My Account

My Account
Before I was in university, I did not have pocket money. If I wanted to buy something, I asked my parents for money. The only thing that troubled me was to figure out a reason to convince my parents that the thing I wanted to buy was worth the money. Although sometimes, I met some difficulty in persuading them, the good thing was I had never met something like “private financial crisis”.

However, on the way to Nanjing University, I was thrust a credit card and a deposit book by my mother. I looked up surprisingly and saw her smiling broadly. “That is a danger signal.” I said in my mind. I sat up straight and adjusted myself to the “alert state”. “Good news or bad news?” asked my mother cheerfully. “Good news.” “You have a credit card. We will deposit money every month to enable you to survive in the university. You can spend it as you like.” I nodded, “Sounds reasonable. And the bad news?” She answered happily, “The bad news is that the card is not like your parents. It does not have the overdraft facility and except the money in the card you are not supposed to ask for extra money from us.” Upon hearing this, I frowned to her. She seemed not to take in my message and continued, ”You are now an adult. It is time for you to take some responsibilities. The money is a start. We hope that you can learn something, apart from the university knowledge.” “What if I use up all the money?” I asked. “Then,” she added, “Why not keep an account? I am sure that will be a good practice for your future career. (I studied accountancy at that time.) Don’t worry. If you can manage well, the money we give you will be more than enough.”

I had thought that keeping an account was quite easy. Every day, sparing a few minutes would do. However, the fact proved that things usually got easier said than done. A few days later, I began to hate the notebook I used as my account. When I opened it, the first few pages were tidy and neat. Then, the handwriting was got more and more difficult to recognize. The latest pages were full of strange marks and figures, like “B 20, S 50” or whatever. I could not figure out anything from it, and I had no idea about how much I spent at all. That weekend, I put great effort to sort them out, which cost the whole afternoon and finally ended up with 100RMB to be seen nowhere. I got irritated and was angry at myself. I refused to talk to everyone that day so as to put the account record in order, but failed. At last, I threw away the notebook and admitted to myself that I did not have the talents for being a qualified accountancy.

I decided to do according to my will and spend only what I needed to spend in order to save money. I was happy to see that without the account, I could still make ends meet. I started to manage the remaining balance in my mind, which worked very well, and I could even treat myself at times.