Profile

I am thirty six years old and I’m a freelance digital event producer. I got a raise to $50/hour and generally work about 16-20 hours a week. I also work part time for a theatre company doing a digital murder mystery/escape room for £15 a show a few evenings a week.

Spending & Saving

January/February/March are always a little dreary in NJ, but dang does the pandemic add to it. I apologize for the large number of posts moaning about life last month and the few more that you’re likely to see next month.

But there have been a few nice things this month. I did my first performance review at work and got a $10/hour raise.

My income from work is always 30 days off, so it was a little low this month because of the two weeks of no work around Christmas last month. On the plus side, February will have some steady money coming in.

In additional to the digital event producing, I picked up a small second job in the evenings running a digital murder mystery/escape room for a British theater company that wanted to expand to American time zones. I make £15 a show, which lasts about an hour and a half. I finished up my training this last week and I can actually run two shows at a time, which is £30 per hour and a half or so.

I have to say, the murder mystery/escape room is actually a lot of fun. It’s really entertaining to watch the different groups try to solve the puzzles.

If you and your friends are into that kind of thing, you can check it out here, we actually have two different stories (with a third on the way soon), but I work in the Plymouth Point one.

Ok, enough about how the money is coming in. Where is it going?

I started the month by calculating my freelance income and contributing the max I could to my Keough retirement account. I had been setting aside the money for that as I earned it over the year in a savings account. I overestimated a bit, so I took what was left and split it between my first IRA and HSA 2021 contributions.

I also made a little bit of a knee jerk reaction to invest in some more RCL stock. It had more than doubled since I bought it in March and I suspect, in another year or so, it will still double from where it is now back to its prepandemic levels. I’m usually less impulsive on the stock front, but here we are.

At least I didn’t get wrapped up in any of that Gamestop nonsense. Woah, Nelly.

I had some pretty extensive plans to go live in Costa Rica for a few months that kept getting a little shifted. I had always planned to buy everything last minute because, pandemic, but life kept getting in the way. I was going to go in the middle of the month, but my dad needed me to dog sit. I became kind of clear little things could keep me from going forever.

But I guess it wound up being a blessing because that week delay meant I was still in the country when the government changed the travel rules to require people returning to the U.S. to have a negative Covid test that was done within 72 hours of landing.

It’s not impossible to get this done in Costa Rica, but the only place that can guarantee that turn around is a 4 hour drive from where I was planning to be without a car and is extremely expensive. If I had been already over there, I guess I just would’ve done it, but since I hadn’t left yet, I just changed my plan.

There are also a lot of clinics that are still real expensive and claim they could probably, maybe get you the results in time, but that just made me too anxious. I mean, I was planning to be over there for a good, long time (not in a sightseeing capacity or anything, just in a go live somewhere warm by the beach by myself kind of way), so who knows what the rules would’ve been by the time I tried to leave the country. Whatever. Costa Rica can wait.

I’m going to the Outerbanks for several weeks. And then perhaps I will go to some other random place in America for a while. I don’t know. I’ve kind of been trying to find a houseboat to live on for a while. I also had an interview for a job in Chicago this past week which is a total long shot, but maybe I will land there. Who knows these days?

Anyway, I used a bunch of credit card rewards to knock down the price of the AirBnB. I also bought AirBnB gift cards off Raise.com first and saved $50 that way too. The Rakuten plug in also added another $19 in cash back that I’ll see eventually when they send their next payouts.

My health insurance is astronomical because I switched last month and am still getting billed by the old company and the new company. So I am battling that out with them and my credit card company. Hopefully more than half of that will be a refund by next month.

Stage management supplies were also high. A lot of software/storage programs auto renewed. Also, to do the murder mystery/escape room, I had to have two computers. I had two computers, but trying to update the old one broke it. So I bought a pretty cheap PC after running the numbers and seeing it would pay for itself in about two weeks of work. However, my brother then gave me his old laptop which is more busted than he wants to use, but acceptably busted to me. I was able to return the PC and I should be able to reflect that refund next month too.

Other than that, my expenses were pretty low. It’s been a real slow month. I feel like between both my jobs, my hobby blogging, and my accounting classes I am actually part computer. Maybe this is the start of the robot revolution? I really don’t know.

My expenses this month:

• Beach – $1950.00
• Health Insurance – $414.11
• Stage Management Supplies – $401.68
• Food – $171.71
• Gifts – $128.64
• Gas – $68.49
• Dog – $44.78
• Clothes – $42.49
• Entertainment – $36.94
• Car – $34.11
• Postage – $28.29
• School – $14.95
• Miscellaneous – $10.65
• Credit Card Rewards – -$689.07

Total Spending in January: $2657.77

Hustling

My income was mostly from digital workshop producing. There were a few other little things too. I worked a few days doing maintenance at a local theater. I also received the government stipend at the beginning of the month. Additionally, I made a little from brokeGIRLrich, dividends, eBay, and UserTesting.

• Digital Event Producing – $2540.00
• Government Stipend – $600.00
• Stagehand Work – $135.58
• brokeGIRLrich – $308.16
• Dividends – $31.00
• eBay – $21.71
• User Testing – $10.00

Income This Month: $3646.45

Most Popular Post of the Month: Doin’It By the Decade: The Wealthy Barber Review

My Favorite Post to Write This Month: Financial Lessons from Ticket to Ride

Goals

I always feel a little depressed as uncross-out all my goals from the previous year. It’s like Sisyphus and his dang rock.

• Max out my Roth IRA. $1,372 down, $4,628 to go.
• Max out my HSA..This is on track. I’ve learned to just go a month at a time here, since sometimes my insurance changes over the course of the year due to different jobs.
• Set aside $1,000 for my new car account.
• Invest $2,000. $1,000 down. $1,000 to go. Definitely in an index for the other $1k since the first $1k was RCL.
• Save up $3,000 for post-pandemic traveling.
• Add $1,000 to the emergency savings account.
• Add $2,000 to the new car savings account.  
• Break $300,000 net worth.
• Do two things to build up my stage management skills.