Profile

I am thirty eight years old and I’m a digital event producer and very occasional freelance stage manager. I make $55/hour at the digital production company I work with. I work a variety of small side hustles and am a full time student working on a PhD in Drama.

Spending & Saving

Work is still lousy. School is a bit lousy. I kind of feel like I’m dancing while I watch Rome burn.

As I ran these numbers today, I did remind myself that I have been incredibly fortunate over the years because while I’m fairly stressed about my checking account numbers and beginning to pay rent monthly again next month, overall I am ok. I even managed to pretty much break even this month with expenses – minus my quarterly tax payments but those are already saved up in a separate saving account.

My digital producing income has been pretty terrible. There were a few more sessions this month than last month but it’s certainly concerning. On the plus side, I’ve been TAing this month and last month and should start getting paid for last month’s TAing sometime this month. All of that money is earmarked for tuition.

I did also get to step in and stage manage a ballet for a friend this month. Not really what I had in mind when I said I wanted to stage manage something this year, but technically, that is one thing off the goals list. Ideally I will actually stage manage something start to finish rather than covering a few stops of a tour, but there’s still plenty of year left to possibly manage that.

My boyfriend and I are about to run a wedding gauntlet – three weddings in two months, none of them in London, so a lot of travel costs are related to that and some of the hustling income labelled travel payback is stuff he repaid me for. Though I did also find a cheap flight to Copenhagen for later in the month to meet up with a friend for the weekend who is there on a work trip.

TfL (Transit for London) kindly hiked their rates during this cost of living crisis and it now costs about £25-30 more a month to travel around London, so that’s awesome.

British Gas also raised our prices starting next month so that is also very exciting considering I essentially froze all winter fpr like $200 a month in my little one bedroom apartment.

Sigh. But enough of the negativity. Things will be ok. I got to stage manage a dance show, which is pretty rare for me. I went to a cool little concert at a pub that was awesome. I played a lot of lovely board games. I got to teach stage management to excited (sometimes) undergraduates. I went to a cool accessibility workshop about audio description techniques. The show I work on during the weekends had a one year of shows party that was a lot of fun.

Things are ok.

Here is the expense breakdown for the month:

• Taxes – $2223.00
• Food – $598.82
• Travel – $445.06
• Utilities – $243.68
• Transit – $234.80
• Entertainment – $143.36
• Health – $125.98
• Clothes – $119.36
• Blog – $57.41
• Gym – $47.75
• Charity – $35.18
• Flat – $18.75
• Gifts – $15.34

Total Spending in April: $4,308.49 (or 2,085.49 without taxes)

Hustling

This month’s income:

• Digital Event Producing – $742.63
• Ushering – $501.43
• brokeGIRLrich – $429.94
• Travel Payback – $259.53
• Stage Managing – $256.63
• Murder Mysteries – $31.41

Income This Month: $2,221.57

Goals

These are my goals for 2023.

• Save up $10,000 for school.
• Save up £5100 for school. Bit of a decrease to £1420 this month.
• Max out Roth IRA ($6500).$1000 contributed so far.
• Max out HSA ($3850).
• Buy the pretty lamp.
• Save $2000 for vacation with BFF over the summer.
• Stage manage a show.