Accountability: May 2025 – brokeGIRLrich

Profile

I am forty years old, an occasional digital event producer and freelance stage manager. I work as a TA and an adjunct. I also work a variety of side hustles and am a full-time student working on a PhD in Drama.

Spending & Saving

Last month I thought that this month would be expensive. It was. It was also a little crazy balancing school and work life, especially finishing up the student theatre festival and then doing all of the grading for the term – always a fun thing.

At least a lot of it, I had planned for. I knew it was going to be expensive, so I saved up for most of these things. The trip to Egypt with my boyfriend, brother and sister-in-law is fully booked. We just need to figure out how to get to and from the airport and how to feed ourselves.

The BFF trip is fully booked except for one West End ticket and paying for an airport transfer, which is booked but has to be paid for at the hotel. And these two vacations combined were about as ridiculously expensive as I thought they would be, even though I did a pretty decent job finding deals, etc. I did all the booking for those things, so you can see in the income a balance in what she paid me back for the trip. The BF had actually paid for most of the Egypt trip last month.

But YOLO right? Hopefully by next summer I will be fully employed and then, though I will hopefully have a reliable stream of money, I will not have this kind of time.

School wise I feel like exhausted and burnt out and want to both quit and set fire to my Macbook and my thesis. So… that's healthy, I guess. But I continue to write that thing. I guess I feel like I may actually finish it eventually. Had a small breakdown at a supervisor meeting this month with the supervisor I am most honest with and pretty much expressed that and he went ‘but you're almost done!' And I went…. ‘but am I? Am I really?' So that's where I'm at. It's been kind of a rough winter and spring. Not like the worst ever but it's all just felt a bit unrelenting and I've been struggling a big this month. I think it's all caught up to me. I've reached the point where I would tell any other PhD student to just take a step back from it all for a week or so, so that's what I've been trying to do.

I am concerned that I feel dumber than I've ever been and like I'm actively getting dumber by the day. So that's a fun feeling too.

I spent the last week of May in New Jersey on the family camping trip, and though I have been working on my thesis in the mornings, most evenings I've been spending with friends and family, but in a much more low-key way than the last two trips. Which I feel a little bad about because I would like to see more people but I also sort just needed a slower pace this time.

I got slammed on train fees this month. I have no idea why they were so unusually high.

I paid my annual driving insurance fee for my car in the U.S. Mona the Matrix now has the absolute bare minimum of coverage on her these days – just enough to keep her street legal. If anything happens, it will be the end of her. She is also making a real crazy sound, which might also be the end of her. I suppose we'll see over Christmas.

I failed my first attempt at a UK driving test, which I hear is really very common, so I will be reattempting it at the end of June. I found a cheaper way to obtain a car to take to the test this time, thank goodness, but I'm still a little irritated with myself because that's like another £150-200 to go take the test again.

My partner is going to come with me to that one and we are going to spend the night by the ocean so whether I pass or not we will still have a nice little overnight getaway. That added to the entertainment expenses this month, along with paying for tickets to Cocktails in the City (always a summer highlight!) and we bought Frosthaven, a big, crazy boardgame we will be playing for months. I did not have to pay for the game, so I bought several of the things we needed to organise it, along with an app we like that dramatically reads the story text for us. I also splurged with the other BFF and bought the Ticket to Ride around the world expansion for the game we like to play together remotely. We have been very entertained by the Japan map so far.

I am hopeful that I squeezed all these big expenses in before my last TAing paycheck because things become a bit tighter over the summer the last two years. I'm trying to play for it a bit better this year and I'm hopeful I may get to start a 20 hours a week research assistant job in September which would be a pretty ideal way to finish up the PhD time at Greenwich. Hopefully I'll hear more about that in July or August.

I can definitely say, thank goodness for preplanning, or this would not have been an option. Most of the expenses this month came from my savings account for the insurance, and my travel savings account.

So that's life these days. I am also reminded again this month about the power of investing because as you can see, my net worth should logically have gone down a bit this month and instead, because the stock market is apparently rallying at the moment, it's not. Now I just need the pound to dollar conversion to go back to it's normal 25% instead of 33% extra and that would be great.

Expenses this month:

• BFF Visit – $3923.57
• Egypt – $2810.61
• Car Insurance – $952.95
• Rent – $841.26
• UK Driving Test Expenses – $451.76
• Entertainment – $335.37
• Trains – $342.57
• Utilities – $160.19
• Blog – $117.00
• Gifts – $108.18
• Uber -$84.93
• Council Tax – $76.72
• Gas – $70.55
• TfL – $56.38
• Charity – $43.07
• Clothes – $39.99
• American Driving License Renewal – $25.05
• Home – $17.73

Total Spending in May:  $10,457.88 

Hustling

This month's income:

• BFF Repayment – $2066.46
• Adjuncting – $1427.51
• Teaching Assistant – $675.18
• Digital Producing – $247.50
• Murder Mysteries – $242.58
• BF Repayment – $90.51

Income This Month: $4,749.74

Goals

Onwards to the goals!

1. Max Out My Roth IRA for 2024:Done.
2. Max Out My Roth IRA for 2025: $7000 to go.
3. Max Out My HSA– $4300 to go.
4. Go to Egypt with My Boyfriend and Family: This is paid for. Vacation is in August.
5. Best Friend Summer Adventures: This is also paid for. Vacation is in July.
6. Sunshine Getaway –This is officially pushed to the fall. We are aiming for some sunshine and cocktails over a long weekend to the cheapest decent all-inclusive we can find in Europe the week after my doctoral defense – whenever that winds up being scheduled.
7. Save $1,200 for my US Car Insurance by June
8. Buy a Used Car in the UK– I currently have $10,000 in a new car account because my Toyota Matrix is on her last legs. I was saving to purchase a new car, but instead I'm looking to buy a used car in the UK after I finish my driving lessons for approximately £5,000 or less.
9. Pay for a Graduate Visa– this is going to cost around £4000 and I have $6000 left in my tuition account, so this should be good to go. We will see at the end of the year.