With Dh200, James Dean is my only friend

James Dean's appalling table manners, Fatty Arbuckle's disgrace and the untimely demise of John Belushi - it was proving to be an interesting evening. Or, perhaps more precisely, it was proving to be an interesting book. I was more than halfway through the fourth week of a budget challenge set by the Personal Finance section, and this time I had just Dh200 to get me through seven days. So in the spirit of the challenge, I had decided to see how easy it would be to find some reading material on an extreme budget.
And I had to look no further than my local Abu Dhabi Co-operative Society supermarket where, festering on a dusty shelf, I found a delightful little volume titled The World's Greatest Hollywood Scandals. Yes, 158 pages of drug overdoses, murders, outrageous love lives and censorship controversies - and all for just Dh10. No more heading to the mainstream bookshops and shelling out Dh60 for a novel or biography, I decided, as I devoured scandal after scandal. It wasn't the most intellectual book I have whiled away the hours with (not that my typical reading material is anything other than resolutely middle brow), but it certainly offered some escapism.
It was just as well that I managed to find some light relief on that Wednesday evening, a day before the end of my financial week, because getting by on Dh200 was proving to be a struggle. As described in the past three weeks, I had had plenty of fun on Dh500, had started to feel the squeeze a little with Dh400 and had felt my purse strings tighten even further when I had a mere Dh300 for seven days.
And Dh200 was proving to be a whole lot tougher. My weekend was dull in the extreme. I had done my weekly shop on the Friday and little more. The likes of bananas, carrots, tomatoes, pasta, cheese, peppers, dates, orange juice and milk had set me back Dh56. There had been no nights out at my favourite Filipino bar, no lazy afternoons in coffee shops spending US$5 (Dh18.35) on a cappuccino. There was not much of anything, really.
Instead, I stayed at home and began packing some of the stuff I had accumulated in the UAE over the past five years, so I could send it back to England in advance of my planned departure from the Emirates sometime in the new year. My daily food bill over the first few days of the working week proved modest, amounting to not much more than a few bananas, a chocolate bar and perhaps a small bottle of milk. As usual, I made a packed lunch and cooked at home in the evening.
On Monday I used up nearly a quarter of my weekly budget when I shelled out Dh49 on some cardboard boxes, which I picked up from the main post office in Abu Dhabi on a detour before work. The following day, my food bill came to slightly more than usual for a work day, at Dh19, when I ventured into a small supermarket for my tea, ahead of playing football with a few of my colleagues. Unfortunately, by midweek my shelves were unusually empty, so on Wednesday, I made a trip to my local supermarket, where I stocked up on bread, vegetable stock cubes, milk, carrots, apples and that Hollywood scandals book.
I also bought a tin of cat food, as I sometimes feed the neighbourhood felines, particularly one unfortunate animal with a broken front leg and a large sore on its back. The total cost of my shopping basket, including the book and the cat food, was Dh48. And as a result, on the Thursday I had a grand total of Dh17.5 to play with. You would struggle to enjoy a night out in the least expensive corners of the world on such a sum. I got some petrol on the way to work and picked up a couple of bananas before walking into the office.
Fortunately, I was stuck there late that day, so at least I didn't have to spend a miserable evening contemplating my financial woes. So the fourth week of my budget challenge was over - and it really had been a trial. Feeding myself nutritiously on Dh200 had not been a problem, but there were precious few dirhams left over to have any fun with. I got a few cardboard boxes, a cheap book, and that was it. There had not been much entertainment to speak of.
In fact, there had not been much of anything. Life at the financial sharp end was proving to be more than a little bit boring. There was no way I would be able to get by for a week on a mere Dh100, I thought, as I contemplated the final - and hardest - week of the budget challenge.
dbardsley@thenational.ae