So I’m a bit late in publishing this but I got sidetracked working on “Operation Expat” (selling my stuff, moving into my mom’s place, securing a place in Germany planning and working stupid hours because of an hour commute each way to work that I now have) but I’ve FINALLY gotten around to getting this out there.

A while ago, (like a month ago) a brilliant article was shared on Billfold by writer Paulette Perhach. She begins writing a story that I am sure is all too familiar for many young women around the world. About graduating from university and doing all the things you think you should do. Moving in with a boyfriend, getting a better car, getting a job. But then Perhach goes on to describe events that, well that fucking suck. The boyfriend becomes abusive. Your boss starts to treat you like a piece of meat but because you’re a recent grad with student loans and barely any money, so you’re stuck. Perhach stop in her story to rewrite the “adventure”. In her revision she goes on to extol the virtues of having a savings account not matter how small, as she called it a “Fuck it Fund”. So that if any of the aforementioned crap happens, you have an out.

Let me just say now…. where the hell was the article when I graduated from college? Maybe it was there written by someone else but with much the same message and I just missed it. I mean my mother had always told me to save as much as I could but my story was like the first one Perhach describes and I had no “Fuck it Fund”. It’s only been in the last 3 to 4 years that I’ve made enough money to cover ALL my bills, buy necessities AND SAVE. When I first graduated the only job I could get was part time. The second job I got paid 25k which would have been fine if I had continued living at home with my mum. I made every financial mistake there is to possibly make and then it was like some one threw a finance for dummies book directly at my forehead and it all clicked!

Again, I wished it had clicked sooner. But none of that, none of my backstory is really the point. The point of this is to in my own way extol the virtues of a “Fuck it Fund”. It seems today that more often than not, more young people are in debt and have no way to save money aside from cutting out the daily Starbucks which at this point is probably one of if not their only vices (yes I’m very guilty). And the ones that do happen to have a bit extra to spend, blow what they have left over from bills on clothes or cars or alcohol.

So what does this all really add up to? We are fiscally irresponsible generation thrust into an economy of record inflation living day to day because that’s all we were ever taught.