Often on my living path, I have extreme financial difficulties!
Just remember the situation on October 2018. While spending all the money I earn monthly I got another feature to be paid, it is due to my resettle to a “higher-level” dormitory. First of all, I should immediately pay for a current month, what usually happens next month. As result – negative balance. The second, there was a surprise in the new dormitory. The system I lived for 8 years doesn’t work there – pay for the living next months. Here, I have to make a prepay for the next three months! To be noted, the living cost is about 1/4th of my income.
So, I could own 3/4 of my income to pay 1/4 for the old dormitory and 3/4 for the new, moreover, I have to eat food, what should be about 2/4 to feel comfortable with the food.
My very good friend, the PrivatBank, always ready to support me, of course not for free, but grabbing cruel commission.
That was fine, I am used for limiting myself, to find cheaper products, to have less fun. The good thing is I have completed a translation of a methodic manuscript to earn one more monthly income. Before the end of the year 2018, I have been feeling like a king! I was going outside often, having coffee or beer and offering it to my friends. I even went to smoke a hookah bar once.
That time I was thinking to come back to a normal way of spending money.
The new 2019 year came!
My mother had broken her leg. I have to spend all the money on my positive balance and take credit money equal to my two monthly incomes.
The amazing beginning of the year.
However, at least I can feel like an American now, that’s due to their political crisis.
The balance is -2 incomes with a month ahead to live till the next income. Another thing waiting for me next month is to pay for the living – 3/4 of income.
I need a plan to turn the money back, limit myself, survive.
Maybe go to work? That is a difficult question for me always. It would a great option because in a month or two I could cover my credit. It would bother the badly going research, no progress during months of spent time and power, no results! I need two articles and three conference theses by October 2019.
I am not working.
I broke the money I had in my wallet for each day till the next income. It was 0.79$ per day. One could say, I am living even for less money. But, it is not easy to switch from comfortable digestion to a very limiting, by its taste.
I can say now, I did it. I lived for three weeks for this money. The new month has begun already.
Here I want to mention another one depressing factor. From the January 2019, the minimum salary in Ukraine rose in average about by 10%. The consequence of this increase is the increase in the cost of everything. I was encountering the income increase while making expenses plan. The shocking thing was I didn’t get extra money, while everyone, workers, students did. However, I got 1.46% more than the previous month, for an unknown reason.
I am staying home mostly to don’t seduce myself to spend some money on a coffee or beer when meeting somebody outside this beautiful frosty winter.
If I keep living in this way for two more months, I can get a positive balance, and a few months later just turn back to normal way of spending my money, for the food, that’s the only thing it is enough for.
Something supporting me is that I have bought so many souses and seasonings, so if something isn’t going through my throat I can have a chilly pepper then anything would jump in.
I have bad feelings to eat noodles. The noodles made of low-quality powder, so after boiled it feels like a slippery frog in your mouth and so nasty that stop breathing. In South Korea, I have tried a living octopus along with a list of other living sea creatures, so believe me, nothing of that might taste so disgusting as the noodles. But that’s not a problem if you can’t swallow it, just wait for a while! That’s because you’re not hungry, in a few hours your appetite will wake up and you are happy to eat it. This is a great rule and it works.
On the other hand, I remember the people starving to die, the Ukrainians in 1932-1933, or 1947, 1949. What were they eating? The pancakes made of dried bitter leaves. That really made them sick. But if you want to survive you should eat.
My life is not that so bad.
The soy souse. Yummy! Another difficulty here, I was out of any vegetables to be fried with soy souse. The only vegetable I had was a turnip. Strange taste, but a nice additive to the main dish, especially if the main dish is the slippery noodles.
During the last month, on my menu, there was a lot of wheat cereals, noodles, peas, cabbages, carrots, beetroots; fewer – potatoes, onions, bread, turnips, coffee; and once apples and meat (to be concrete, the chicken skeleton, wings and legs), tea, tomato souse, mayonnaise, sunflower seeds.
Another thing I have cursed during rich times is a chemical seasoning to instant noodles which I didn’t use while cooking but collected just for the case I may use it. Who could imagine that harmful, fake seasoning will make my dish taste so delicious!
Some of the seasonings are used, that’s chilly pepper powder, black pepper and red pepper. I cooked a lot of pickled cabbages, “Korean” spiced carrots, beetroots and cabbages.
This year the bad thing is the all of the common Ukrainian cuisine vegetables are relatively expensive. Year by year just some of that is expensive, for example, the carrots, the potatoes. Once a cruel prime minister commented the price rising suggested to eat more cabbages because that is so cheap this year, which was the truth. The price of these vegetables was regulated by the government, then, this regulation was cancelled, so vegetable producers can find a million reasons to raise the price. Now it is impossible to make an accent on some of the vegetables as all of them are equally expensive. Minus one survival tip.
These vegetables lost for the new generation, especially the “heathy-living” or vegans, among new highly promoted and more expensive exotic vegetables and cereals. What I mean is a life-giving avocado. Who needs this propaganda – it should be easy to find it out, but I do not care, it is a business. Obviously, it’s harder to make money on something accessible. Moreover, the stories about the amazing abilities of the pickled cabbage and the list of useful microcomponents in a beetroot are lost in somewhere in the past.
Nobody will die.
Being hungry for delicious food is like being an abuser or an addict. I have the feeling to go to the shop and buy something delicious. Maybe that’s a fish, or a banana, or sugar, or peanuts, or what would be that I just want I just want to buy it. I am not going to starve, I not doing to die, but I am feeling not complete and the tortures me. Seems I am dealing with it better now.
I should also mention my friends I visited during these weeks. I had amazing meals along with beer! Same as going out to dring for the friend’s offer.
I didn’t meet any new people, which is very strange about me. I believe I can keep living like this, just if I want it.
But the question is still opened, why am I being the poor?
The first supper in Korea in Dongducheon.
I had problems with my pancreas so I worried to eat the oily meal. My first beer Cassa.
lezhok 