Surviving on a recession budget

Ugh. My financial paucity looms over me like one of J.K Rowling’s dementors, whispering a gloomy mantra into my ear: no job, no money, no prospects. Like most people in my year, I left university with a mountain of debt, I moved out and started renting, and I still part-rely on my parents (at what point does that become embarrassing? When will I have to start paying them back?)

Enough grumbling though – there are more pressing concerns. Like: we need more toothpaste, and the bog role is dwindling. Like: while I wait for that golden career opportunity to escape from the dull compulsion of a jading bar job, how will I make ends meet?

It’s taken me a while to adjust to my new life of austerity – a crash course in thriftiness – but after three months on the breadline, I think I’m getting the knack of it. I tell myself: don’t get evicted, remain in rude health, and try and stave off recession woe. My budget: £100 a week, after rent.

The first conundrum was how to beat down my Morrison’s budget without getting too fat or too thin. Thank god for economy class products, and thanks too to the supermarket for stacking them at the end of the isle so I'm not tempted by luxury items (Caramel McVities are the bane of my post-recession life). Economy bread comes in at 28 pence a loaf, economy juice at 58 pence a cartoon, economy soap at 13 pence a bar.

I buy small amounts of food every evening – not only does this make me feel better at the checkout desk, it also means I can grab discounted products just about to head into the skip. Gradually, triumphantly, I have developed an entirely functional attitude to my food. I have cut out indulgences. I listen to my body. If I am on a sugar low, I eat sugar.

But what about my mental health? Am I never spending on recreation ever again? Correct! A television, with it’s exorbitant license fee, would be fiscal suicide. I watch iplayer and 4OD (I don’t watch ITV). I don’t pay for a TV licence because I don’t watch live television. I go to the pub for the football, ordering a larger shandy - or anything that looks and feels like a pint but doesn’t cost one - and I place it further than an arm’s reach away on the table, to prevent nervous sipping. My gym membership has been cancelled. I don’t swim anymore. I cycle, everywhere. My purchase of a grade 2 bike lock was a difficult, but justifiable decision (a vexed price versus risk assessment).

And finally, my piece de resistance, my tight fist raised and shaking stoically against the downturn: I immerse myself in films and books (loaned from the library, of course) that romanticize poverty. This week I reread Orwell’s Down and Out in London and Paris, last week it was the beat canon: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, Charles Bukowski. I watched Withnail and I three times last month, and I was positively revived by The Pursuit of Happiness (Will Smith, 2006).

So I’m coping. Granted, I’m not having the most fun I have ever had, but fun is expensive. At the moment, I am settling, sanguinely, for fiscal satisfaction.