Check this out and guess what's inside the white envelope!!

It's not letter or wedding invitation postcard though, it is in fact a little appreciation of $20 cash I received this morning. *Syiok yea!* This is of course not a free cash. I actually volunteered myself to have an interview by a PhD student for her research with regard to how students manage their money. This research is on the subject of student's growing concern about their ability to successfully make ends meet. Sounds cool right. All i need to do is just attending an hour of interview and do some discussion and get rewarded of $20. And i received it!


Basically, I met up with the lady, Jill around 10.30AM together with my friend and three other locals. It's kinda a fruitful and relaxing discussion. Five of us took turns to share our views. Questions like how do we manage our finance as students, who provide us financial support, do our parents influence us in handling money and many more.


No worries, i will not post my funny and lengthy answers here. But what i would like to highlight here is more about my personal reflection throughout the interview. As I was hearing the thoughts from an Australian student, i realized that most of them are actually living under tight budget. One of the locals said that he lives within $10-15 per week! And this sounds struggling but it's true. How can he survive with that?! Some parents are filthy rich and some are not. And we discuss about how students these days spend their money unwisely plus blindly and just do buying without any second thoughts. Many are influenced by peer pressure, fashion, greed and so forth.


It hits me though. Of course, i'm not saying that i am the type who simply spend whenever i can. I am pretty much careful and calculative when it comes to spending. Nonetheless, it comes to a realization that it is really really really really hard to earn money. How taxing for parents to work hard to supply for the families, how silly we are to spend on things that we shouldn't buy at all. Things that we don't need at all, yet immature students like us would just buy things that we want instead of need.


I shared, as for me, living in Melbourne has definitely been a real test and learning at the same time to really learn much of managing my expenses. I learn to spend wisely, i learn to live within budget in the given period. I learn to say "No" to things that i don't find it necessary to purchase and spend on. If we, as students can't even handle the current given money properly, within the budget and time frame, what's more to say when we enter into working world. Are students controlling their money or their money control them?


It does make sense yea. After all, this is just students giving views on the related research topic. You guys would probably have your own ideas of managing finance. Haiyoo.. That's why it's called discussion mah...


Not only that, thanks to Jill for giving us free drinks after an hour of gasping conversation

*Quench my thirst!*