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I always get great feedback about these semi-funny, irreverent emails I write. But today I’m not here to pat myself on the back – others do that for me when they thank me for the help I provide.
I have hundreds of letters in my “written about me” folder in my Google account, and when I’m having a bad day, I just start reading them and realize I have a positive impact on many people’s lives.
From yesterday’s letter: “You’ve contributed greatly to this with your work, my perspective on finances has changed a lot because of you, so thank you very much! :)”
This lady, for example, dove into financial education and shortly after found themselves buying an investment property. Pretty amazing, right?
A Story About Letting Loose
The other morning I was thinking about how last week someone invited me to a party with the theme “let’s get wasted.”
As a mom, I thought about it. I flirted with the idea. I felt the tastes and colors of my youth. I felt my young self for a moment – that irresponsible blonde twenty-something who went to clubs alone, didn’t give a damn about conventions, was always happy and ready for LIFE.
This is a vastly different picture from my current life, where they push a drawing tablet up to my eyeballs when I don’t want to draw, with the text “DRAW, DRAAAAAW, DRAAAAAW, MOMMY DRAAAAAW.” Me, mom DRAW, just be quiet, you know?
Then I realized that this activity wouldn’t last long for me, nor would it cost much money. Good savings, right, that I’d get drunk from one drink? 😀
You know when I last got drunk?
Sit down for this one – it was at my bachelorette party.
Why do my friends love me? Because I’m incredibly embarrassing, but if you’re Gen Z you’d describe me as cringe, though I’ve never used this word in my life and it makes me feel damn old!
The Drinking Problem
I think it’s completely unnecessary to say that Hungary is first in alcoholism. Because we know it is. We succeeded in that.
Depression, Szoboszlai, we were in space, drink another shot. This is currently the Hungarian “merit” cross-section.
Mind-boggling.
Yet we could stick our chests out much more proudly because we’re not a stupid people, and we live in a good place, and many other things, but there’s always that stinking “but”…
Everyone knows a working-class Uncle Béla in Hungary today who drinks palinka for breakfast, beer for lunch, and cognac for dinner, and only pours water into the bowl for the chickens next to their feed.
Somehow Hungarians don’t know how to party culturally.
The Connection Between Money and Drinking
Here’s something you might not realize: if you drink when you’re in a good mood and happy, you become a sweet, nice person who’s touchy-feely, makes friends, stands in the aura and asks if you have a cigarette.
But if you ever drank because of bad mood or sadness – listen. I felt damn strong and went in the same direction as the ultras.
The situation is that Hungarians drink for everything – because it’s Monday, because yesterday was Sunday. And usually because they don’t have money and their problems aren’t solved.
Did you know it’s more than likely that if you have more money and are more successful, you drink less?
So alcohol isn’t a solution to our problems, it just delays them, and that’s exactly why I don’t drink much anymore.
When I got some sense, I normally didn’t drink anymore.
In America, you can’t drink alcohol until you’re 21, but by age 18 we’re already clean and mixing matcha with some kind of plant milk.
So the statistical average of my drinking also peaked between ages 15-18, and after that, like a half-reformed, big-city alcoholic, I only consumed the occasional glass of wine 90% of the time.
A Bachelorette Party Story
So at my embarrassing bachelorette party, let me tell you what happened before my girlfriends put me to bed after a knockout drunk and a meter-long rubber dildo was my pillow that night.
The events in order:
4:00 PM – We ate like normal people in a restaurant while I had to drink a liter of vodka-orange and they decorated me like a Christmas tree.
5:00 PM – They inflated a meter-long dildo with a mini pump and I was ready for various embarrassing tasks that no other normal woman would have done.
6:00 PM – I was selling parsley and running after guys to buy bunches from me and give me money for it. All this while screaming in the main square, and by this time my girlfriends were screaming at me, and the less brave ones had already fallen behind. Naturally with phones in their hands, shaking, and the videos are such that there’s not a single straight frame because they were howling so much.
6:30 PM – I sold everything and wanted to buy the complete inventory from a more modest bride from another bachelorette party for a thousand forints, which they could only prevent by dragging me away.
7:00 PM – I wanted to cajole another bride’s parsley basket so I could sell to her too and split the money. (Feel how creative I am?)
7:30 PM – I tangoed with all the existing security guard uncles with the dildo under my arm.
8:00 PM – We found a guitar-playing homeless man, next to whom I stood on a bench singing and collecting money. About 100 people stood around us and this was the point when even my braver girlfriends started to find it embarrassing that they knew me.
8:30 PM – I saw some other girl from an upstairs window at a bachelorette party and climbed up with my whole team to party with them in their rented apartment. Yes, I technically invited myself to a bachelorette party at my bachelorette party and we partied with them, conga-lining with the massive dildo.
The night continued with increasingly ridiculous antics until my strongest girlfriend, who was responsible for getting me home safely, herded my argumentative drunk self homeward.
The next morning I treated everyone to breakfast with the money I had scraped together the night before as part of my gratitude – 16,500 forints collected with a few bunches of parsley and some hustling.
The Bigger Picture
The point isn’t just about drinking or embarrassing bachelorette parties. It’s about how we cope with stress, financial pressure, and life’s challenges. When we don’t have our finances sorted, when we feel powerless about our economic situation, we often turn to temporary escapes that don’t solve the underlying problems.
Financial stress is real, and it manifests in countless ways – from the Uncle Béla who drinks his problems away to the young professional who shops compulsively or the parent who can’t sleep at night worrying about bills.
The solution isn’t to judge these coping mechanisms but to address the root cause: financial literacy and empowerment. When you understand money, when you have a plan, when you see a path forward, the need for these escapes diminishes naturally.
Success and financial stability don’t just change your bank account – they change your entire relationship with stress, with the future, and with yourself.
