47. My First Pay Cheque

Finances had been tight for the last few weeks and we had been living off pasta and pesto almost every day. Doing most things in Sydney cost some amount of money so we’d been spending lots of nights in the flat and we’d even been reduced to renting free DVDs from the local library for free. Unfortunately, the library’s collection wasn’t exactly up to date. I think that the most modern DVD we saw was the original version of “Flight of the Phoenix”.

I had $397 in the bank and I know that you are all saying “that’s plenty of cash. Surely they could get by on that?” Normally we would have nor problem surviving on that amount of money for a few weeks but the rent was due and that cost $380. That left $17 to last us till pay day. This was compounded by the fact that the ATMs in Australia only let you take out a minimum of $20. That mean I would have to go into the bank to get out the $17, however, dealing with a teller cost $2 which takes the total down to $15.

Things were not going well from a financial point of view but far and away the single worse thing was that my flat in the UK still wasn’t rented which meant I was also covering a mortgage there as well as our bills here. So I’m sure you can imagine my delight when my first Australian pay went into my bank account.

I was desperate to go out and buy loads of tasty food and wine and some other things that we needed for the flat but instead I paid the rent and bought some more cheap pasta since it was going to be at least another month before we were completely liquid again.