eyeballs
(well, for a 19 year old without a degree to show for it!), no job, nowhere to
live and that ridiculous confidence you have when you’re that age and think
life is about to do something amazing for you.
I soon realised that hard work was in my future and over the last 9
years have seen that dreams can come true in some ways, but not in others. Money comes and goes, and you will be rich
sometimes, and then very, very poor.
I used to tease Dave (and
still do sometimes) about how I “moved to Scotland for [him]”, and before I
left had paid off my debt. After weeks
without work in Edinburgh (and then a trip to Canada) I had nearly half of it
back. A year in, I had all of it back.
But you truck on. It’s hardly Dave’s fault that we’ve never
been the wealthiest of people. And it’s
not mine, either. I moved to Scotland in
the midst of a recession, and I moved for love.
It wasn’t opportunistic “OE” time, or “let’s save loads of money and go
travelling!” time. It was, “shit. I can’t be without this person.” And so it
was.
I started temping, then
moved into a longer-term low paid role, which I enjoyed but struggled
with. I was promoted and given a little
more, but even with the exchange rate, and lower cost of living, my salary was
still £5k/year less than what I was earning in New Zealand before I left, and it
was hard for me to push myself to get out and about. My focus was also on buying my piano, on our
upcoming trip to Canada for a friend’s wedding, and on the bills that were
starting to mount up. Dave had a job
that he enjoyed and stuck with until last September when he was made redundant,
and it was paid at a very similar pay rate.
It’s only now that I am on a higher salary and Dave is (nearly..
nearly..) going to be paid a decent wage.
We’re nearly 3 years
in. We’ve spent a lot of time getting
settled and establishing our life here and solidifying our relationship. And now we’re going to have a little room to
breathe in the bank account and settling down for the long haul. So I am trying to imagine our life a little
differently.
The relief, I imagine, will
be enormous. There’s just something so ingrained within me – I just cannot miss a bill.
Call it being “raised
right”, call it paranoia or a sense of responsibility, but I pay everything. On
time. Always. I am the spreadsheet girl who has everything
budgeted, knows when everything is due, and makes sure that we can cover it.
Somehow. Even if we eat packet noodles
and make poor excuses for missing everything.
Unfortunately, this does
occasionally bring with it a small drawback when you have nothing. Coming to the (thankfully, hopefully) end of
6 months on one income, not having the cash in the bank can give me sleepless
nights. And of course, Dave not stressing about it makes me more
stressy. He is just a little more
laidback about these things (well, apart from the not having a job bit). But I try to remember two things, every time
I stress.
1) There is a
light at the end of the tunnel.
For
us, sadly, we’re still waiting for a letter to confirm that this light is
shining at us. Bureaucracy and the
*coughNZgovernmentcough* are still holding up a few bits and pieces, but
hopefully in the next week or two, everything will fall into place.
2) In your
twenties, you are supposed to be
pretty poor, as you sort out your life. (Unless you are very skilled, or very
lucky).
Obviously
this is a wide generalisation. But this
decade is that time in your life where you work out what the hell you’re going
to do with it, and after you finish studying (or if like me, you don’t!), it
could take some time to work out where you go from there, and how you’re going
to pay your bills.
Depending on your
education, job, living situation, marital situation, etc, it could be a very
tough time, or a fairly easy time.
Personally, I know many people who have “lucked into” the right job,
married the right person, or chose the degree that was useful just at that
right time to boost them somewhat in their career despite the recession, and
live fabulous lives.
I could be jealous of those
friends. But I choose not to be. I’ve
lived the life I have, they’ve lived the life they have. They’ve had money, I’ve had none. They’ve had
pain, I’ve had pain. They’ve had love, I’ve had love.
I have had amazing, brilliant, beautiful,
spellbinding, agonising, irreplaceable love.
And while I hate talking
about all this (because it is embarrassing to admit when you are poor), and
although I have mentioned it in passing, I have put off posting about it for a
long time. But today I need to say it. I’ve been really
fucking poor. It has been really fucking hard.
But I have also been really fucking happy.
