My boyfriend and I work as a cooks. We get paid on the high end for the industry/position but it's still a struggle. After bills, my boyfriend and I have a pooled $300 a month to provide daily spending/groceries/gas. We don't live extravagantly, we rent an apartment priced normal for our area and don't spend money on anything “luxury.” I think we spend ~$25 a month on some streaming services.
My boyfriend has chronic health problems and needs insurance and has some medical debt. I have dental debt and we've racked up credit card debt from living paycheck to paycheck. The insurance premium plus the debt payments alone cost us $850 a month.
So I picked up a second cooking job. With me being a full-time student, I could only add on weekend nights. So now, Friday through Sunday I work for 15 hours straight, 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. That's 43 hours of working manual labor over the course of 3 days, with 6 hours of sleep between shifts.
This past weekend was my first week of this and holy shit that was exhausting. I had a final Monday morning and after it, I slept for 9 hours in the middle of the day.
People around me, who care about me, are trying to tell me I shouldn't push myself like this. But they fail to understand that I don't have a choice. I'm 29 and have $0 in savings. No retirement contributions, emergency fund, and I can't even keep up on the bills.
Something has to give.