Budgeting

I don't know about everyone else, but as a poor graduate student who only gets paid FOUR times a year, budgeting is an intimate part of my vocabulary and daily existence. I budget everything and even have a detailed Excel spreadsheet dedicated to chronicling where every precious cent goes. (Hmmm...this make me sound kind of anal, but it's not as bad as that. I just allow x amount of money for things each week or per quarter, and make sure that I don't spend over that amount. To help me keep track, I enter and tally my receipts into Excel. Yay for Excel!!) At first, when I realized that we would only get paid 4 times a quarter, I didn't think I would like it. Surprisingly, however, I love it. It allows me to pay all my bills on the day that I receive them. There's no waiting until the next pay period to pay things. That's great!

Anyway, I digress from my initial point of this entry....Yesterday, I stopped by the Student Services office for my department for a little sugar break (she keeps a basket of candy by the door), when MJ (the student services coordinator) said that she need to talk to me about budgets or finance or something. Hmmm, I thought...what could this be about? The only thing I had used department money for was to purchase my laptop fall quarter - department approved spending of funds. Well, what she had to tell me had nothing to do with my computer, but rather my stipend. Evidently, whomever had stipend allocating (it would be called payroll if we were employees) at the beginning of the year had made a mistake. I was incorrectly entered under some special fellowship that paid more than the Biosciences graduate student stipend ($30,000 vs. $26,750, which may sound like a lot, but this is northern california...nothing's cheap here). Well, to make a long story short, my stipend check will be about $2,500 LESS for the summer quarter than anticipated b/c of someone's mistake! $2,500 LESS!!! I'll be lucky if, after my on-campus housing is automatically deducted, I'll have money for groceries!!!! Not to mention that the summer quarter is longer than any other quarter! Longer by an additional FOUR weeks! Thus, not only will I have less money, but I'll have less money over a longer period of time! While I'm airing my grevieances, let it be known that at the beginning of the academic year, I didn't even get paid for weeks (several weeks after classes had started mind you!)!! All I know is that if this were a business, heads would roll. This kind of mistake is unacceptable in the business world and should be unacceptable everywhere! How can you mess up someone's paycheck?!