#PlsSaveMe : Doing A YOLO Thing

Loise in one of her travels

You Only Live Once (YOLO) is a very popular thing among Generation Z or so-called post-millennials. One of the activities they consider the most is traveling to go around and enjoy life without much concern of what happens in the future. The generation believes that traveling with adventure is a way to spend life without regrets.

For this story, I have Loise, 23 years of age, a former medical clinic secretary and now, a second year medical student. It is her dream of becoming a physician. She is a medical scholar and keeps up with her studies. However, to fulfill her dreams of becoming a physician, she faces so much pressure to sustain her academics as a scholar. Traveling with friends is her option to keep her sane - a way to unwind, but she battles with time and her finances.

According to her, she loves to travel with her friends and they usually schedule their trip in order for her to save enough from her daily allowances. It is a matter of saving money then spending it to travel. She enjoys mountain trekking and going to the beach, and it is very special with her friends, but unfortunately, it makes her go home empty pocket. Way back when she has been working, it isn’t much of a problem to travel because she can earn it and then spend for travel. However, things have changed when she has decided to study again and become a medical doctor; a 360 degrees shift. As earlier said, she now saves for a scheduled travel, but there are times that what she has saved will then be used for emergency expenses for her studies, and her budget for travel has been taken out. With that, she still continues the scheduled travel to spend time with friends and divert her attention from the demands of her studies, but she often results to borrow money from her parents as debt. That is a bit hard for her knowing that she only has her allowance to save up and pay the debts! But according to her, it takes her two months to repay her parents, though. She does it really and will sometimes say, “panagsa ra bitaw” (not an often thing). Somehow, she has done it several times already.

To have debt is not a bad thing, actually, but you have to make it sure that you can pay your debt or else it will accumulate more if your debt has an interest to pay. Good thing with Loise that she doesn’t need to pay for any interest but still she has become bothered by the pressure in school, debt incurred and as a whole, limited time to do many things. But that’s what students who want to travel will endure, unless, they are well off. For Loise’s case, her option is limited in borrowing from her parents for now, but eventually, when she’s able to finish school, things will be different.