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Welcome to Money Diaries, where we're tackling what might be the last taboo facing modern working women: money. We're asking a cross-section of women how they spend their hard-earned money during a seven-day period – and we're tracking every last penny.
This week we're with a youth worker and charity administrator who lives by herself in a tiny flat in one of the most deprived areas in Britain. She has two jobs, one of which involves a two-hour bus journey there and back. She says she spends probably too much money on food and is just starting to spend more on getting her nails done and having her hair cut more regularly. She's also in the middle of planning a holiday to Greece with one of her best friends.
Industry: Charity and Youth Worker
Age: 24
Location: Manchester
Salary: £19,390
Paycheque amount: £1,453
Number of housemates: None, but I share my bathroom with my neighbours, a lovely couple (honestly, they are meticulously clean and great for corridor conversations about the drama in our house).
Monthly Expenses
Housing costs: £350, including council tax and water
Loan payments: I don’t earn enough to pay off my student loan
Utilities: Internet £25, electricity about £50
Transportation: £60
Phone bill: £15
Savings? £150 towards Help to Buy, £25 savings account. I keep changing my mind about what I am saving up for – a laptop, phone or driving lessons maybe?
Other? Netflix £7.99, Amazon Prime £7.99, Spotify £9.99, Gym £15.99, Microsoft Office £5.99, Various charity direct debits £147
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Day One
7.30am: I cannot force my body to go back to sleep so I lie in bed and fall into a spiral of YouTube videos, eating the chocolate sitting on my bedside table.
8.30am: I get up and try and make up for what I have already eaten with a plate of toast and a piece of fruit. I read an article on renewable energy and about the possibility of switching to an environmentally friendly provider before remembering that I had an electricity meter installed by my landlord so I can’t switch. Top said meter up. £25
10.15am: Walk to work and make a list of things to buy for upcoming overnight trip with work before trudging into the town centre to buy first aid kit supplies, paper plates and other random decorations (£18.43, will claim back). Also buy a birthday present, snacks for myself and a game for my youth group while I am in the shops. £20.88
12.15pm: Spot Pound Bakery and an opportunity to grab food on the move. Two veggie sausage rolls for a quid. What a northern treasure you are, Pound Bakery. £1
4.25pm: Travel to event venue laden down with helium balloons, hula hoops, a sleeping bag and an overnight bag and realise that I have forgotten to bring tampons despite being midway through my period. Go to Boots and pick up extra toiletries. £1.32
7.45pm: Pay contribution towards event to cover accommodation and food and then go into café to heap a plate with chips, garlic bread, hummus and falafel. Pleasantly surprised there is food that I can eat – I didn’t send my dietary requirements ahead of time, so was just planning to wing it. £15
12.30am: Stay up talking to other youth workers, drinking tea and eating Oreos. Eventually return to where I am sleeping and go to bed.
Total: £63.20
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Day Two
8am: Wake up in my sleeping bag feeling slightly worse for wear. I am too old to feel excited about sleeping anywhere other than my own bed these days.
8.30am: No one turns up for the early morning workout scheduled as they have all stayed in bed a little longer. I should probably be disappointed, but instead I seize the opportunity to avoid doing exercise and walk around tidying up after the hula hoop and helium balloons games the night before. I also eat a banana.
9.30am: Everyone else gets up for breakfast and I eat with them: toast and an orange.
10.30am: I go to a seminar about ethical consumption and think about using my savings account to buy a Fairphone as a replacement for my current phone, which has a cracked screen. Remember that I only actually have £75 in that account and decide that I will be fine for a few more months. Eat more Oreos.
12.30pm: Our chef has made sweet potato and black bean soup. It is ridiculously good and I eat a little too much.
2.30pm: My post-lunch food baby is making me drowsy so I sit out the first half of the team games to write thank you cards for the volunteers at the event.
3.30pm: I buy a can of Vimto and a bag of sweets at the tuck shop since I think we may have run out of Oreos and my sugar levels are dropping. £1
5.15pm: We all eat vegetable hotpot. The cooks for the evening introduce me to ‘pie lids’ where you cook puff pastry squares separate to the filling so the top of the pie doesn’t get damp. Genius.
8.30pm: I get home and collapse into the mattress-laden goodness that is my bed.
Total: £1
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Day Three
7.30am: I haul my body out of bed and crash onto the sofa (a five-foot trek across my one-room flat) to eat Rice Krispies and watch Girls Incarcerated. It’s honestly heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time and reminds me why I do my job.
10.30am: I go to church, which is actually paid hours of work for me, although I would go anyway. I pop £1 into the children’s offering bag to go towards the kids’ club.
12.30pm: There is cake after the service for someone’s 60th birthday, but I have to gaze adoringly from afar as it all has dairy in.
1.30pm: I combine Lidl and Asda to get a load of food in for the week, including bagels, loose fruit and a huge bag of frozen prawns. I make the always unwise decision of walking down one of the aisles in Lidl which sells random stuff and end up buying that game where players have to push a button and see if they get hit in the face by a pile of squirty cream, but I’ll claim that back, since it’s for my youth group (£7.99). £27.33
2pm: When I get home, I grab a quick falafel, hummus and spinach baguette with some fresh bread I just bought at the shops and then jump on a bus to the city centre.
2.30pm: I meet up with a friend and because I didn’t eat cake earlier, we go on a hunt of the Northern Quarter to find some we can eat. It should be easy, but most of our normal spots are out of stock or closed, and we end up wandering in and out of shops along the way. I buy fabric bunting and a book from a charity shop for £4.98 and get a cashmere jumper half-price at H&M. £39.98
4.45pm: We FINALLY find a coffee shop which has what we need. Its sign calls itself a bookshop, but it has no books for sale, which definitely stops me from spending more. I decide to spend the money saved on cake – we get three different pieces for the two of us. I buy two. £6.98
7.30pm: I get home and watch more Girls Incarcerated. As I start crying at my laptop, I get a knock on the door. My neighbour has brought me leftover granola bars from the coffee chain she works at. I pretend that I haven’t just been sobbing and we share what we know about our drug dealing neighbour who’s just moved out.
Total: £80.27
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Day Four
8am: I get up and watch more Netflix while eating a rocket and salmon bagel.
9.30am: Head to the gym to train for an obstacle race which I have stupidly signed up for. I can’t currently do more than 10 push-ups but I am aiming to haul myself along a 10k course and swing myself between hanging straps like Tarzan in less than two months. I should charge people tickets to watch.
11.30am: I head to work wearing the jumper I bought yesterday. I feel like a real adult.
1.30pm: I eat lunch at my desk (hummus, veg, breadsticks and a bag of crisps).
6.30pm: I race home, get changed and hop on a bus to go to an EP launch of a band some of my colleagues are in. Travel is covered by my weekly bus pass again.
7.45pm: I finally get to the coffee shop the launch is being held in, buy a bottle of cider and a brownie and sit down with friends to enjoy the music. £5.50
10pm: I head home. It takes a couple of buses and the second is delayed so I end up buying some chickpea snacks at a shop in the city centre while waiting. They are awful; I don’t even finish the bag. 80p
11.40pm: Arrive home, sleep.
Total: £6.30
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Day Five
8am: I’ve got a day off! I slowly get up, making the same breakfast as the previous morning, and planning my day.
10am: I head to a local museum. It’s within walking distance for me and is free entry. I dropped history before GCSE so I’m not an expert, but I still enjoy wandering around, reading the signs and listening to Spotify on my phone. The gift shop is great, and I end up buying a couple of vintage-style fridge magnets and a jigsaw of a pile of pick and mix. £8.49
11.15am: I end up heading into a charity shop again on the way to my gym and buying more books. I have a problem. £1.80. I also buy some loose carrots in Asda on the way past for my lunches this week. 32p
12.30pm: I go to a class at the gym I’ve not been to before. The instructor is lovely and even takes five minutes at the end of the session to give me tips on how to improve my technique for doing crunches.
1.30pm: Pop into Aldi on the way back from the gym to buy protein bars and end up picking up an avocado and some poppadoms too. £4.55
2pm: I get home, eat avocado toast and my poppadoms and have a nap on my sofa while watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
4.15pm: Some might say that cookies are not a meal. However, I ‘test’ enough of them while testing out my plug-in oven to not need to eat dinner.
7.30pm: I wrap up the day watching a film on Amazon Prime.
Total: £15.16
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Day Six
6.15am: I’m at my other job today and it feels super early, so I delay getting up by watching YouTube in bed for as long as I can and then grab a bagel and head out the door to work.
8.25am: I arrive at the office early, and end up drinking tea and reading some more of the book I’ve been getting through on the bus. I’ve also brought the cookies I baked last night, and end up eating one before I put them on the side in the communal kitchen.
12.15pm: I eat vegetables, breadsticks and hummus while laying out all the pieces of the jigsaw I bought yesterday in an available room at work. We finished another jigsaw a month or two back, and it was an oddly relaxing way to spend our lunch hours.
3.30pm: A friend at work lends me a book he has been talking about for a while. The nearly two-hour commute to get to this job is a pain, but I do get through a bunch of books sitting on buses.
5.30pm: The group I normally run on this night for my youth work job has been cancelled as all the young people who come are on holiday or revising, so I go straight home.
7pm: I cook stir fry with a variety of veg I have lying around and watch more Girls Incarcerated. I also try ringing my family home but almost all of my family are out, so I have a conversation with my brother and go to bed pretty early.
Total: £0
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Day Seven
6.15am: Another day, another bagel. My bus pass ran out last night so I buy a new one on my phone at the bus stop. £15
8.45am: I get to work and just about have time to grab a cup of tea and set up my desk before the day starts.
12.30pm: I brought in overnight oats for lunch. It’s meant to be a breakfast dish, but I can’t stomach wholegrain that early in the morning and it’s super easy to pop in my bag for work. I eat it adding more pieces to the jigsaw.
2.30pm: I try to subtly eat an apple while on reception. This is a terrible idea, because unlike biscuits, I can’t swallow it quickly when the phone rings. I almost choke on a couple of occasions. This is why I should eat less fruit and more biscuits.
5.15pm: I go to my hairdressers for an after-work appointment. I’ve had it pretty much the same mid-back length since I was about 13 and I found out when looking at shorter hair that if you get more than 12 inches cut off, you can donate it to charities who make wigs for kids who need them. So I go for a full snip to just below my chin. It’s pretty dramatic, but I hope it looks okay. £35
6.45pm: Still on the fence about whether I look edgy or hitting a mid-life crisis, I call my friends who invite me over to get takeaway.
7.30pm: When we get back to their house with the pizza, their dog recognises me, which reassures me that the hair loss hasn’t changed me too much. They pay the majority of the pizza cost. £3.50
9.30pm: They drive me back to my flat to save me getting the bus, and I update social media with the before and after photos.
10.30pm: I go to sleep with my phone on the pillow next to me watching YouTube.
Total: £53.50
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The Breakdown
Food/Drink: £86.86
Entertainment: £10.29
Clothes/Beauty: £76.30
Travel: £15
Other: £30.98
Total: £219.43
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