Paying off debts detrimentally affects your social life (273-92)

Being in debt, and working as hard as we can to pay it off, sometimes makes me want to scream. I know it’s our own fault (not helped by UK Immigration’s reaction to my marriage to a foreigner), but it sucks socially to be skint. We’re constantly having to turn down social invitations because we just cannot afford a night out, or weigh up how much we’ll have to cut back our food budget to afford to go to my cousin’s engagement party in London – and when we do go out, e.g. joining everyone in the pub after volleyball training, we have to drink soft drinks to keep our costs down (and strategically avoid the whole rounds scenario) – I hate it; it makes us look like we’ve turned into an old married couple who just want to stay at home and keep to themselves and be old and boring, when in fact I’m a complete party animal and am dying to go dancing and drinking every chance I get.

This week, it’s a volleyball friend’s birthday and they’re going on a pub crawl and, once again, I’ve got to look old and dull and say I can’t make it – when I could make it, I just can’t afford to. The team is mainly students and even they have more money than I do (I’m much worse off now then when I was a student!) and I feel like I’m constantly turning down nights out or ’shall we go have a meal after training’ suggestions, and I just cringe at how dull they must think I am. I know I shouldn’t care what other people think, but I do. I don’t want to be thought of as boring - especially when I’m not! Yes, it’s superficial but I care.

The other major thing we’ve had to turn down this week is my other (mixed) volleyball club’s ski trip in February. They’ve managed to find a chalet for 20 of us to go for 7 days, including flights, transfers, accommodation, food and lift passes for £600pp – it’s such good value for money and we really hoped we’d be able to go. The deposit call is upon us though and so CJ and I sat down and had a proper, mature discussion (a novelty and impressive thought-advance in itself!) and eventually concluded that we probably could afford it but we’d be under major pressure to scrape together the amount needed and if any unexpected financial emergency cropped up we’d be scuppered and our stress levels would go through the roof – and that it’s not worth the extra stress and pressure. I’m quite gutted; life is so much more fun (for a short while anyway) when you’re financially irresponsible and just do what you want to do. It’s quite impressive, though, that we have been mature because we did both really want to go with all our friends. As a way to compensate and reward ourselves for being financially mature, and to stop us going off the rails with irritation, we’re going to have a long weekend city break in Europe instead, which should be half the price, which is attainable without all the stress, and something equally great to look forward to. Plus, hopefully, the ski trip’s going to become an annual event, so there’s always 2011…

~ by diaryofadebtor on September 30, 2009.