Life in Zambo

Paydays usually fall on the 15th and the 30th. When I still worked at my first call center, and if the 15th fell on a Saturday, we'd get our pay on the 14th. The funny thing was, it's still the 13th and people are already itching to withdraw from ATMs. We'd call the last few days towards the payday " tingbits ". That's short for tingbitay, an expression Cebuanos use that means "running low on cash". My salary used to be between P10,000 - P15,000 at the time. Since I was a fresh graduate, the frugal living that I led and taught my younger siblings were carried over by habit and I managed to live somehow without asking for allowance from my parents. Then I met Lifestyle. I met Starbucks, Bo's Coffee, met with McDonald's and Jollibee as much as I can, and even forgot that I used to see Carinderia to shell out just P20 during midday. Regretfully, whenever it was payday, I always found a way to spend it and just lived from paycheck to pay...

As a public engineer, you can't really make the kind of money that will get you a nice house, a nice car and even some vacation time. It's all about public service. Once you enter public service, forget luxuries. You can't afford it unless you're paid what only about 10% of government officials are paid. My salary bracket is the lowest among government employees and that's not even PhP 10,000. *Sigh* So what can I do in this situation? Let's see. I'm a public engineer paid with minimum wage, living with the parents and that means I don't have to pay for food at home. I can contribute, but I don't have to. I don't have to pay rent, I don't have utility bills, except for my cellphone bill, which I will be downgrading as soon as the contract's about to renew. What have I been doing with my salary?