I know everyone is reeling from the almost daily price increases, and most of us wee office workers have to scrimp and save to make ends meet. And with salaries going nowhere (unless you go some place else), our expense lists tend to be slashed – I mean, we slash the expenses that are not really important in order to fit the important ones in our budget.
For me, it is the transportation budget that gets the biggest hit – this item is directly affected by the weekly price increases in gasoline and diesel. I am now exploring the most efficient route to take going to and from the office, while at the same time I won’t be late when I go to work and I won’t have to suffer from the stress called MRT twice a day. It is actually a tradeoff issue, but as long as the budget holds, I am OK, I guess.
The first casualty in the list is entertainment. This is not really a big issue, since for this year, I had only seen one movie (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian), and I am not big into entertaining anyway.
So I have two questions for you:
1. How do you cope with the price increases?
2. What is the cheapest way to entertain nowadays?
Q1. I cope by cutting down on the trivial expenses. I eat at home and limit my gimmicks. Tipid! Tipid! Tipid talaga.
Q2. The cheapest way to entertain is to do it the traditional way… hold it at home and cook! Matrabaho nga lang.
Well, for bachelors, it is easy: just buy beer and chips!
Hmm… I am feeling this right now. My bus fare which used to be P17 has now jumped to a whopping P22. I’ve cut back on the expenses by walking more, takes a lot more time but I save close to P40 a day doing that. However since I’m almost always running late, you might say that I’m not coping really well. Today’s a good 3 days before the next pay day and my budget is down to P200.
As for entertainment, I rely on reading and blogging to entertain me hehe
That’s ok, you are helping the country achieve first world status.