The other day I jumped inwardly when I once again threw a look at my account.
Why is there so little on it?
Where's all my money gone?
And most importantly: How am I supposed to get through the month that has just started, with just 100 euros in my pocket and a completely empty fridge?
I frantically went over my expenses for the past month in my head.
A night out with friends, daily 1 euro coffee on the university campus and occasional ice cream on the Rhine - that's all I had done.
My first impulse was to call my parents.
After all, they have often helped me financially.
But my pride finally stopped me.
“How can I save as a student?” I frantically typed into the Google search bar instead.
The answers were sobering: using public transport instead of your own car was the first suggestion, which involuntarily made me wonder which student could afford their own car.
The second smart piece of advice I found was to live in shared apartments instead of living in your own apartment.
For me, who has been living in a flat share for three years, having my own place to live was never an option anyway for financial reasons.
A few days later, I spoke to some fellow students about my financial distress.
They told me about similar situations from their everyday lives: weekly purchases that were suddenly much more expensive than usual, hardly any money for the monthly rent or other fun events such as concerts or party nights that usually make the stressful everyday student life easier.
Some even gave up completely in the face of rising consumer prices and regularly fled to their parents' weekends to eat there instead of shopping expensively themselves.
Money is getting tighter, the fridge emptier
So while the whole of Germany is complaining about rising oil prices and speculating on the next forecasts from the Bundesbank, for us students it is all about very practical questions: What about the rising pasta and pesto prices?
What about the increasingly expensive cappuccino at the coffee shop around the corner?
And how am I supposed to cope with the skyrocketing ancillary costs of my apartment in the coming months?
What remains is the impression of being forgotten again by politics and society.
While we were already going stale in our own four walls in the times of Corona, semester after semester, although home office obligations were being relaxed again and again out there, the current issue, in view of the increasing inflation, is something very fundamental: money is becoming tighter, the fridge emptier.
Those who cannot count on parental support run the risk of being left behind.
What would we students wish for?
For example, that the Bafög would be increased in line with inflation.
The same applies to child benefit.
The federal government is trying to help families and people under 25 with a one-time bonus of 100 euros per child.
However, I wonder what the one-off 100 euros are supposed to do if they are gone with a single weekly purchase for the flat share.
Even our student jobs can hardly help.
For example, working students are only allowed to work their limited number of 20 hours per week, for which they are poorly paid if they are unlucky or simply work in the wrong industry.
Raising this limit has not yet been discussed.
Pity!
Why should we go to Sylt for 9 euros?
What do students get instead?
Semester fees that increase from year to year, mandatory internships that are usually underpaid, even lasting two to three months, and a 9-euro ticket, which, in view of the semester ticket, is of little use to most people.
After all, we can now perhaps take the train to Berlin or even Sylt, but there is no money for further activities there anyway.
The bleak prospects already make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I think about the cold autumn and winter months.
Actually, I should have been saving a lot to be prepared for the coming energy and electricity prices.
But the question is: How much money should I set aside?
Lina von Coburg (22 years old) is a bachelor's student in journalism in Mainz. In addition to her studies, she writes poems, philosophizes about life and thinks about how a prospective journalist can survive.