There were a few years after university when my budget was especially tight.
My job paid truly little, & I was paying off student loans.
My motorcar payment, motorcar insurance & multiple expenses were hard to cover. I found an household with especially low rent & went without any luxuries. The accommodations were cramped & old. There were stains from water detriment on the ceilings & walls. The electric was a bit horrifying. If I wanted to run the microwave, I needed to unplug everything else. The outlets often sparked & the lights dimmed when the refrigerator cycled on. There was minimal tepid water & truly little water pressure. My largest complaints were with the heating & cooling systems. The air conditioner offered tepid air with a musty smell & cost so much to operate, I never used it. I tried setting up a window air conditioner in the home office but kept blowing fuses. I had no choice but to manage with a box fan. In the winter, with outdoor rapidly changing temperatures well below chilly, heating was a necessity! No matter how high I turned up the temperature control, the heater couldn’t keep up with demand. It made a tremendous amount of noise whenever it started up & spewed dust into the breathing air. It didn’t help that the windows were single pane & leaked a tremendous amount of air. Despite installing plastic over them, there were constant drafts inside the apartment. I eventually figured out that the cost of my utilities was defeating my purpose of living in a low-rent apartment. I moved into nicer accommodations where the cost of utilities was included in the rent.
