Making ends meet?

Reader question:

Please explain the following sentence (“make ends meet” in particular) - We could barely make ends meet. That is why I jumped at the opportunity when I saw their advertisement in a newspaper.

My comments:

Ok, to paraphrase:

We were poor at the time. We were having difficulty paying bills, barely making enough money for food. Therefore I accepted the job offer immediately when I read their advertisement in a newspaper.

Now what’s implied (without being said in words) here is this: We took the job because we were pretty desperate. We knew it was not an exciting job or even a high-paying one but we took it because we had to. Or, as they say, beggars can’t be choosers.

Anyways, “make ends meet” is the idiom in question here. More commonly known as “make both ends meet”, “ends” stand for the END of the incomes column and the END of the expenses column in the account book.

At the END of the incomes column of course is the number for TOTAL INCOME, and at the end of the expenses column is the number for TOTAL EXPENDITURE.

Those two number must meet (match) for it to work. Elite international accountancy firms, of course, can always literally make both ends meet, being expert at fudging figures and coming up with all sorts of desirable numbers to help clients evade tax or for other shady purposes but on a personal level, we as individuals and families know how important it is to have enough income to cover all our expenses.

Or as Mr. Micawber, for whom “something will turn up” but never seems to, succinctly tells a young David Copperfield in the Charles Dickens classic:

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

Enough said, really.

So, here are real examples of people who have problems making ends, or both ends, meet:

1. As the effects of the recession linger on, one place it continues to have a tight grip is on workers’ wallets. Nearly eight-in-ten (77 percent) workers report that they live paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet. Sixty-one percent of workers said that they felt they lived paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet in 2009. Workers went on to say that sometimes they are unable to make ends meet at all, with one-in-five (22 percent) saying they have missed payments on bills in the last year. This is according to a new nationwide survey of more than 4,400 workers by CareerBuilder that was conducted from May 18 to June 3, 2010.

Workers report they have made a variety of changes to their living and spending habits to help get by. When asked what tactics they have used since the start of the recession to make ends meet, workers said the following:

Cut back on leisure activities - 54 percent

Used coupons or shopped at discount stores - 48 percent

Drove less to save on gas - 37 percent

Cancelled cable and other subscriptions - 12 percent

Used public transportation - 5 percent

- One-in-Five Workers Have Trouble Making Ends Meet, CareerBuilder.com, September 1, 2010.

2. About half of the oil tanker owners have halted supply to Nato forces in Afghanistan due to security reasons and the extortion money demanded by police and khasadar personnel at various points.

While talking to Dawn here on Tuesday, the owners said that regular attacks on oil tankers were scaring away the drivers and cleaners. The cleaners have to travel on the rooftop of vehicles, as directed by authorities, and remain fully alert to any attack while on their way to Afghanistan.

Long queues of tankers supplying oil to Nato forces can be seen on the Ring Road, where most of their terminals are located.

The drivers said that political administration of Khyber Agency had made it mandatory for them to cross Takhta Baig area of the tribal region before 10am on daily basis otherwise they had have to pay a fine of Rs10,000 on return.

Drivers said that the instructions had been issued to them in the wake of fresh attacks but it was very difficult for them to keep an eye on the movement of suspected person on such a long route, from Karachi to Afghanistan.

“We are doing this just to make both ends meet, otherwise it is a very risky,” they opined and said that they could not park their vehicles carrying Nato supplies outside hotels and buildings, as the residents did not allow them to do so.

They also blamed police for not letting them move ahead due to security reasons and warned that they would forced to block the road if police did not change its attitude.

Khyber Agency Truckers Association president Shakir Afridi told Dawn that drivers were the ultimate sufferers of the restrictions on movement of tankers. He claimed that over 1,000 tankers had been destroyed since 2002.

During this period, he said, some 85 drivers had been killed and 120 wounded in sabotage acts on way from Karachi to Afghanistan. He said that it was a very tough job but the people were uneducated and could not adopt any other profession.

- Weary tanker owners give up Nato oil supply, Dawn.com, March 8, 2011.

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.