Profile

I am thirty two years old and I am the Production Stage Manager for the national tour of FAME. I make $700 per week and a $300 weekly stipend, though this week I only worked 10 days out of the month, which was not so awesome.

Saving & Spending

What can I say other than that I am 100% feeling all those eff 2016 memes more this month than any other. Bring on 2017! On to a happier year with less horrible stuff happening in it.

I am not sure I’ve ever spent as much as I have this month. Maybe I got a little too cocky about where I was financially.

Sigh.

Either way, what’s done is done.

The month started out pretty normal with 10 days back at work on Fame. The very last night of tour, one of the girls was leaving and I ran out of my hotel room to say good-bye to her, slipped and hit the ground hard. Oh, did I mention that I was holding my iPhone and, despite being in a good rubber case that has saved it from me many times, nothing could save it that night. And so I destroyed my first iPhone. $480 later that was replaced.

On the plus side, I was pretty ok with that then because I had a fair surplus of money that was vaguely earmarked to jump start my IRA on January 1^st. So this was a little irritating, but whatever, not a huge deal.

A little more Christmas shopping ate away a little over one hundred dollars. This includes a fight I had with the Papa John’s man when I went in to get my brother a gift certificate for $15 and he rang it up as $50 because he didn’t really speak any English and then informed me there was nothing he could do about it. I fought with him for a little while about it and then went to another Papa John’s to see if I could at least get it split into 3 gift certificates and I would give them to him for his birthday and next Christmas too and that Papa John’s was equally useless and wouldn’t split the gift certificate either. So Papa John’s just joined my McDonald’s boycott (which I’ve only broken once in the last 11 years).

I accidentally tried to make a credit card payment from the wrong bank account. I thought I had selected my primary one, but it was on my backup one and there wasn’t enough money in there to cover the payment, so I got hit with an overdraft fee from the bank and a returned payment fee from the credit card. That was terrifically stupid.

The check engine light came on in my car and to get that fixed was another $337 dollars.

At this point, I was pretty much ready to be done with December.

Then I spent $145 on graduate school application fees, with the sinking feeling that there’s no way I’m getting into either school and while totally rethinking whether or not I even want to go to one of them.

Then my family had a financial problem and I helped them out there with a loan that I don’t ever expect to get paid back. For about $4,000.

Ok, 2016, just go away.

And while I’m honestly delighted that I was in a position to help, I would just like everything to get better for everyone and go smoothly in 2017. Could that just be a thing?

However, there were a few fun things that happened this month. The rest of the Fame crew and I did this breakout room/escape the room thing in Mobile, Alabama that was actually a lot of fun.

A friend of mine from Dinosaur Train was in The Golden Girls Parody and I got to see it. I managed to see Something Rotten with my best friends before it closed (and it was pretty fantastic). I had a chance to catch up with several friends the last week of December before heading back to work. I spent an awful lot of time with my family. I binge watched probably a few too many TV shows.

My spending breakdown this month:

• Gym – $10.70
• Food – $221.66
• Healthcare – $182.00
• Travel – $32.27
• Gifts – $115.69
• College Applications – $145.00
• Charity – $75.00
• Car – $430.65
• Entertainment – $199.18
• Blog – $9.00
• Fees – $60.00
• Phone – $480.43
• Loan – $3,845.81

Total Spending in November: $5,807.39

Hustling

My income this month was made up of FAME paychecks, brokeGIRLrich and eBay. I also became an Uber driver this month, which I like way better than substitute teaching. I only got into it at the end of the month, but I think it’s something I’ll definitely do when I’m home on breaks.

• Stage Managing – $1,134.26
• brokeGIRLrich – $844.08
• eBay – $14.44
• Uber – $129.99

Income This Month: $2,122.77

Most Popular Post of the Month: 114 Side Hustles: Ways to Make More Money

My Favorite Post to Write This Month: Sometimes I Am a Niffler

Entirely Unrelated to Personal Finance

How about a little consumerism? Favorite gift of the 2016 holiday season? Mine was a 25’ measuring tape. Mine broke the last few days of tour and I asked my brother for a 16’ or 25’ measuring tape for Christmas. My dad stuffed it in the bottom of my stocking and put a 6’ measuring tape key chain on top and they both messed with me and my evident disappointment that I was trying to mask when I opened that first before getting to the bottom – and then we all laughed. So perfect delivery, exactly what I wanted, and now I also have a tape measurer keychain.

I also feel I should note that while personally 2016 keeps kicking me in the teeth, it was probably my best year as a stage manager ever. Every show I did this year taught me something new and/or brought friends into my life that I’ll probably keep in touch with forever. It was also a pretty unending stream of work too – fingers crossed that 2017 winds up the same!

Goals

• Contribute $1,000 to my Emergency Savings Account
• Max out my Roth IRA–
• Contribute $3,000 to my Down Payment Fund – I raided $2,000 out of this fund, so I managed to hit $1,000. At least the plans don’t involve actually buying a house anytime soon. So sort of fail.
• Contribute $2,000 to my New Car Fund
• Have a $1,000 Best Friend’s Wedding Fund
• Buy $1,000 of stock– And added another $1,000 this month.
• Develop 2 new resume skills –
• Track all the time I spent on my computer outside of work for 1 week and then go without a computer for a week and see how I use that time.
• Go on a vacation with a friend 
• Look for a big show to stage manage
• Run a 5k– fail.