Money

Talking to another school and university friend (who shall remain nameless) about the misery of being a poverty stricken student.

Him: so, Victor- you want to make some extra money while being student?

Me: yes. 

Him: are you prepared to sell drugs?

Me: no.

Him: hmmm…. this is where it usually gets tricky…..

How is everyone?

Hopefully none of you are selling drugs. 

Thankfully, I stuck to my word and stuck to legal means of putting food on the table back then, although I did have to get a bit creative. Ironically, that same person above suggested that I try out to be one of the podium dancers at the 70s disco Carwash in London, which I did, and got accepted. Also, I was playing rugby for London Scottish under 21s at the time, which is semi-professional. I considered myself very fortunate to have two things that I loved doing, and was good enough at both of them to be paid to do them. 

I’m sure that most, if not all of you will be able to relate to this, but looking back a student life, I genuinely wonder sometimes how we survived. The lengths we would go to in order to save money were sometimes pretty extreme. I lost count of the number of upside down ketchup bottles I saw at friends places, and people hanging tea bags out to dry so they could use them again. One of my friends at Manchester, in his whole three years at university, never once bought toilet paper. Instead, every week, he’d go to McDonalds and pick up a stack of serviettes and just walk out. I think the audacity alone deserves applause. 

I also remember taking the train out to the sports fields every Wednesday. Nothing would make a group of students scatter more quickly than the sight of a ticket inspector. I have to admit that I too took part in this skullduggery. On the budget that we all had to live on, I saw it as a (relatively) victimless crime…:-/

Although, my good friend Simon didn’t seem to think so. I said to him once

“I feel sorry for ticket inspectors- they have such an antisocial job.”

“Yeah, they do have an antisocial job, but at the end of the day, they’re just trying to keep fares low for people like you and m-….. well…. for people like ME, anyway…!”

I stood by my principle.

Graduating and actually earning a decent amount of money was quite a seismic shift for us all. No more second jobs or counting the space at the back of the sofa as a savings account. It really was quite surreal. I haven’t had any serious money worries since then. I do try and be at least reasonably prudent with my finances, although I can be a bit less serious with other peoples’. I remember once in the doctors house in New Zealand, my housemate Hannah was phoning her bank to arrange a transaction. I just happened to be in the living room with her at the time.

Her: Hi, my name’s Hannah-

Me: NO IT ISN’T!!!!

She tried desperately hard to sound serious, but couldn’t help laughing. I think the banking assistant believed her, as, to the best of my knowledge, she hasn’t gone to jail for fraud…..

You may know that I moved back to London at the end of 2021, as I hadn’t seen my family since the pandemic hit. It was a long time coming and took a lot of planning. With everything locked down, there wasn’t much opportunity to do anything fun, so I was working a lot of extra shifts and saved enough for a deposit for an investment property. This growing up thing is very strange- not something I ever truly planned on doing. Having a house and a car and investments really is something only grown ups do. 

Six months before the move, I spoke to a recruitment agent who was helping me arrange a job in the UK for when I got back. I had filled out all the necessary paperwork well ahead of time. I moved in with my sister in north London close to where we grew up, and I was still waiting for my tax refund, as sadly, my accountants dad had died recently. I had the deposit for the property sitting in my savings account, but obviously I couldn’t touch that. It was a tight situation, but one I had anticipated, and expected to be brief. I asked my agent when I could start work. He said probably about six weeks. “WHAT??” I asked him. “What the Hell am I supposed to do until then???” He had no answer. It was a sad confluence of events. If either one of those things hadn’t gone wrong, I would have been fine, but as things stood, I wasn’t.

Thankfully, my friend Sachin came to the rescue and asked his London hospital contacts if any of them needed an emergency doctor, and thankfully all of them did, and I had an interview that week and started work the following week.

The intervening two week period was both interesting and nostalgic: I pretty much went back to living like a student. I would only buy unbranded food at the supermarket. I’d almost never have the heating on, even though it was the dead of winter. I even found myself walking 45minutes just to save the 1 pound 50p on bus fare. It wasn’t too distressing, as I knew that if the worst came to the absolute worst, I could have just spent my deposit and actually lived a life of relative luxury, but that wouldn’t have been great for me in the long term, so I just stuck it out until I started getting paid again. 

It was all fine in the end, but I couldn’t help but think to myself “Imagine living like this all the time”. For some people, that’s their life. With no realistic prospect of it ever improving. That’s very saddening to think of. Poverty is a choice that governments make- and this government is addicted to it. But anyway, enough politics….

Sometimes I consider myself lucky although it’s not all luck- I worked so hard at medical school that I had a convulsion at one point. I am lucky in that I had parents who, while not perfect (but then, neither am I), placed education as a high priority, and they have four children who have careers, are still alive and not in jail. I think that’s to be commended. 

I saw some interesting research a few years ago that showed that beyond an annual income of about $70,000 US, peoples’ happiness doesn’t actually increase very much. This kind of confirms what I have always felt about money and happiness- I don’t think that money can buy happiness, but it can take away a lot of causes of UNhappiness. Being hungry can make you very unhappy. Money can take care of that. Being cold and unhoused can make you extremely unhappy. Money can take care of that. Beyond having basic needs taken care of, I don’t think that having lots and lots of money would make me much happier.

I definitely didn’t go into medicine for the money. Especially in the UK, there isn’t much. Also, I’m not sure how widely known it is that emergency doctors are the poorest doctors. Poor being a relative term- we’re not starving. We just don’t drive Ferraris (do we, Satyen...?).

I love my patients, and they seem to appreciate that.

Sam Smith agrees.

Until the next time. 

Victor.