PARIS – You can’t always get what you want.

From housing to transportation, furniture and food, seniors at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School now know what it takes to live within a budget as a working member of the community.

In what was billed as a financial forum for students who will soon be living on their own, hundreds of senior class members spent nearly two hours Tuesday creating a budget for their “real world” lifestyles.

The event, which was developed by the Oxford Federal Union Credit, allowed students to select a career goal and then determine an average monthly salary for that occupation. That became the foundation on which they built their budgets.

With their budget in hand, students went from station to station learning about their options when purchasing items ranging from food to a car.

“They need to spend the same or spend less than their monthly allowance,” explained Maureen Howard, who works with the school’s community education exchange program. She first saw the financial forum program in the Mexico school district and knew right off that she wanted the seniors at Oxford Hills to have the same opportunity.

The results were surprising to many students.

With a budgeted annual salary of only $22,875, future interior designer Allison Reid said she favored renting an apartment in order to buy a new car. By the end of the session, she still had her car but decided she needed to share an apartment to make ends meet.

Meredith Vieira, who hopes to get her MBA in business management at Thomas College, said she didn’t have a lot of room to budget with a starting annual salary of $26,625 and a monthly salary of $2,219. Buying a house was too expensive but renting an apartment for $455 a month was doable, she said.

“I wanted to make the smarter decision and not waste all my money,” she said of deciding to rent rather than buy a home. She found a dependable car with good mileage and skimped on some luxuries she might have liked except for furniture.

“I’m more interested in my surroundings,” said Vieira, who decided to take out a loan for $190 a month to buy new, but not top of the line, furniture for a cheaper apartment.

Travis Smith and Bill Reed decided they could have it all simply by purchasing a $120,000 home together at a cost of $529 a month on a 30-year mortgage. “Why pay money to someone else?” asked Reed. “We can sell it later and split the money.”

Susan Graves, a volunteer at the event, said many of the students learned quickly that they could not always afford to own a home and pay for extravagant entertainment desires together. But rather than give up a computer or perhaps a high-end car, many students opted to rent an apartment together with as many as four students to one apartment. “One even said he’d sleep on the couch,” Graves said.

By calculating and recalculating, many of the students hit their budget or even had money left over by the day’s end.

“What a gift Oxford Federal is giving to the kids,” Howard said.

People from the community, school and the credit union helped organize the event, which concluded with prizes such as certificates to local businesses and ski passes.

The volunteers included Tally DeCato, Matt Kaubris, Chris Shorey from Western Auto, Holly Brown from Paris Cape Realty, Doug Van Durme from Bessey Motor, Karen Austin of TD Banknorth, Sam Noyes, teachers Jane Munn and Paul Bickford and Wendy Martin.

Also helping in the event were Susan Graves, Diana McLaughlin from Stephens Memorial Hospital, Greg Graves of Sunday River Ski Resort, Cindy Giroux, Scott Galbiati, Hugh Rowley, Marianne Todd of Wheeler Insurance, Nikki Abbott of the Western Maine College Center, Stephen Gilman of Northeast Planning, Doug Smith from Hannaford supermarkets and Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School Principal Ted M. Moccia.