As every person’s financial situation is unique, going forward we’re asking diarists to complete a series of financial-based questions to provide readers with more context to their relationship with money. Please remember before commenting that the diarists are from a range of backgrounds and cultures and their experience, education and mental relationship with money might be very different from yours. Money Diaries are designed to provide readers with diverse experiences of spending, saving and asking for more in the hope that by learning from each other, we can build a more positive financial future together.
This week: “I’m a 24-year-old Operations Manager, working for a London-based tech company and living in York. I moved up here a few months ago with my long-term partner T, who got a great job opportunity. I joined my current company during the pandemic, after being furloughed, meaning I’ve never entered the physical office, and have only met a handful of colleagues in real life. When the office in London reopens I’m planning to spend three or four days a month there and spend the majority of my time up in York. As well as working, I’m studying for a masters in a business-related field. My company is paying for this, although if I leave the company within two years of completing it I’d have to pay part of it back. I started it towards the end of 2020 and I’m now approaching my last few months.”
Occupation: Operations Manager
Industry: Tech
Age: 24
Location: York
Salary: £42,000
Paycheque amount: Varies depending on expenses (each paycheque contains the expenses from two months before), but around £2,500.
Number of housemates: 1, my partner T.
Monthly Expenses
Housing costs: £1,200 for our rental house, which we pay from the joint account.
Loan payments: Just one final car payment in September. My partner and I bought my parent’s 10-year-old car, and have paid £600 a month for the last two months.
Savings?: £20,000 in a Marcus account. I put £600 in from my paycheque each month.
Pension status: I have a couple of pension pots from different employers. Currently, I pay 3% of my salary into my pot.
All other monthly expenses: Phone bill £30 (paying off a phone plan as well as my data contract). Utilities come out of the joint account (which I put £1,300 into and T puts £1,100 in a month). WiFi, car insurance, and council tax come to roughly £300. Bird & Blend Tea Co. subscription costing £11.95. Heights supplement subscription costing £20. Disney+ subscription which works out to roughly £4.16 a month (we paid a lump sum for the year). Contact lenses costing £30. I also give £50 to charity each month, but I tend to vary which one; I often support ones that help people with the same chronic conditions I have.
Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?
Not going to uni wasn’t an option. I never really heard about or researched alternatives. I went to Oxbridge for a three year humanities undergrad. I took out a student loan for it but this was paid in my grandparents’ will after they passed away. I’m currently studying for an MA in a business-related discipline, which my employer is paying for.
Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money?
My parents were huge advocates of saving, and also figuring out what you value spending your money on. For them, they love to splash out on a nice restaurant meal but see no point in getting a fancy car. It helped me understand that being able to afford expensive things doesn’t mean you necessarily should buy them.
If you have, when did you move out of your parents or guardians house?
I moved out after university when I was 21, however, I did move back in with them due to the pandemic and then moved out again in May this year.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself? Does anyone else cover any aspects of your financial life?
I became fully financially responsible for myself after I graduated from uni. Nobody covers any aspects of my financial life at present. My partner and I share expenses but I pay a higher proportion of them as I make more.
What was your first job and why did you get it?
My first real job was in consulting. I did an internship at the consultancy after my second year of uni, which I applied for directly through their website. It went well and I was offered a full-time job there upon graduating.
Do you worry about money now?
I do. My partner and I are comfortable financially but I find myself stressed about money all the time. The last year has shown me how unpredictable life is, which makes me scared to make big financial commitments like buying a house. However, I’m worried about making poor financial decisions by not doing this.
Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain.
When my grandparents passed away they left some money which is in a savings account. This is what paid for my brother and my student loans.
9.30am: Wake up after sleeping in longer than usual and start the day with a lovely cup of tea in bed brought to me by T.
10.15am: Finally get myself out of bed and start the day with some meal planning. Most Sundays I figure out the meal plan for the week. The upcoming one is slightly different as we have a discount HelloFresh box arriving tomorrow, which will cover a few dinners. We sit down and figure out the rest of the week and what groceries I need to get in. In terms of chores, I handle food things like meal plans, groceries, and cooking and T does the washing up, laundry and bins. It works pretty well for us as we both get to avoid the chores that stress us out most.
10.45am: I decide to do a morning workout using a variety of weight sets and dance videos on YouTube. Midway through I get distracted by Taylor Swift YouTube videos, so it takes a bit longer than planned.
11.15am: I have some leftovers for breakfast along with a yoghurt that I only realise was out of date after finishing.
12pm: Our friends (M and J) arrive at ours for a supermarket trip. We have a little car that we recently bought which allows us to drive out to the large out-of-town Tesco. We only go once every three weeks or so, as we always end up veering from the plan and buying unnecessary things. We buy food for the next couple of weeks, some items for our upcoming housewarming, some spices we’re running low on, wine and a stupid number of sugar-free jellies which comes to £67.25 (which we pay for using the joint account).
1.30pm: The big Tesco is next to a Wilko, so we stop there too. We decide to buy a BBQ as we’re hoping to have most of our housewarming outdoors. We also pick up a water filter as we just discovered the water in our rental house has softener pumped in, which isn’t great to drink. The shop costs £26.85 which we pay for using the joint account.
3pm: Slump on the sofa for the next few hours, catching up on work emails and messages after having a week off for a holiday in Scotland.
6pm: T and I play one of our favourite board games: Wingspan. It’s a strategic game where you place various birds in different habitats and it’s honestly one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played. I’m a huge board game fan and have a collection of over 20 games. T wasn’t a huge fan when we started dating, but four years in he’s come to enjoy them.
7.30pm: Time to start cooking. I find a recipe online for some creamy turkey meatballs, which I make with cauliflower rice and roasted veg. I have a chronic disability that I need to control through diet, exercise and a stupid amount of medication, so I tend to make recipes that are low-carb, and make some carby bits on the side for T to eat.
9pm: I run a nice bath and soak in it for around 45 minutes, while putting on a face mask and drinking some tea. I’m optimistic that my first few days back at work should be pretty quiet, but I’m sad to finish my summer holiday time off.
10pm: Off to sleep.
Total: £94.10
6.40am: Usually I’m really good at getting up with my alarm, but today was not one of those days. Manage to crawl out by 7.10am and jump in the shower.
7:30am: T and I go on a morning walk. There’s a really picturesque road that’s a 10-minute walk from us, where a few really friendly, fluffy cats live. The thought of being able to adopt a cat of our own makes me desperate to buy a property, but we don’t know where T’s next role will be (his industry works with one to three year contracts), so it’s not in the short-term plan.
9am: First day back after time off. Before going away I blocked it out so there would be no meetings, and I’m very grateful to my past self for this.
1pm: Lunchtime! The morning was pretty uneventful, which is a relief. I pop out to the deli round the corner to grab a box of their salads for lunch costing £3.50. They make four or five salads fresh every day which are really tasty. We have them with a scotch egg that we bought when we shopped for groceries.
2pm: Back to work. This afternoon I’m hoping to make real progress in one of my major projects this quarter. My project involves lots of input from people across our company, so I’ll be mapping out which individuals I need to talk to and coming up with an action plan!
3pm: Our Hello Fresh box arrives (which cost £15 on the joint account), however some of the ingredients are wrong, so they issue £8 credit onto our account.
4pm: My tea break dissolves into me eating way too much of the cheese we bought for dinner. I make a vow to work extra hard at my exercise class tonight.
6pm: I wrap up work early to head over to Leeds for my exercise class. Over lockdown, I took up pole fitness, which has been a huge challenge but really enjoyable. I’m a bigger girl, so I never figured I’d be strong enough to be able to hang off a pole, but in just a couple of months, I’ve become so much stronger and can do things I never thought I’d be able to do. This is my first class with this group as I just graduated from the foundation course, so I’m excited to meet new people. I bought a block of four classes for £35, so this class costs me £8.75.
8pm: Found that class really hard, and left feeling a bit demotivated. My hands absolutely kill and I could barely do a single move. Trying not to feel too down about it, but pretty sure that if I hadn’t bought a block of four I wouldn’t be returning.
8:30pm: T and I cook one of the HelloFresh meals together, and then snuggle up with Netflix.
10pm: I have a quick shower, and head off to bed.
Total: £19.25
6.40am: Manage to actually get out of bed with my alarm this morning, which is an improvement on yesterday! Do a lateral flow test and I’m pleased to get a negative result. I don’t have any symptoms but have been following the guidance to test twice a week in case of asymptomatic COVID-19.
7.20am: Workout time! I’m pretty sore from last night, so decide to do 20 minutes of stretching, and 20 minutes of leg work. Feel way better after doing that.
8am: Watch some Grace and Frankie over breakfast and read through some industry news.
9am: I have three meetings this morning and a very long checklist of things to do in between them. T brings some hot tea to me whilst I’m in a stressful meeting and I feel very grateful for his psychic abilities to know when I need caffeine.
1pm: Work wasn’t as productive as I’d have liked, but I managed to get through a few key pieces so it wasn’t a bad morning. I heat up some nice soup we bought in Tesco for lunch and serve it with some leftover salad from yesterday. T is in a meeting over our lunch break, so I drop his off to him and spend my break scrolling through Reddit.
2pm: This afternoon is a study afternoon. My work gives me half a day a week of work time to study for my MA, and then I usually study two or three evenings a week. We’ve actually got a break at the moment, as we recently finished one module, and the next one starts in a few weeks, but there’s pre-reading for the next module that I want to get through.
6.15pm: Curl up with my book for an hour, and then cook the next HelloFresh meal which turns out pretty good.
7.30pm: One of our friends (J) pops round as he has some spare vegetables that he wants to share before they go off and we end up sitting down for a nice catch-up. This is one of the things that feels so different for me being in the North. In London, all my friends were 30 or 40 mins away, so you couldn’t just pop round for a half-hour chat. Here, all our friends are less than 15 mins away and making plans is so much easier because of it.
9pm: TV time! Whilst watching, I spend some time tracking down academic journal articles that I’d struggled to find earlier. I find the final one and feel very satisfied with myself.
10pm: Bedtime
Total: £0
6.40am: Get up, jump in the shower and head out on a 45 minute morning walk with T. It’s a beautifully sunny morning so we walk around the riverbanks. Very few people are around which is nice.
8am: Decide to eat breakfast in the garden, and feel very European doing it. Set up my work laptop to try and do my morning work here, but the combination of poor WiFi in the garden and quite loud neighbours next door makes me regret my decision immediately and I head back inside.
11am: Have a quick coffee break and realise that I no longer have ‘going out’ fold-up flats that I can put in my clutch to change into when heels get too much. It’s too late to get them for tomorrow, but I order a pair online for future evenings out! They come to £34.69 including delivery and a 10% off first order discount.
1pm: Had planned a healthy lunch of salad and gazpacho, but when 1pm hits T and I are both really hungry, so I decide to cook something inventive. Pick up supplies at the local butcher and greengrocer costing £8 and end up making a pretty terrible dish. Turns out being inventive isn’t always a good thing. On the bright side, it will make us enjoy salad and gazpacho more next time.
2pm: Back to work. My afternoon isn’t It super productive but I got what I needed to done.
6pm: Drive back to the pole studio for a private lesson which works out to £30. There’s a huge amount of traffic which means my 35-minute journey takes over an hour (T is a saint for driving me!). My instructor is really kind about me being a bit late and still runs the full class length. I’m very much an early bird and feel super anxious about arriving late so her being so nice about it meant a lot. In the private lesson, I manage to get a pole to move down that I’d never managed to do before, so I felt thrilled!
9pm: Call a friend whilst preparing the final meal from the HelloFresh box. It was really lovely catching up with her and hearing all about her life, though it also makes me a little sad . She’s one of my closest friends, and we barely manage to see each other in person anymore. I feel a little pang of nostalgia for the pre-Covid times when we both lived in London.
9.30 pm: Eat dinner and then head to bed.
Total: £72.69
6.45am: T wakes up earlier than me for once as he’s off to visiting a friend for a few days. I have a few physical conditions that make activities like hiking tricky, so it’s really great for him to have good friends to do things like that with.
7.15am: Any good intentions to do my morning work-out clearly forgot to stop by this morning. I snuggle on the sofa with a nice cup of tea and catch up on some telly.
8.30am: Open up my laptop and start work. Our company has offices all over the world and my role involves working with all employees, so there’s always a lot of stuff to catch up on first thing in the morning.
10.45am: My body decides to punish me for not working out this morning and one of my conditions flares up badly. End up having to stop work for an hour and a half to treat it and recover. I feel like the universe is cruel to send a flare-up on one of the only days that T isn’t here. It’s tricky as I’m the only employee at my company who works in my area, so I feel a lot of guilt being sick as it means things simply don’t get done. My company is super supportive when I’m unwell so the guilt is definitely self-imposed, but that doesn’t make it feel any less bad.
12pm: Get back to work but push the hardest tasks away until tomorrow. My brain feels like it’s melted slightly, so I focused on a rather tedious task that I don’t need to think about! Grab some soup for lunch after an hour or so of work. Decide to spend 25 minutes stretching in the hope it calms my body down a little.
2pm: Feeling much better now and get back to work. I have quite a lot of meetings, but they all go well and I finish my day feeling really satisfied.
6.30pm: One of my friends (M) comes round so we can get ready for an evening out. We’re going to a cocktail party to meet other girls in the area. I cook us some pasta and we drink some wine whilst getting ready. I discover I don’t even have any mascara with me in York and get too scared to attempt to put eyeliner on.
8pm: We head over to the party, picking up another girl on the way. When we get to the party the place is buzzing and all the girls are so friendly. Three drinks were included in the entrance ticket which costs £15. My friend buys me a few shots and I buy a couple cocktails on a 2-for-1 offer costing £10.95. This is the most ‘normal’ feeling night I’ve had since the pandemic started which is really nice.
11pm: My friend and her boyfriend (J) walk me home as I live slightly further out than they do. I quickly realise being quite drunk and having my disability flaring up is not a fun combo. I end up staying up until 2am treating it which definitely makes me regret the number of drinks I had.
Total: £25.95
7.30am: Ugh. I’ve definitely felt better. Getting out of bed my head is spinning and I feel terrible and I can’t blame anything except my own decisions. Wish T was here so I could have some morning hungover cuddles.
8.30am: The morning gets worse as I attempt to check my emails as I eat breakfast and discover our WiFi is down. I reset the box, check the fuse, do all the recommendations on the website and… nothing. Attempt to join my 9am Zoom call on my phone, which lets my colleagues see my hungover face up close and personal.
10.30am: After an hour and a half of phone Zoom meetings, I attempt to contact TalkTalk and fail to make any progress. End up deciding to find a cafe that I can work from to salvage some part of the morning.
12pm: The cafe I work from does ten different varieties of cheese toastie, so the morning improves. My friend (M) meets me there to work next to me, which is lovely. I work there for about three hours, making my way through their hot drinks menu and end up paying £9.50 for a toastie, English breakfast tea and dark hot chocolate.
3pm: My laptop battery is too low to continue so I trudge back home to try and make some proper headway with fixing the WiFi.
3.30pm: Finally get through to someone at TalkTalk. I find the call really frustrating as they suggest all the things I tried from their website this morning. Eventually, they agree to send out an engineer in the morning.
6pm: After hotspotting from my phone to do my final few hours of work, my WiFi suddenly starts working again. I call TalkTalk to let them know that the engineer is no longer needed and they say that if I cancel it will be a £30 charge. They recommend maintaining the appointment despite the fact the WiFi is still working. At this point I’m done with the situation and agree to keep the appointment, despite feeling baffled at why it’s cheaper for the engineer to come than not to.
7pm: My friend (M) was meant to come round for a movie night and sleepover, but unfortunately got some bad news and has to postpone. I make some salad and gazpacho in an attempt to make my body forgive me for my drinks yesterday. Settle into the sofa with a big cup of hot chocolate and catch up on some TV.
10pm: Decide to finish the evening with a pamper: I put on a foot mask, run a bath, and put a face mask on.
11pm: After my spa session I’m ready to drop and head to bed.
Total: £9.50
8am: That was the best night’s sleep ever. Decide to start the day with a workout, working on my core and upper body strength. I’ve recently got strong enough to do a real push-up and manage to do four in a row this morning. This might not sound like much of an achievement, but I was previously only ever able to do push-ups from my knees, so doing a real one feels brilliant.
9.30am: Time for chores as I wait for the engineer. I water T’s plants, hoover the house, do some dishwashing and some laundry. Get a message about a colleague’s maternity leave present and shoot over £10.
10:30am: The engineer arrives! He’s really lovely, and changes the wall socket. He says the problem is likely an external one, that they can monitor for the coming week. There’s no charge as he determines that TalkTalk was responsible for the issue.
11am: Have some meatballs and pasta from our Tesco shop as a strange sort-of brunch. I don’t have plans for another few hours, so decide to spend some time planning for our housewarming; figuring out what food and drink we need to get in, and what other to-dos there are. We have quite a few vegans and veggies coming, so I’ve been trying to figure out how to make sure they enjoy it as much as the meat-eaters.
12.45pm: Walk into central York to meet my friend (A) at a cat cafe! We pre-booked tickets for £7 and it ends up being such a lovely way to spend the hour. The cats are so friendly and the cafe had just fostered some kittens, which we were able to spend five minutes with.
2:30pm: I have a wander around York after we part ways. I feel really lucky to live in such a beautiful city and I’m always discovering new places in it.
4pm: Walk home via the fishmonger, where I buy some nice looking fish for dinner costing £5.62.
5pm: I relax at home for a few hours, reading XX by Angela Chadwick. It’s really engrossing and I lose track of time, so I don’t start cooking till close to 8pm.
9pm: Walk over to the train station to pick up T. It’s lovely to see him again after a few days apart. When we get home we catch up about his time off and play a board game, before heading to bed.
Total: £22.52
Food & Drink: £136.72
Clothes & Beauty: £34.69
Home & Health: £65.60
Entertainment: £0
Travel: £0
Other: £7
Total: £244.01
Conclusion
In terms of money, I’m pretty happy with how this week went. It’s interesting reflecting on the big Tesco shop because I think it did stop me from making a bunch of impromptu purchases throughout the week, although it relied on me following the plans I’d set. It’s clear my new exercise classes are quite a big spend but if a new sport helps me stay fit, I’m all for that! I’m also not surprised that food and drink were the biggest spends by far. T and I are huge foodies, and I’m a sucker for a nice cocktail.
I’m slightly concerned by how much time I spent last week watching TV, I’m hoping that’s atypical but on reflection, I do probably spend a bit too much time watching Netflix. I’ve been trying to reignite my old love of reading, and I’m going to try to turn to that more instead of the TV remote. That’ll be helped by the fact Love Island has now come to an end.
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