bills, bills, bills #20

A week in the life and wallet of a young NYC admin worker with a brokerage account and a farm share

Bills, Bills, Bills is a monthly series of anonymous money diaries from theatre workers curated and edited by Jenna Clark Embrey. The full archive is available here.

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editor’s note

While editing this diary, the columnist and I had a useful back-and-forth regarding their salary and status as an “exempt” worker (i.e., not eligible for overtime pay). Employers can argue for certain exceptions to be made, but the 2023 threshold for NYC was $58,500 — which is why you may see job postings listed at exactly this amount — and any workers making less than this must keep a weekly timesheet and receive overtime pay for hours worked beyond 40 hours. Make sure you know what that salary threshold is in the state and county where you work! When you read this column, it will be 2024, which means it’s entirely possible that legislation was passed in your area changing this threshold. Let this column serve as an announcement: as of January 1, 2024, the exempt salary threshold in New York City is $62,400. Get a raise or get that overtime, friends!

The month’s columnist opted to donate their honorarium to the National Network of Abortion Funds.

Job/Position: I am a senior associate in the fundraising department of an Off-Broadway theatre.

Location: NYC

Age: 24

Yearly Income: Shortly after recording this money diary, I got a raise from $47,000 to $53,000 a year plus a $100 remote work stipend each month. It ends up being about $2,881.64 a month, paid every other week, after taxes. I also do side projects that sometimes pay, like a friend paid me $500 to help him run social media for a theatre experience he created this summer. My mom also has a recurring transfer of $175 into my account every month. When my parents stopped paying my rent after college, my mom kept that transfer to help out. I try not to count on it in case they decide to stop, but it’s nice to have.

Debt: I have $29,514.48 in direct federal student loans. My parents paid for most of my school that wasn’t covered by scholarships through education savings accounts they and my grandparents had paid into as well as money they had on hand. I took out about $7,000 a year and tried to pay off the interest during school, but didn’t really stay on top of it. I also have a credit card that I pay off every other week when I get my paycheck.

Savings: I have approximately $2,480 in a ROTH IRA and about $10,000 in a personal savings account. The money in those accounts is primarily because my parents paid my rent all through college and for about six months afterwards (I graduated in May 2020) but I was working during that time so I saved a lot of money, and put my stimulus checks into savings and the ROTH. I also have nearly $100,000 in a brokerage account (I don’t totally understand how it works, but about $82,000 is actively invested and $16,000 in cash) which was left to me when a relative died two years ago. I have never taken any money out of it, but it’s a huge safety net that I am really lucky to have. I know with 100% certainty that if I ever had any financial difficulties, my parents would happily back me up, so I can take financial risks, like quitting a job I’m unhappy at without something else lined up. 

Checking: $2,307.73

Monthly Bills:

• Rent: I pay half our rent and my share is $1,100. 

• WiFi: $37.50 (split with roommate)

• Gas/Electric: about $50 (split with roommate)

• Cloud Storage: $3.98 for 200 GB of storage across two google accounts and $2.99 for 200 GB of iCloud Storage

• Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Spotify, Amazon Prime, Disney+, The New York Times, NYT Cooking, and NYT Crossword: $0. My parents have all these accounts and I use theirs. I’m also logged into a friend’s Paramount Plus account.

• Cell Phone: $0. I’m on my parents’ plan and I do not know how much it is.

• Health Insurance: $0. My work covers 100% of my insurance (medical, dental, and vision, which was great when I had to get new contacts).

• Patreon: $3 to a podcast I enjoy

• Zipcar: $9. I got this membership last month so I could make one drive. I haven’t decided yet if I want to keep the account, but I did get charged for this month.

• Recurring Donations: $10.90 to The Bail Project, $10 to the National Network of Abortion Funds, and $5 to an advocacy group in my hometown working against police violence.

I also have my bank set up to automatically transfer $300 from my checking to my savings every month to get myself in the habit of paying off my loans, since my student loan payments will be about that much when the pause ends. I should be putting that money into my ROTH IRA but my ROTH keeps losing money so I don’t feel motivated to put more money in there, even though I recognize that’s exactly the opposite of how I should be managing my retirement investments.

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Friday

I worked from home today so I got up around 8am, showered and made coffee. We have an espresso maker and my summer fave has been two shots of espresso over ice, oat milk, and some lavender syrup I made. I had Cheerios with sliced bananas for breakfast. 

I started work at 10am, had a quick Zoom call with someone from marketing to remind me how to send emails through our bulk email system, and then I primarily worked on folding letters and stuffing envelopes for a big mailing I’m doing. I ate a mozzarella, tomato, and basil sandwich for lunch. The tomato and basil are from a farm share that I joined for the first time this year. I paid about $600 earlier in the summer to join, which gets me fresh, organic veggies from a farm upstate for 22 weeks in the summer and into the fall. I am somewhat happy with the investment, but it makes meal planning hard because I don’t know what I’m going to get every week.

I finished up work at 2pm because it was a summer Friday (the last of the summer, sadly), filmed a TikTok promoting an event I’m doing on Saturday, then went for a quick bike ride. After the bike ride I worked a little bit longer, sealing about 200 envelopes (using the water and paper towel method). I usually try not to work late, and my boss makes it very clear that I shouldn’t, but sometimes I do, especially when it’s basic tasks like folding letters and sealing envelopes. 

Later one of my friends came over to my apartment. We ordered Thai takeout, picked it up, and ate in a park. We both had fried rice and Thai iced tea; the total with tip was $48.20, which I covered. We came back to the apartment and hung out with my boyfriend for a while when he got home from work. When my friend left we ate Cheez-Its (which are like $10 for a box these days, which is ridiculous) and went to bed around 1am.

Daily Total: $48.20

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Saturday

My boyfriend left for work around 10am, which is when I woke up. He told me that Walgreens had slots available for the Omicron booster before he left, so I made an appointment for Thursday and then made coffee. My past shots have really given me a lot of side effects, so I had to be very strategic about scheduling. I have to work in the office on Wednesday, there’s a Board meeting on Thursday, and then I fly to my parents’ house on Saturday. (They bought my plane tickets.) I scheduled the shot for Thursday afternoon so hopefully I’ll have most of the side effects on Friday. I ate my leftover fried rice for lunch, then took the train to go thrifting with a friend. The train costs $2.75 and I spent $66.94 on two pairs of pants, a top, and a pair of new tights. Then I took the bus, another $2.75, to the park where the event I organized was taking place. A couple people who had seen the TikTok I made yesterday came, which was exciting for me. One of my friends there wanted ice cream from an ice cream truck but didn’t have cash, so I gave her $3, then I took the train home, another $2.75. I made stir fried tomatoes and eggs for dinner, which is a Chinese dish, with tomatoes from the farm share. 

Daily Total: $78.19

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Sunday

We woke up around noon and had scrambled eggs and roasted tomatoes (again, from the farm share, they gave us so many) and coffee. After a few household tasks, we went to see the matinee of Into the Woods. I had already seen it, but I had gotten my boyfriend tickets for his birthday. They were $357.50 in total (paid before this week), which is more money than I have ever spent on theatre tickets. I don’t see shows on Broadway a lot, I mostly see things that I can get comp tickets for or at non-profits that have deals for young people, but a birthday and Sondheim are good reasons to spend more than usual. We took the train both ways which was $2.75 times two. After the show we went home and decided to make curry for dinner because it would use up a lot of the veggies from our farm share. I went grocery shopping to get the things we were missing for curry and to pick up a few other essentials like milk and trash bags. The total was $53.58 which we split evenly, so my share was $26.79. We used potatoes, bell peppers, onion, garlic, Thai basil, and kale in the curry, all from the farm share. 

Daily Total: $32.29

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Monday

I got up at 8:30am and had coffee, toast, and more eggs and farm share tomatoes for breakfast. During the summer, I volunteer with a non-profit that runs a free kayaking program on the Hudson River. As volunteers, we go on kayaking trips up and down the river together, which is what we were doing on this day. I packed up my backpack and rode my bike down to our launch point, getting there at about 10:30am. We all packed our boats and headed out around noon. We paddled to New Jersey and when we got there we split some pizzas. My share was $12.63. Then we paddled back and hung out and swam in the river for a while. I left around 5pm and biked home. It takes me about 45 minutes to bike home, but longer when I’m tired after a day of kayaking. I started a load of laundry, which costs $4 ($2 wash, $2 dry) at the machines in the basement of our building, but we have a laundry card that we pre-load which already had money on it. My boyfriend got home while I was doing laundry. We had corn from the farm share for dinner and a fruit tart he made today for dessert. Then we folded laundry together.

Daily Total: $12.63

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Tuesday

I woke up around 8am and had espresso, iced with oat milk, and cereal with banana slices for breakfast. I opened up Slack and my work email a little early, at 9:30am, to check in with my boss because we had a new employee on our team starting that day. I cleaned out my personal email until 10am, when I read through all the performance reports and donation reports from over the weekend. I spent most of the morning in Zoom calls with my new coworker doing some training and helping out with other first day things. I was promoted recently, so I’m transferring a lot of my current responsibilities to the new coworker and transitioning to focusing on some bigger picture projects. I normally do not have many meetings at work, but I was on Zoom most of the day today. I also talked to my mom on the phone. I was supposed to fly home to visit my parents on Saturday, but both my parents tested positive for Covid so I wanted to touch base with her about the trip.

After work I rode my bike up to a local park where I picked up our farm share for this week. We got corn, a pumpkin, basil, green beans, Swiss chard, arugula, kale, potatoes, shallots, garlic, tomatoes, etc. I was supposed to have a meeting with my friend who I had the event with on Saturday to discuss next steps for his project, but he had an emergency at work so he had to work late and we rescheduled for next week. I was glad to have that time cleared up because it meant I could cook a bigger dinner, which was really important because the fridge is overwhelmed with veggies from the farm share. I made pesto with farm share basil and then made pasta to go with it. I also cooked green beans from last week’s farm share with some garlic from the farm and roasted cherry tomatoes from last week’s farm share. We had a friend staying with us for a few days starting that night and they arrived around 10pm and my boyfriend got home not long after that. They both had the leftovers from the dinner I cooked. We went to bed around 12:30am or 1am.

Daily Total: $0

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Wednesday

I usually work in the office on Wednesdays to mail acknowledgement letters to donors. That is a task I am passing off to my new coworker, so today I was going in to train her. I got up around 7:30am and had espresso and cereal with banana slices for breakfast. I’ve ridden my bike to work a few times this summer, but I did not want to be sweaty the first time I met my new coworker in person, so I took the train ($2.75) which takes about 45 minutes depending on how long my transfer takes. I got to the office around 9:30am and took a rapid test. We have a big supply that the productions use, but they’re available for admin staff to use when we’re in the office so I usually take one when I go in if I haven’t already taken one at home. Masks are required in the theatre but people do not wear them as consistently as I’d like in the office which is one of the reasons I choose not to work in the office every day. Except for sending mail, there are not many parts of my job that I need to physically be in the office to do.

When my new coworker arrived I gave them a tour and then we got their desk space, computer, and phone set up. We do not have an IT person or an office manager so it was a team effort to track down a chair and make the computer and everything work. I did a bit more training with them in the morning, then our boss came in and we all went out to lunch, which work paid for. In the afternoon I worked on my own projects for a while then did more training until the end of the day. We left a couple minutes before 6pm to take acknowledgement letters to the mailbox and then I took the train home ($2.75). I got home a bit after 7pm and immediately called one of my friends who lives in another city and we talked for about two and a half hours. When we got off the phone I ate a very late dinner of leftover rice and curry from Sunday. My boyfriend got home while I was eating and he ended up eating other leftovers with me while we chatted with our house guest. We all went to bed probably around 12:30am or 1am again.

Daily Total: $5.50

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Thursday

I got up around 8am and had yogurt with banana slices, granola, peanut butter, and assorted other toppings for breakfast, with coffee of course. I didn’t finish the yogurt and stuck it in the fridge, promptly forgetting about it. I had a few meetings on Zoom in the morning, during one of which my computer quit unexpectedly. I’ve been having issues with my computer for a while, it’s nearly four years old and because I use my personal computer for work it gets a lot of use. After my meetings, I ate leftovers for lunch and replied to emails. With my promotion I do a lot more interaction with individual donors which I’ve really enjoyed. I get my paychecks every other Thursday, which is when I take care of paying any upcoming bills and pay off any balance on my credit card from the previous two weeks. I paid our energy bill which was $116.98 for the past month. Normally we split those bills evenly, but my boyfriend was away almost the entire month, so we split it 70/30 and my share was $81.89.

I let my coworkers know that I was heading out around 1:30pm to head to my booster appointment and that I’d be back online, in the office, by 3pm. I took the train ($2.75) near my office and went to my appointment, where I discovered that I had made the appointment for the day before and they didn’t have time to see me. I was frustrated with myself, but glad people are getting their booster shots! From there I just headed into the office a little early and my boss and I set up for our Board Meeting that afternoon. I also took a rapid test in the office like I usually do, plus we asked everyone coming to the Board Meeting to take one. I got to put my technical theatre skills to use taping down the cable for the phone we used for people to conference in. Before the meeting, my boss and I talked about the issues I’ve had with my computer and he told me that the organization could not buy me a new computer, but that they could reimburse me $900 towards a new one if I bought it myself. That was honestly a better deal than I was expecting, so now I just have to decide what to get. I take minutes for board meetings, which I’ve really enjoyed because it allows me to learn more about the organization, as well as how Boards work. I left work around 8pm and rode the train ($2.75) home, where I rediscovered my morning yogurt and finished that for dinner around 9:15pm. My boyfriend and his friend got home not too long after that and we went to bed around midnight.

Daily Total: $5.50

Total Weekly Spending: $182.31