Paying rent or board and

rent is something I have done from the time I left school. It was also something my mother demanded of me.

"If you want to go to teacher training college then you will have to support yourself to do it," she told me. I know she thought it would not be possible, that I would never be able to do it. Who employs untrained, unskilled and hopelessly naive young cats who know nothing about the world? Who employs them in a way which also allows them to study?

I was lucky. I landed a position as a "junior housemistress" in a boarding school. What it meant was that, for a certain number of hours of supervision of the girls (not much younger than myself), I had somewhere to live and my meals. The headmistress who employed just happened to know the Senior Cat and heard about me. She offered me the job and even organised my hours there so that I could go on doing what I loved - working in the residential nursery school for the deaf about two kilometres from the school. 

I worked - and I worked hard. The Senior Cat provided me with "pocket money" because he thought I should be given some encouragement. It wasn't a lot but it was enough for absolute essentials. 

When I began earning I lived at home again for a while - because my parents were back in the city by that time and the other role was only for students of course.  I gave my mother the "board" she asked for. My brother was also paying board out of his student scholarship. When Middle Cat began to earn something she also paid board. The Black Cat was the only one who never paid board. Our mother's excuse was that "she is not earning enough". Well no, she was not earning a lot but she was earning something at the time.

The interesting thing about all this is that, in line with the article suggesting that children should pay board - even just a small amount, there is the suggestion that this is one of the things that actually helps them to appreciate the need to budget and save.  Of the four of us it is now the Black Cat who is apparently unable to budget or save. 

I do not know of course if paying even a token amount of board might have helped her but I think it did help the rest of us. There are people I know who thought our mother was "too hard" but we had no choice except to accept what she demanded from us if we were going to do what we wanted to do. If we were determined enough we would get there. Yes, I was "lucky" over my position as a junior housemistress but I still had to do the work involved. I was "lucky" when I could live at home again but I paid a good deal of my income to be there. 

Even when I came back home (out of necessity to care for my parents) I paid my way.  I am paying now while the situation the Black Cat has created is being resolved. It may not be the "market rate rent" she believes I should be paying but it is a sum others believe is fair. I hope it is. I would like to think I have been as independent as possible.