A Week In Regional Victoria As An Agriculture Student On $74/Fortnight

Occupation: Agriculture Student & Summer Worker
Industry: Food/Retail
Age: 19
Location: Regional Victoria
Salary: $5,000
Net Worth: Around $26,402 ($25,300 between my checking and savings accounts, $4,656 invested in shares, $2,374 in my super account, and $2,500 that I lent to my parents when they were short on money for bills. (I have been fortunate to have scholarships for uni that have acted as income and boosted my savings since my last Money Diary.)
Debt: $8,428 in HECS debt
Paycheque Amount (Fortnightly): $74.92 in Youth Allowance
Pronouns: She/Her

Rent: $1,052. I’m currently living away from home for university and this is the cost to live in mixed-sex dorms. The cost also includes four dinners each week. There are 20 people on my floor and around 80 people living in the dorms in total. I’ve loved living on campus so far and having my besties as neighbours!
Spotify (Student Rate): $5.99
Apple iCloud Storage: $1.49
Weekly Times Newspaper Subscription: $14
Phone: $25
Groceries: $200. I only pay for these when I'm living away from home.
Savings Contributions: I haven’t been able to make any savings contributions while I’ve been living up here.

I am just about to finish my second year of my Bachelor of Agriculture, which I am loving. I'm happy knowing I am studying something useful and worthwhile! My subject fees go directly onto my HECS and I only have to pay my annual student fee (around $350). I received a three-year scholarship for $10,000 from my university when I started, based on academic merit and financial disadvantage. I also got another one-off $5,000 scholarship this year, as well as $2,000 to help me as I live away from home this semester. I also receive an additional $10,000 this year and next year, which is from a trust, also due to academic merit and financial disadvantage. This year alone, I’ve received $27,000 in scholarships. I’m extremely grateful!

My parents never did (and still don’t like to) discuss money with my sister or me, but it was fairly obvious from a young age that we didn’t have much money to go around. They didn’t really educate me about money but I learned to be careful about spending and to save as much as possible. My dad was the person who told me I should start investing, but I’ve taught myself about it and what to invest in.

My first proper job was working at Priceline as a 16-year-old on the weekends. I wanted to make some money on the side in case I wanted to go out or buy things.

I did worry about money growing up, as there were often things my parents had to say no to, even if they were closer to needs instead of wants. It was a regular occurrence to have our phones or internet slowed down if bills were paid late. When my parents had to ask me for money, they showed me that they really needed the money. I know they’re still ashamed of having to ask me for money.

I do still worry about money now. Late last year, I had a reaction to my COVID vaccine that left me with two heart conditions and unable to work for over six months (something I was in the middle of being diagnosed for during my last Money Diary). I’m in the process of claiming lost earnings, and pain and suffering costs in excess of $15,000 via the government vaccine claims scheme. It all shook me and left me thinking I should live my life to the fullest as I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but also that I still want financial stability. I'm having to fight hard to make sure I am adequately compensated for my suffering. I’m currently unemployed whilst living on campus for university, and am planning an exchange for university next year, which is looking like it’s going to cost a fair chunk. So yes, I definitely still worry about money now.

I’m not financially responsible for myself yet, but I think my safety net would be my savings. After that, my grandma would help if anything really bad were to happen and I couldn’t provide for myself.

No inheritance, but I do have scholarships that act as an income stream.

12:00am — I’m just getting home from my first-ever university ball. Sadly, I’m not actually drunk and didn’t make use of the $135 unlimited alcohol ticket. The IBS life means dinner made me feel sick, plus the alcohol wasn’t sitting right and the vibes were simply not there, so I head straight to bed still feeling funky. 

8:00am — Wake up still feeling gross. My stomach feels incredibly bloated and yuck and I feel nauseous, so I have some water and a piece of plain bread for breakfast, shower and get ready for my doctor’s appointment at 10:30.

11:30am — My doctor is always running late, but at least I get to watch some Friends in the waiting room. He sees me and gives me a referral to my gastroenterologist, tells me to get a blood test to check my iron (in case I need another iron infusion) and also that my birth control is good to use even though I was having some problems with breakthrough bleeding. The appointment costs $96.95 as it’s a weekend, but I’ll get $76.95 back from Medicare. $20 

4:00pm — I’ve spent the afternoon in bed still feeling nauseous, but I'm trying to get some uni work done. I’m currently home in Melbourne for the weekend due to the ball last night and the uni campus I have to get back to on Monday is currently surrounded by floodwaters and road closures. I spend a lot of time talking to friends about who is going to make it back, or not. 

7:00pm — It’s my mum’s birthday on Monday, but as I’m only home for the weekend and my sister is busy on Monday night, we’re doing birthday dinner tonight. We go to a new Italian place near us and it’s really yummy! I order a main size of tortellini but I'm still not up to eating much from being bloated, so I take the leftovers home for lunch tomorrow. My parents pay, as it’s a birthday occasion and a rare occurrence we go out for dinner. 

10:00pm — Bedtime for me. Brush my teeth and splash water on my face (I can’t be bothered washing it properly), then scroll on my phone till I fall asleep. 

9:00am — I wake up, scroll on my phone and slowly get up and out of bed. Meet my mum in the kitchen and we make eggs on toast together for breakfast. We then watch a Donna Hay cooking show. My mum has a very good time bagging Donna for some of her conceited comments. I see Donna using a KitchenAid and remember my mum has always wanted one, so look them up just to see what price they are at the moment, and they’re actually on sale for $495 with engraving included, so my sister and I decide to buy one for her 60th birthday next year (only 366 days early!). I pay $248 for my half. $248

11:00am — I FaceTime my friend and we work on a uni quiz together. It’s on soil, which I personally am not too enthralled with, so helping each other and working through questions works for us. My mum and I then decide to head out to DFO to see if we can find me a winter coat as I’ll be heading to the UK in the new year, which will be freezing!

4:00pm — We get the train to and from the city ($4.60 return), and I manage to find an orange puffer at Kathmandu I like. I call my grandma and ask if she wants it to be my birthday present as my birthday is in two weeks and she likes getting gifts we’ll actually use. I FaceTime her to model it for her, and while we're on the phone, she finds a coat she likes too. I end up getting my coat and her coat for $350 — she’ll pay me back when I see her next. I also get my Mum a skincare set for her birthday tomorrow ($48), and she gets us ice-creams for lunch. $402.60

6:00pm — My mum and I go to the supermarket quickly to get some dinner, which is roast pork (the one the supermarket cooks is really good!) with salad. While we’re there, I get her a bottle of gin for her birthday tomorrow using a gift voucher I won from a photo competition at uni. 

8:00pm — I have a look at flight prices to the UK as I'm meant to be going on exchange for semester one next year. I don’t know why I do it to myself, as every time I look, the prices seem to be getting higher and I still can’t book my flight until I have my acceptance letter. Then I do some uni work but get extremely bored. 

10:00pm — Organise my bag to get ready to go back to uni in the morning. I message a friend who’s picking me up in the morning to see what time she’ll be here. Scroll on my phone till I fall asleep. 

7:00am — Wake up early to do birthday presents and birthday morning with Mum. She has to head off for work earlyish, so we do breakfast and presents simultaneously. The only surprise is a bottle of gin my dad gets for her (luckily it’s a different brand) as she was there when all her other presents were bought. 

9:00am — I'm on the way back to uni with my friend (I don’t drive or have a car so am the designated passenger). On our way back home to Melbourne on Friday, the weather was terrible and she hit a pothole that dented her wheel and gave her a flat tyre. We’re being extra vigilant looking for potholes or dodgy roads. We go past some road closure signs and water near the road, as well as some pretty silo art, but make it back in one piece. 

12:00pm — We’re meant to have a lecture from 11am to 1pm today but my friend and I skip the lecture and instead head out onto the grass to do some study ourselves. Over the course of the afternoon, people come back to campus and we have a few more friends join us. They tell us all about their stories of getting back through the floodwaters. Thankfully, everyone got home and back in one piece, but there are a few of my friends who aren’t able to make it up this week as they’re flooded in or the roads are in too poor condition. I also check my bank account and see that my Youth Allowance has come in for the fortnight. It’s really not much, but it's better than nothing. I've already come to terms with the fact that scholarships and savings are paying for me to be up here. 

6:00pm — My friends and I head down to dinner and it’s pasta! Pasta is a rare occurrence, so makes us happy, but I do have to sit there picking out all the onion from the sauce so I’m not on the toilet for the rest of the night. It's happened multiple times while I've lived here but now I just try to avoid what has hurt me in the past. We sit outside to eat and it’s really pretty while still being warm. After dinner, a group of us head outside for a game of soccer, which is very fun and quite competitive, but everyone ends up covered in mosquito bites and is very itchy. I head inside for a cool shower to stop the itch then head off to bed, scrolling on my phone till I fall asleep. 

9:00am — Wake up late and snooze in bed for a bit. Wake up a second time to my friend knocking on my door wanting to have a chat in my room. I get up and go through the drama she has going on in her life, including a boy up here who's been flirting with her and admitting he’d sleep with her, all while it’s well-known she’s in a long-term relationship! More than enough drama for the both of us — at least it keeps me entertained!

12:00pm — We have a class, so we plug a laptop into a TV and sit on the couch to watch the lecture about soil. It should be in person but the lecturer can’t get to campus due to flooding. A friend tells us if we do star jumps on video he’ll buy us stuff from the vending machine, so of course, we oblige. I get a cookie and chips in exchange for seven star jumps. We then put on cooking shows as background noise while we finish off other work and assignments. 

4:00pm — I head to the kitchen with a larger group of friends, where we all work on the main assignment we have due on Monday. We had to press weeds to make a weed herbarium and it’s taking so much time to put together! We then try to organise ourselves and get ready for the final pub night of the semester — toga night! I use the sheet off my bed for mine which has pink flowers on it, so it’s a non-traditional toga for me tonight. 

6:00pm — We head to dinner in our togas, ready for the final pub night for the semester. I wash dinner down with the classic raspberry UDL, then head off to the pub. It’s my first pub night for a few months as a friend got kicked out of the pub, so our group boycotted in solidarity. It’s such a fun night socialising with everyone for probably the last time, singing and crowning the best dressed. "Amnesia" by 5SOS will now always hold a special spot in my heart, too.

10:00pm — Get back to campus and it’s time for dinner round two for some. We also relax and chat in the common room about anything and everything. I make it to 11 before deciding to head to bed as I’m getting too tired, but on my way to bed, I see people moving a boy’s bed into the showers, which should make for a comfortable sleep. This is why they tell us to always lock our doors, yet people (including myself) never do. I scroll on my phone, then head off to sleep around midnight. I hear people trickling back to campus throughout the night, which I now find oddly comforting. 

8:00am — Wake up with the sun coming in through my window and have a scroll on my phone. I hear my friend across the hall sneeze and blow her nose, so I Snapchat her and ask her if she wants to go get breakfast together. We go to the communal kitchen and make some Crunchy Nut with warm, long-life milk. #luxury. We head off to a 9am lecture on grass and animal grazing. 

12:00pm — We leave the lecture at 10am to lay in the sun on the grass and listen to the live stream of the lecture online. Some of our friends come to sit outside to finish some assignments due at the end of the semester. As it’s the last week, I am skint for food, so I decide to buy a chicken burger and dim sim for lunch from the dining hall. $7.40

2:00pm — One of the benefits of studying agriculture is getting to grow vegetables that you can take home. I harvest beetroot, rocket, cos lettuce, sugar snap peas and some coriander. I get incredibly hot in the sun and inside the polytunnels, and my friends get stung by stinging nettle! We then have to walk to some paddocks to look at crops and do crop yield estimates. It's hot and I’m thirsty, so my friends and I stop by the vending machine on the way back to our dorms for a raspberry lemonade. $2.20

6:00pm — A couple of friends and I get dragged into filling in for a friend's netball team tonight, so we have to get our meals from the dining halls in containers to take in the car to the game. I end up playing basically two games of netball back-to-back, and with all the floodwater around, I get eaten alive by mosquitos while playing. I play goal shooter and manage to get about five goals in between the two games, which is good as my team hasn’t won a game all season. 

9:30pm — I head back to college with a friend (said boy who is flirting with my friend in the relationship!). He decides to go down a flooded dirt road even though his ute doesn’t have a snorkel. We end up having to go into the closest town and back as he’s worried water will stay in his engine. I’m tired but force myself to shower and wash my hair, then get into bed and am out pretty fast. 

8:00am — I don’t want to be awake this early this morning. It was pretty warm here overnight and the dorms don’t have air-con, so it’s a bit stuffy. I lay around till 8:15am then force myself out of bed to get dressed for an 8:30am lecture about wine. I have a Le Snak for breakfast during the lecture. 

11:00am — As an end-of-semester celebration for this class, we’re going to a winery! It's about an hour away from uni so we take a bus. I sit next to my friend and have a sleep on the way there. We do a wine tasting and I now realise that I do not like fortified wine or muscats. That said, the tour of the winery is pretty interesting. We then do a sales pitch for their wines, and I have a sneaking suspicion they’re using us for new marketing ideas. We get a free lunch from uni, which is yum, and I buy a Billson’s soft drink for some sugar and hydration in the sun ($5). We get back on the bus to campus. I’m sad I'm about to leave all these people who I’ve spent the last three months living with. $5

4:00pm — I get back to campus and have to pack up my entire room as I’m moving out for good tonight. We only live up here for a semester during our degree, so this little room has been mine for the last few months and will be someone else’s next year. It takes some time and I’m very sweaty after, but my friends and I are all packed into cars and utes. We even haul a bar fridge down three flights of stairs. We all make sure we write our names in our rooms so people who stay here in the future can look back on who was here (I have someone’s name from the '70s in my room, which I guess also shows the age of the dorms!).

6:00pm — Our last dinner on campus is roast pork with veggies and roast potatoes. Although I did request this meal from the cook, they cut the pork paper thin so it’s dry and nowhere near as good as other times we’ve had it. Dessert is also a self-saucing lemon pudding. Let's just say I won’t be missing that. 

9:00pm — My family is at home, ready to greet me and help me get my stuff out of my friend’s car. I’m emotionally and physically drained, so I hug all my family and say hi then head off to bed. I get a bit sentimental about already missing my friends and not being able to wake up with them all tomorrow. I'm also a bit sad about moving back home and having less independence. I get to sleep after some phone scrolling. 

9:00am — I wake up and have a quick breakfast and start getting sorted to head off down the coast to my grandma’s today, where I’m lucky enough to have a summer job working at a supermarket. I have to unpack some of the stuff I brought home yesterday and then repack it into the bag I’m taking with me today. I also have to lug 4kg of beetroot to my grandma as she loves homemade pickled beetroot, as well as both our coats, since I’ll be with her for my birthday. 

12:00pm — I'm out the door and get the train into the city ($2.30), and then buy my concession V-line ticket to the station my grandma will pick me up from ($9.50). While I’m at the station, I also fill my script for the pill for the next four months ($26.60). $38.40

3:00pm — I get off the train and see my grandma and even though I only saw her three weeks ago, it feels like a long time. I’ve spent the last two summers living with her so I'm used to being around her lots! She buys us a Golden Gaytime for the drive to her place. I catch her up on the last few weeks of my life and I ask about her life in case anything fun has happened. Then I relax and have a snuggle with her dog (he’s energetic but cute). 

7:00pm — My grandma and I decide to go out for dinner. We settle on an Asian/Thai place and get Pad Thai, Nasi Goreng and a mocktail each. She gives me $50 for dinner but it ends up being $65.20, so it only costs me $15.20. Times like this make me so happy to be here with her, but also really sad as I think of her getting older and one day not being here with me. We take the leftovers home with us for lunch tomorrow. $15.20

9:30pm — We get home after having a walk down the street, then have a Maxibon for dessert. At 10pm, my grandma gets her nightly call from her friend (which is basically to make sure her friend is alive and hasn't had a fall), so I decide it’s time for me to head off to bed. I fall asleep basically straight away.