Luck and Money
Okay, so I know money isn’t the most important thing in the world, and I know luck doesn’t really exist. Maybe I should have said blessed or something. But two things happened recently that are going to make budgeting the rest of my pounds much easier. First, Friday night, we had the final fling launch party, where they tell what the theme of the final fling (our spring dance type thing) will be. It’s Antiquity, Greek and Roman. I could totally make an awesome toga. Lots of practice in JCL. But at the launch party, they had a prize draw if you bought your ticket that night. Third prize was a 10 pound gift card for some company I had never heard of, possibly music. Second prize was a bottle of champagne, which I think tastes bad. So I probably would have given both those prizes away had I gotten them. And it wouldn’t really have been worth it for me to buy the ticket this early. But the first prize was a full refund of the cost of the ticket, which the ticket costs 45 pounds, or $90. So I decided, I know I’m going to go because everyone goes, and that’s just how it is. So I might as well buy it. Doubtful that I’ll win, but a small chance. But guess what? I know you already know from how I started off this story, but I won! First prize, so I don’t have to pay for final fling. Yay!! 45 pounds that I get to keep.
Then today, I got a check for the remainder of my loan checks after they had paid a second third of my fees. But I never get a receipt from Regents, so I e-mailed the finance woman, who is very nice, and asked her what I would owe next term so I could budget and for a copy of my original invoice. And she wrote me back quite quickly, and gave me the total of 4,363 pounds plus battels, which will be about 950 pounds. Which was a few hundred pounds less than I thought it would be, so that was nice. And then she said, however, she was expecting two 1000 pound payments from Americans for Oxford to contribute to my balance. So really it should be 2,363 pounds plus battels once she gets those checks. Crazy! So I wrote and asked what Americans for Oxford is, and she said it’s an organization that basically facilitates donations to Oxford from Americans, sometimes to an individual. However, she didn’t know if she was allowed to tell me who was sending the money for me. So apparently I got another anonymous donation. Last year I got one too. And in a way, I hate anonymous donations because I can’t say thank you to the person who sent them. Don’t get me wrong, I like getting the donation. I just wish I could show my gratitude. So I doubt the person who sent those reads my blog, but if you do, I truly appreciate your generosity. You don’t know how excited that makes me and lifts some of my debt burden off my shoulders. Now I don’t have to be quite as strict with my money, though as my mom said, I probably will still be cheap because it’s just in my nature. And hopefully I’ll be able to pay some of my loan back with my leftover loan money as soon as I’m done here.
I was getting sort of worried that I was going to have no money by the end of this, because when making my estimates I round up, and I was thinking I might owe over 6,000 pounds next term. So apparently I suck at estimating, and now I’m very relieved that I will be able to pay for the bus to the airport to get home in June.