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Edited to remove the tables because when I obsessively checked this post on my phone I couldn't read them?? Also I tried to, but was prevented from, editing the title. I know it looks sanctimonious but that's just one small part of my personality I swear. D:
❤️ Section 1: Assets and Debt
Total Net Worth: $30,875 - all equity.
Retirement Balance: $0 for me; $20,500 for my husband in the state pension program for teachers. (My partner, L, has been paying into the state teachers' pension system for 5 years. For most of my 20s, I either worked at very low-paying jobs, or supported myself and others on a teacher’s salary, so no retirement for me. My current job does not have a retirement program, but one of my goals for this year is to either start a Roth IRA or get a new job with a 401k match… or maybe both?)
Savings Account Balance: $23,733 We’re moving this summer to a city closer to our families, and are saving all we can for a down payment on a dreamy spot. After we move, some amount of what’s left over will go into a retirement fund, and the rest will stay in this HYSA as our emergency fund. For us, three months of expenses, including childcare, is about $18,000.
Checking Account Balance: $455
Credit Card Debt: n/a, pay off each month
Student Loan Debt: $80,000 for L’s undergrad and MAT. $18,000 for my undergrad and (unfinished) MAT. (My undergrad degrees were mostly covered by the Pell Grant, scholarships, and a $10,000 529 from my parents. L was a nontraditional student - didn’t start undergrad until he was 24 - so none of his was covered. Most of my debt is for a MAT program I dropped out of after one year. I was trying to find any way out of teaching at the time (it is demanding, all-consuming, and carceral at once) and thought a PhD would be my only route. When I got my current job I promptly left the program and any dreams of a PhD behind.)
Equity: $83,875 (This number is from an online equity calculator, and is for our house in a very popular neighborhood in a very popular city. Our outstanding debt on the house is $295,000. We put our whole savings down in 2019, which was $9,000 at the time.)
❤️ Section 2: Income
Monthly Take Home: My base pay is $65,000, and L’s is $45,000. I worked a side gig last year that totaled about $10k in additional compensation; all of it went to savings so we don't budget for it. My take home is $4096/month for my full time job, and my current side gig income (grant writing) is variable, between $300 and $600 a month. L’s take home is $2262/month. My health insurance is paid in full by work. L’s insurance and B’s come out of L’s paycheck, as does L’s retirement contribution.
Income Progression: I’ve been working since I was 15 years old, moved out for college at 18, and paid my own bills starting that year. I won’t include that money here though (it was like $12,000 a year as a college student, for reference). Income below starts when I graduated with two BAs that had nothing to do with teaching.
Year 1: $15,600 (part time ABA therapist, full time baby anarchist)
Year 2: $32,000 (year 1 teacher salary: I accepted a spot in Teach for America for this giant salary even though I thought it was an obnoxious neoliberal org. Yes, I was also obnoxious at the time.)
Year 3: $33,000 (teacher, step increase)
Year 4: $34,000 (teacher, step increase)
Year 5: $35,000 (teacher, step increase)
Year 6: $15,000 (community organizer; at the time this felt like a dream job)
Year 7: $20,000 (community organizer & cafe worker)
Year 8: $40,000 (back to teaching, felt rich; this includes a side hustle writing grants on the side for $50 an hour)
Year 9: $45,000 (left teaching for my current job, quit the grants side hustle)
Year 10: $55,000 (got a raise, got pregnant)
Year 11: $65,000 (got a raise and promotion, had a baby)
Year 12: $75,000 (was promoted again in January but waiting on the pay increase to hit, hopefully with backdating. This money diary doesn’t reflect this salary as it hasn’t been reflected in my check yet)
❤️ Section 3: Expenses
Mortgage/PMI/Insurance: $2,110
Retirement Contribution: n/a (L’s retirement is pulled out of his check before he receives it: it’s $169 a month. Right now, I don’t have a retirement contribution)
Savings Contribution: $1000 to main savings, $400 to sinking fund (This is a super aggressive goal for us and is only possible because our childcare costs are covered by work)
Debt Payments: n/a right now (We have student loans to the tune of $100k but haven’t been paying a dime since they were paused due to COVID. But then the other day I checked and saw they've gained interest? Should we be paying them then? WWJD? I legit don’t know.)
Electric: $130
Internet: $100
Cellphone: $65 (For L & I both. We are on a bigass family plan with 40 gajillion other people.)
Subscriptions: $45 ($10 Spotify; $10 Youtube music; $2.99 Apple data (Why?!); $22 NYT (for newspaper and cooking app); also have a split subscription to the New Yorker with bestie F but we paid for a yearly deal.)
Car Payment and Insurance: $150 for a car payment; $202 for insurance (Insurance covers both of our used cars and my dad’s used handicap van. Our car payment is for our used Honda. We only owe $6,850 on the car and I’m back and forth on whether to pay it off with savings)
Medical/Therapy: $0 (My therapist is $140 a session, and I just started seeing her again once a month, but this is reimbursed by work. I also get an inhaler at least twice a month - that’s reimbursed too, costs $60 total.)
Misfits Market: $120 (For a weekly box, which really helps us cut down on overall grocery cost)
Gym membership: $30 (For my intense local yoga studio’s app which is so great in the winter. We also run and bike a lot, as long as it’s warm enough)
Donations: $100 (We give monthly to our local Democratic Socialists of America; the Working Families Party; and a small, local org. I’m also on an organizing committee for that org. We’ll give them one big gift of at least $250 this year, probably in May. I support a couple organizations with grant writing and grant-finding support as much as I can, which usually amounts to a few hours a month.)
Childcare: $0 B goes to a very precious Montessori preschool, and we can walk him there. It’s pricey af ($1300/month). The other $200 is to account for some babysitting from my little sister when L or I have to work weird hours. For now, work reimburses this full amount as a COVID perk; if that changes, we will have to cut costs significantly.
House cleaner: $160 (They come twice a month and charge $80 each time.)
❤️ Section 4: Money Diary
NOTE: We are masked and afraid everywhere we go.
✨DAY 1: THURSDAY✨
4:20 am: Good morning world! I shuffle into the kitchen in my panties and my slippers to fill up the gooseneck kettle. I recently got into pour over coffee even though it’s quite a commitment. With a toddler, a full-time job, and a Libra sun, I don’t really have time for meditative morning routines. This lengthy, half-naked coffee regimen is my closest attempt. As soon as I get the coffee brewing, our 18 month old, B, starts making noise. I open the door and see he’s got his pacifier in his mouth and his pillow in his arms. He wants to lay with Dada. I help him get in the bed with my husband, L, as quietly as possible. Last week L was super sick and we thought for sure he had picked up COVID. Blessedly all of our tests came back negative, but on the heels of that, he started having major tooth pain and had to have an emergency tooth extraction, AND he got an ear infection as he was coming down from whatever virus he had. I hate it :(
I get dressed and do some chores while they snooze to ease L's morning. I start the diaper laundry (usually his job - we use cloth), put away the dishes, start the Eufy vacuum, and get B and L’s breakfasts together: sunbutter and a little bit of syrup on some banana pancakes I prepped earlier this week.
6:30 am: B and L are up! The hour before we take B to preschool is kind of a marathon. L eats with B (and supervises his syrup consumption) as I clean out some more dirty diapers, brush my teeth, make another cup of coffee, strip our sheets, spray my hair with water to refresh the curl, return a few group texts, and wash some breakfast dishes. Somewhere in here I also eat two boiled eggs with Everything But the Bagel seasoning, and a bunch of grapes.
I help L get B loaded up in the car, and just as they pull off, my parents Facetime me. They’re calling to see B but are polite enough to talk to me for a few minutes. They live a few hours away, and are divorced, but cohabitating. The full story is long and spiritual for me so I’ll spare you. Anyway, my mom and I talk for a while about this couch she thinks I should buy from one of her friends, but it’s two hours away and we’d have to rent a U-Haul, so I think we’ll pass. I do hate our current couch though. Please drop comfy toddler- and dog-friendly recommendations in the comments!
8:15 am: I set out to walk the dog and listen to the Daily’s recent update on the coronavirus. Donald G. McNeill, Jr., says we’re in this through the summer, which is a bummer on the personal and global front, but I suppose it could be worse??? Maybe?? As soon as they finish talking I switch over to You’re Wrong About. I’m deep in the Jessica Simpson series and highly recommend this pod for any other nerdy, lefty, kinda burnt out millennials, especially those of you that are queer or queer-adjacent. Once home, I take my whole operation onto the front porch to work, since the cleaner will be here soon and I don’t want to crowd her in this time of COVID. I LOVE a clean house and I love paying someone else to do the big stuff, which is a recent luxury for us.
11:00 am: I’ve been working steadily in my email and google docs for a couple hours now, and it’s COLD out here. The cleaner leaves and I am grateful to go back into the heat. I Venmo her $80 for the cleaning (included in monthly expenses). I take a break from work and check out the job boards. My current job is the best, and highest-paying, gig I’ve ever had, but I’m planning to leave some time this year for several reasons. The premier reason: I recently learned that I’m qualified for several positions that pay over $100k at similar organizations. With that kind of money we could pay off our student loans, help our families out more, make sizable donations, and L could explore a career outside of teaching without freaking about a slight cut in his pay for a few years as he finds his niche. Or - maybe he’ll get into Edtech somehow and we’ll join Resource Generation. Who knows.
12:30 pm: I have a quick break and pull together lunch: half a cheese quesadilla, a big bowl of Smitten Kitchen’s roasted tomato soup, and a LimonCello LaCroix. L is on his planning period and asks me to edit his most recent job application, and I oblige. Since we’re both job hunting, I ask him if I can buy a resume template and guide on Etsy. I have sworn off online shopping for the year to curb my impulse spending, but he says we’ll just count this one as his purchase. Great news because I hate the formatting of my resume from 2016 and don’t want to fix it myself! $9.95
3:30 pm: My Zooms are over, my inbox is at 0, and I put up my out of office message because I’m taking the day off tomorrow to work on my resume and do some things to prep our house for sale. My high-functioning anxiety created an ambitious backwards timeline for this process back in December, and that timeline currently runs my life. I work for a few more minutes to tie up loose ends, and then walk O to a nearby shop to buy my favorite candle, curbside-style. When I get there the owner gives me some percentage off because it’s slightly discolored from the sun. Huzzah! $27.25, marked down from $40
4:45 pm: My angel of a baby sister, J, who lives just a few blocks away and is in a pod with us, comes to hang out with B for an hour so L can rest. I head to my good friend D’s place for my investment overalls appointment. She's going to alter their awkward wide leg into more of a tapered, mom jean shape. I have a capsule wardrobe which means I’ll wear these babies at least once a week, and plus I get to pay my friend, so I’m fine with the extra expense. When I arrive, she and her partner have the fire pit going, and we drink a couple glasses of wine together, yet more than 6 feet apart. I learn they are planning to move to the same new city as us in the next couple of years and legit cry happy tears.
Afterwards, I head out to pick up dinner for tonight. We are getting burgers from L’s favorite place as a treat. On my way, the WOLF MOON appears over the water and my stomach does triple flips. Then I pick up our dinner: a veggie burger with eggplant jam and kale for me; a real-meat burger with mushrooms, bacon, swiss, carmelized onion, and horseradish mayo for L; and an appetizer plate with pretzels, pimento cheese, onion jam, pickles, and chips for B. Delicious and unhealthy. The total is $34.54.
6:30: Home and eating dinner. B loves his meal, especially the “chokes.” He calls pretzels “chokes” because when L first started feeding them to him, I worried aloud that he would choke every time. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how a pretzel almost took out George W. Bush. Turns out our toddler is better at chewing than George W. Bush.
After dinner, L gives B a bubble bath while I do my own, very minimal, bedtime routine. Then L and I lay down with B to put him to sleep. He has a floor bed, which is a Montessori thing I learned about on mom blogs. L is a very hot and talented woodworker, so he took my floor bed dream to the next level by building a lovely house-shaped frame. The top beam is wrapped in twinkle lights and fake ivy. It’s a nice place to sleep, and we pass out here all the time.
10:30 pm: L wakes me up and we wander to our own bed.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 71.74
✨ DAY 2: FRIDAY✨
4:15 am: Wake up and go look at the clock. Decide this is a silly time to get up on a day off, drink some water, and go lay back down. But once in bed all I can think about is how much I want to read the news, organize my resume, and update this money diary. This is the problem with falling asleep at toddler time. So I get up again at 4:45, make my coffee, read a New Yorker article about Biden’s pandemic response on my phone, and sit down to work on this diary.
6:00 am: L wakes up! He works on breakfast for himself and B and I start meal planning for the month. This is one of my best and most recent life hacks. I found that if I chart out our cooking, weekly takeout, and leftovers at the start of the month, we save lots of money and are so much less stressed about the labor that goes into feeding ourselves. I pull out Smitten Kitchen Every Day and use it to inspire the month’s meals. So quaint to cook from an actual BOOK.
6:45 am: B walks out of our room and announces that he drank my water off the side table. He’s so proud! And so ready to eat. While he eats breakfast, I snack on some grapes and, at B’s request, blast 7 Days A Week by They Might Be Giants. This is the consummate children’s song for any household that dreams of a self-determined world. Over the next hour I take B to school; make myself a real breakfast (a soy chorizo and egg taco); and browse TikTok. Eventually I find a series about this Gamestop situation by a smart Irish woman and L and I watch it together. When it’s over we feel like shrewd stock brokers ready to win money, and L gets to work teaching virtually.
I spend the morning painting our front door and our kitchen wall to prep our house to sell, and talking to my (other) little sister on the phone. She’s an HR person with a job that’s taken her far away from our family, and we don’t talk that often. It is so good to catch up on her life. After that I have a fun, day-off Zoom call with longtime bestie and coworker K. We drink coffee and talk about The Future.
12:30 pm: I make lunch (tomato soup with goat cheese on top, and a savory scone on the side) and get a text from another bestie, M, who offers me a little grant writing contract work this week. Yay! I love them and love working with them. Next, I order our groceries for the week. I get baking powder, eggs, cremini mushrooms, vegan sausage patties, oat milk, ginger root, shredded cheddar cheese, plantains, black beans, doggy bags, broccoli, vegan chicken strips, artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, capers, ciabatta bread, grits, bananas, avocados, greek yogurt, and on impulse, a pineapple on sale (?!). Maybe B will love it. The total comes to $94.08.
1:15 pm: I do a brief power vinyasa class in B’s room and take a shower. It takes me approximately two Drake songs to shower and dry off, as I don’t have to wash my hair today and I never shave. I work on my resume until L and I leave to pick up B. On the way home we stop at the park to play, and then we all get in the car to pick up groceries.
6:30 pm: We get home later than planned and eat together: leftover tofu ramen for us and veggie lasagna for B, who is so sleepy that he hardly touches his lasagna. L gets him in the bath around 7:15 and I run through my evening routine. There’s a lot going on in the house - preschool lunch and clothes to put up, a mountain of laundry in our room, all of the groceries for the week waiting to be put away, and dinner dishes are languishing in the sink. L starts on chores while I get B dressed.
As I’m dressing B, my mom Facetimes and B shows her several of his board books. While we’re talking my dad texts me a heart emoji - he overheard B and my mom talking from his room. He lives with a disability and a painful illness, so he goes to bed very early. We hang up with my mom and record a video of B making “P” sounds and saying “I love you” to my dad, and send it over. This is the first time B’s ever said “I love you!” Huge news. We read books and fall asleep next to B.
9 pm: I wake up and nudge L but he wants to keep sleeping. I go clean the dinner dishes, put away the food and reorganize the cabinets and fridge, and mop the kitchen floor while I listen to The Daily’s latest reporting on QAnon believers who are at once totally bananagrams and also remind me very much of my aunt. L wakes up at 9:30 because he and Y, my sister’s boyfriend, are gonna game. Cute! He finishes the laundry and I fold a few diapers to help out. Then we lay in bed together until game time, when I fall asleep.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 94.08
✨DAY 3: SATURDAY✨
5:40 am: Wake up at a ~*~weekend hour~*~!! Start my kettle, clean and moisturize my face, pull out the ingredients for waffles, and pick up around the house while I wait for it to boil. I try to read some, but get bored a few pages in. I’m currently reading How to Do Nothing and it’s good enough, but I think I need to chill on the nonfiction and read, like, saucy romance novels with hot bisexual leads. Send me your recs please!
Waffle time! This recipe is my go-to. I recommend whipping the egg whites first. B wakes up around 7:15 and helps me cook which is cute and very messy. He eats his waffle with honey, peanut butter, and grapes. L wakes up after him - he had a late night gaming!
8 am: I open yesterday’s mail and find an anti-abortion DVD from L’s grandma. It’s Abby Johnson’s “memoir.” Abby Johnson is an opportunistic right winger and documented liar who once moonlighted as a Planned Parenthood clinic manager. L is a preacher’s kid, so we’re not surprised to receive this from his grandma. For example: 10 years ago, when L and I were a couple years into our relationship, her Christmas gift to me was a book about how one can recover from being a slut by getting married and finding Jesus. This particular package really sends me over the edge, though. I decide to write them a short note later that states my own experience with abortion and sets a clear boundary on this kind of propaganda, and includes an article about Abby Johnson’s bullshit life. It’s unlikely this will change their minds - they are septuagenarian Southern Baptists, after all - but at least I’ll be in my integrity.
In the meantime, I group text L’s siblings, and they commiserate with us. His one sibling who is transitioning shares that grandma recently sent them a book about how to tell your gay friends they’re sinning. We agree that’s hilariously dense (and fucking rude) of her, and talk about how everyone under forty is a gay slut living their best life, so really it’s grandma’s loss. During this time I clean the kitchen, finish the waffles, and freeze them for B’s weekday breakfasts.
9:30 am: B asks to use the potty and does a great job peeing on his own! He’s geeked about it and is especially excited to have my parents on Facetime cheering him on. After that we head out on our morning walk. L takes B to the playground and I take O to the dog park nearby. She gets tired pretty quick and we all head to the thrift store. We need chairs for our hand-me-down kitchen table. The ones that came with it are awkwardly wide. L spots two sturdy ones that are just $5 each. Score! $10
11:30 am: B and L are both wiped out once we get home. They eat lunch and go to sleep. I clean up the kitchen, repot one of my plants, water our porch plants, and eat some leftover ramen for lunch. The Marie Antoinette episode of You’re Wrong About keeps me company all the while. 10/10 would recommend.
2 pm: B wakes up and eats some lunch. We watercolor together for a while (he on his big paper, I in my bullet journal), then walk down the street to the local high school while L preps potatoes for our fondue. The high school grounds are open on the weekends, and there’s an amphitheatre on site. B loves the echo in there.
4:30 pm: L joins us in the amphitheatre and together we drag B two blocks back home. I prep the fondue: brie, gouda, and more gouda with white wine. It ends up being a little clumpy but so delicious. My sister, J, and her boyfriend, Y arrive while I’m cooking. Y brings yummy baguettes from his bakery job for the dipping and we prep broccoli, green beans, and tempeh too. We sit down in our new chairs to eat and for the zillionth time I am so thankful we’ve been able to make a pod together this year. Fondue would be a terrifying proposition with anyone else, really.
While we eat, Y tells us he put in his two weeks at the bakery because their COVID protocols aren’t so tight and his coworkers are continuing to go to bars and out to eat. His plan for now is to get back on unemployment and find a virtual job sometime soon. Both he and my sister have worked food service their whole adult lives so the pandemic has been tough on them. Besides the fact that they’re delightful and perfect, this is one key reason we’re planning to move with them to our new city this summer: L and I will be able to easily afford the majority of the rent, deposits, and utilities on a pretty big, and centrally located, house. Living together will allow us to grow our savings and take our time looking for a Forever Home, and will allow J and Y to pay really low rent as my sister goes back to school full time and Y looks for a full-time job. I’m really looking forward to living with them and know it’ll be good for B, too. They leave around 7 pm and we put B to bed, this time without falling asleep ourselves!
8:30 pm: Turn on How I Met Your Mother in bed and the episodes are baaaaad bad. One entire episode casts sex workers as a punch line. Ick. L and I agree to find a new show, and fall asleep around 10.
11 pm - 2 am: B is up and between our two beds. Wahhhh.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 10
✨DAY 4: SUNDAY✨
6 am: Up and at ‘em! Discover I’m out of my fancy coffee and don’t want to emphasize the flavor of our grocery store beans with a slow pour, so make a french press instead. B wakes up too early so we watch toddlers together on TikTok while I drink my coffee, then read books while L makes us all eggs for breakfast. We head out for our morning walk around 9 am and stop at a coffee shop a few blocks away. I pick up Counter Culture’s Iridescent beans, buy an espresso brownie on a whim, and tip the cashier because she’s so sweet and tipping is good. The total is 23.03. L takes B to the playground and I drop my purchases and O back at the house before I head out for a run.
9:45 am: It’s 65 degrees and my run is glorious. I run to the water and pause Lil Yachty for a minute to take it all in. Once home I shower and put on a black LA Apparel catsuit and a marled black and white cocoon sweater from AA of the past (I like what I like!). We feed B lunch and then L puts him down while I clean up.
Around 11:30, J comes over after to watch B while we remove the storm windows from our whole house and clean the windows underneath as part of our work to prep the house for sale. We’re a solid team: L removes the storm windows and caulks all the gaps in the wood while I follow behind him and wash the windows inside and out. Our sweet neighbor catches us cleaning and offers to let us use her power washer for free next weekend to clean up the front of the house. I resolve to bake them some cookies.
2:30 pm: We are done with the window operation and it’s time for me to water all 57 plants in the house. Along the way, discover that I overwatered B’s hoya last week and it’s rotting. Noooo! I unpot it on the porch to dry the roots, but it’s raining so this might not work. There’s only one surefire solution: buy a replacement plant! I try to convince L we should go to the nursery, but he’s not so into it. I walk around dejectedly with a towel to clean up all the water I spilled, and Zelle J $70 for babysitting even though she insists she would do it for free. Next B, L, and I share a snack: crackers with goat cheese and harissa. Mmm. B skips the harissa but loves the goat cheese. Meanwhile I begin to stress about making dinner. We’d planned goddess bowls but L and I just aren’t feeling it after our marathon of house work. L requests Chinese and is suddenly more amenable to visiting the nursery, which is near our favorite Chinese takeout spot. Score!
5:00 pm: We leave the plant shop with a heartleaf philodendron for B’s room and a giant, lovely, perfect monstera deliciosa just because. The total comes to $53.24. Then we pick up our food: $33.08 including the tip. L ordered a large veggie lo mein to share with B and General Tso’s chicken, and I got family style tofu and vegetables. We start B’s bedtime routine at 6:30 and he’s out by 7:00 - early for him!
After he’s down, L preps his breakfast sandwiches for the week and I do some dishes. Then we take mutual advantage of the extra hour we have together. Even after 12 years it’s always so good with L. I fall asleep around 10 pm feeling blessed.
🌿 Daily total: 179.32
✨DAY 5: MONDAY✨
5 am: I make my pour over and get started on work first thing. I have a couple of deadlines this week and the side gig to balance so I’m already feeling pressed for time! I wrap up an entire grant report before 6 am and feel very accomplished. Then I pause work to start our breakfast, which is all pre-prepped, hallelujah. While L and B eat breakfast, I get dressed in a black turtleneck minidress, busted old tights, black ankle socks, and my Doc Martens.
I help L load up the car with B and all his gear, and tell L to be careful. Today is L’s first day back teaching in person since December, and we’re both nervous since COVID is still running wild in our red state. On the way to work he fills up his car for $18.33.
2:30 pm: After another grant report, seventy gajillion emails, forty Slack messages, and several hours of Zoom calls, I’m ready for a break. I finish eating the quinoa salad I prepped during Zoom call #2 and then eat a pear too. I see our Misfits box has been delivered. It’s $30 a week, and is included in our monthly expenses. I unpack it, clean the counters, wipe down the bathroom sinks, take O for a walk, and sit down to work on my side gig grant report, which is due Wednesday. I set a 30 minute timer because I don’t want to be too late picking up B.
4:25 pm: Worked longer than I meant to! Pack some snacks and pick up B. On the way home we get a giant bag of potting soil so I can repot those plants. It’s $18.52. Come home and engage in B’s favorite winter activity: pressing all the buttons in the turned-off car. Meanwhile, in another car across town, L picks up a big bag of Purina One, butter, maple syrup, and applesauce. That total is $28.64.
5:30 pm: The whole family is home and we kick it inside until it starts to get dark. L and I gather all the things and take the creatures out for a walk even though there’s a light, but very cold, rain happening. B is cranky and so are we, so the walk is quick.
We eat leftover Chinese food around 7 and start B’s bedtime routine. B falls asleep at 8 and I update this diary for a while, then go watch Ted Lasso in bed with L til about 9:30. It’s much better than How I Met Your Mother, for the record.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 65.51
✨Day 6: TUESDAY✨
3 am: B wakes up and needs a diaper change. I have the hardest time falling back asleep after: I can’t stop thinking about how I left B’s hoya out in the cold with its roots exposed most of the day yesterday and into tonight. But it’s too cold for me to get up again and pull it inside! So instead I toss and turn and hope it’s not dead yet.
6 am: L’s alarm wakes me up! No early morning reading and writing time for me. I get right up, make a giant pour over, and get breakfast together while L wakes up B. Then I actually sit down with them to eat: B and I both eat boiled eggs with everything but the bagel seasoning and some coconut milk yogurt, and L sips his coffee while his breakfast sandwich heats in the oven. I get dressed in my workout gear and walk the dog while L gets B ready for school. They leave, and I finally bring the hoya in, and start work, around 7:30. L buys coffee and snacks from the gas station on his way to work: $6.88.
9:30 am: I grab some crackers and peanut butter from the kitchen and notice a DMV bill on the fridge I’ve been meaning to pay, but don’t totally understand. I call them up and respond to emails while I sit on hold. Turns out I owe the DMV $10 for paying my Dad’s van insurance late. With the “processing fee” it comes to $11.17.
1:30 pm: Been on Zoom calls all morning, and decide to switch over to the side gig work for a bit. Meanwhile I eat that quinoa salad I prepped yesterday. At 2 pm, my longtime bestie and neighbor F comes over and we take O for a walk in the park together and have such a good conversation. While the context is (very) different, I’m reminded of the Toni Morrison quote when I think of F: “She’s a friend of my mind.” Such a gem, and such a smartie. At 3:30 I start a HIIT yoga class and it kicks my butt even though it’s only 20 minutes long. Afterwards, I shower and pick up B.
5:00 pm: L arrives home while B and I are playing, and we get in the car once more to check out a cute couch L scoped out on Facebook marketplace. It’s a sweet vintage brown velvet actually-for-real midcentury situation. Unfortunately we discover it’s also small and very uncomfortable. $200 not spent. Once home, my family goes for a walk and I make dinner - this grits and beans recipe from NYT cooking. It’s blessedly quick to pull together. Meanwhile D texts me and says my overalls are ready! YAY! She’s gonna drop them off in a couple of days. She says the total is $30. I include a tip and Venmo her $40.
7:00 pm: At bedtime, B cannot get enough of his books and we read All The World several times. He finally falls asleep around 8:20 and L and I eat dinner on the couch, with Ted Lasso. I drink a glass of red wine, which is a mistake: my anxiety spikes right after, my stomach hurts, and I can’t sleep. This is very upsetting as I want very much to be a wine mom. Does this happen to anyone else?
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 58.05
✨DAY 7: WEDNESDAY✨
5:45 am: Wake up with B cuddled into my back - L moved him to our bed in the middle of the night after his second wake up. Get my coffee and breakfast together and sit down at my computer to work on the side gig grant while everyone's asleep. Then L and I manage the morning rush together. I eat sourdough toast, two scrambled eggs, and some pineapple along the way.
7:30 am: Take O out for a walk and on a whim decide to listen to one of my favorite easy-listening pods: A Beautiful Mess. Normally the two sisters and co-hosts, Elsie and Emma, chat about things like home decor or craft making or how to balance kids and work. This episode is about the host’s evangelical upbringing, though, and is a real raw and honest tear jerker. Pair it with this, one of my top reads of 2020: “What Does the White Evangelical Want?” It gets me thinking about L’s upbringing in the church. He and all his siblings are all agnostic now.
Finally sit down at my desk and debate taking Adderall. I used it regularly in college and for a few years after in order to Do All The Things. I try to stay away from it now - I’m not trying to live an impossible life any more - but I also really want to pick B up earlier than normal today, and that means I need to meet all my deadlines and make it through two Zoom calls with my direct reports by 3 pm. I decide to take 4 mg. Right after I take it, three different friends text me at once and then, suddenly, I’ve spent an hour catching up via text. Get to work for real around 9 am.
3:00 pm: Wrapped all my calls, answered all my emails, washed all the dishes, ate some lunch, and finished the side gig work! OK Adderall, you beautiful bitch. Spend a few more minutes tying up loose ends and then gather my things to pick B up from school. The plan today is to go “play basketball” in the park near his school because he is OBSESSED with balls, and I’m trying to do more magical things every day with him. It’s cold but I’m ready to brave it on his precious, curly-headed behalf.
At 4 pm J calls and asks to go pick him up with me. Hooray, things just got even more magical! We head to a different-than-usual park together and run around until B sits in, and then drinks from, a puddle. We panic and J googles “What happens if my baby drinks from a puddle?” The search returns lots of stories of babies eating muddy rocks and surviving, so we decide it’s ok.
5:00 pm Head home and L is back from work! We take the smols on a walk and I tell L that I think nighttime screentime is making me anxious. I’m a sensitive creature and I really don’t want to blame the wine. He’s very perfect so he helps me think through an alternate plan for this evening: hot tea and book reading in bed, and maybe sex, too! Fun.
Next, I head home with O to pot the plants we bought the other day, and L takes B to the playground. They get back around 6:30 and I am very excited to reveal my new plant placements. Everyone feigns interest except O. Then we eat leftovers together and B gets in bed around 7:30. L and I promptly fall asleep next to him and don’t wake up again til 11 pm. Guess our new nighttime routine will have to wait til tomorrow!
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 0
❤️ Section 5: TOTALS
Total Expenses: $478.71
Food & Drink: $220.25
Fun & Entertainment: $0
Home & Health: $109.01
Clothes & Beauty: $40
Transport: $29.50
Other: $79.95
❤️ Section 6: REFLECTION
This week reflects a new normal for us, I think! We just set the goal of saving up for another down payment in December, and that’s when I swore off online shopping both to save money and to stop lining the pockets of evil billionaires like Bezos (no shade to anyone who uses Amazon, this is purely a personal goal & I’m not sure I can meet it). This self-imposed rule is helping me reign in my discretionary spending overall. L and I have only been living a two-income, middle class life for a few years, and my lifestyle creep was a little out of control in 2020. That said, I can and do still regularly justify spending money on things that make life more luxurious and beautiful - like a $40 candle or a totally unnecessary but very lovely plant.
There are a couple of things not reflected in this diary that we regularly spend on: gifts (my achilles heel - for example, we spent three! thousand! dollars! on Christmas gifts in December), and medical bills. Both B and I had to visit the emergency room in 2020 and we are still getting random bills in the mail as our insurance company and the hospital duke it out. As I was editing this diary on Thursday, I received one for $787. Wahhhh. I think I’m gonna get on a payment plan, but even so that it will be over $200 a month.
Last thought: this process got me thinking in some detail about the contradiction of organizing for the fall of capitalism (and the rise of a more gentle and just economic system), yet believing everyone - including ourselves and our own families - deserve to live full and abundant lives. This means I compromise my own anti-capitalist values and beliefs every day, in big and small ways. Discuss?

Note: I was technically supposed to post this earlier this week, but noticed that no one was signed up for today (plus I was super busy earlier), so I'm posting a bit late, under a throwaway account! Fair warning: I'm VERY verbose, so this will be long!
Section One: Assets and Debt
As I mentioned above, I make $56k per year as an administrator in higher education. My husband (K) just got a raise to making $155k per year. He works as a lawyer, has been in the workforce for about 12 years. I won't get into too many details but he works for a small boutique firm, not Biglaw. He also sometimes gets a yearly bonus of around $10k-20k but it's not guaranteed or anything like that. K and I have totally combined finances, so the below numbers are for both of us. I have a humanities PhD but I decided to leave academia and find an alt-ac job. My current position has good work-life balance (I never work past 5 pm), but pays terribly and my university is very badly run. I'm hoping to leave higher education all together in the future and am currently enrolled in a certificate program to try to make a career transition to instructional design.
The big elephant in the room is that my husband, K, makes a lot more money than me. When we first met, he was paying off massive amounts of student loans and making much less, and I was debt free with a lot of savings, so we both spent about the same amount. Now he makes 3x what I make and we are both debt-free, so the difference is much more noticeable. We do argue about money sometimes (more in the past), but the reality is that I have a humanities PhD and will likely never out earn him, and he knew that when I married him, lol. Because of all the labor I do around the house and in our lives to support him as he works a much more intense job, I was very clear that I believed we should split our finances equally as soon as we got married. We don't have separate accounts and we generally check in with one another whenever we are planning to spend more than $100. This system works for us for now.
I also want to address the question about parental or family support. Although I technically paid all of my own bills since I got my Bachelor's degree, my parents supported me a lot by paying for my flights home to visit at Christmas or in the summer as Xmas presents/birthday presents. My parents also paid for my undergraduate degree (and K's parents paid for his undergraduate degree as well). They also gave us about $15k to pay for our wedding.
Finally, my parents recently gave me $20k as an "early inheritance." They told me they plan to do this every year (depending on the stock market). We put this money into a brokerage. I don't consider my parents rich, as they both worked hourly jobs in health care my entire life (as a nurse and respiratory therapist - both with only associate's degrees). We never owned a new car, when we went on vacation we stayed in hostels , and shopped almost exclusively at Goodwill. But they scrimped and saved and now they have over $1 million in a retirement account. So I want to acknowledge my financial privilege in that I came from this kind of background. K's parents are similar.
Retirement Balance: $186k (combination of 401k, 403b, 457, 2 Roth IRAs, and taxable brokerage account).
Equity: None, we rent.
Savings account balance: Approximately $45k.
Checking account balance: Right now, around 8k.
Credit card debt: Right now, around $3k. But we pay it off each month with our checking account balance.
Student loan debt: $0. We finally paid off my husband’s law school loans (around $130k), last year. I didn’t have any student loans from undergrad (parents paid) and my MA & PhD were fully funded.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I’ve been working in my current field for 3 years. I started off making about $53k and got tiny 2% “merit increases” twice. Then in July my payroll title was changed, which triggered a required raise of about $2k. (I am dramatically underpaid).
Before my current position, I was in academia. I worked as a visiting assistant professor for one year at my alma mater (made $50k for 9 months of work) and before that I was a graduate student for 7 years. I was paid $18k-21k in stipends each year and my tuition & benefits were covered. Luckily, I lived in a very low cost of living area and this was enough for me to live on without going into debt. I got my PhD in 2017. Before I was a graduate student, I taught English in Japan for three years and made around $36k per year. In high school and college, I had random jobs that provided grocery/spending money, but I was lucky enough to have parents that paid my tuition and my rent in college.
I’m currently trying to make a career change (as you will see in my diary) and enrolled in a certificate program which runs from Autumn 2020 to Spring 2021 in order to help with that.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $7,634. This probably seems low relative to our joint income, but we max out our 401k (K) and 403b (me). I work for the state government, which means I’m also eligible for something called a Deferred Compensation Plan (457b). This is basically the same as a 401k but you can withdraw contributions and gains from the account at any age without penalty (of course, you still have to pay taxes). I also max this out, and the limit is the same as a 401k/403b - $19.5k. Also this number is before K’s raise is accounted for. It won’t increase until his end of February paycheck.
Other deductions - I have health insurance taken out (about $80 a month for me, K’s firm covers his premiums) and taxes. WA has no state taxes, so it’s only federal taxes. I used to have to pay $50 / month for a bus pass (K's was free), but I don’t pay any longer because I’m working from home during COVID.
Final note - the sum I mentioned in the headline includes a variable bonus my husband gets. My base pay is $56k and his is $155k (as of February 1). This year he also got a bonus of $20k, which is set up a bit strangely. About $4k of this was structured as a 3% matching contribution to his 401k and the rest was taxable income. In small law firms, it’s unusual to get any 401k match so this was nice.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home: None.
Any Other Monthly Income Here: We get some interest from our savings account… like $25 a month.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent: Rent comes to approximately $2,050 total for a one-bedroom apartment. Rent itself is $1886, then we have pet rent ($25 per month), bicycle parking ($15 a month) and water / sewage / gas, which is usually $120-150 (variable cost).
Renters insurance: $157.76, paid annually. $13 a month.
Retirement contribution: In addition to the 401k, 403b, and 457, which all come out before taxes, we max out our Roth IRAs. That means $500 each per month per person (for a yearly total of $6k each). As I noted up top, we match out our 401k and 403b (19,500 each) and our 457. My employee also offers a 7.5% match. K's employee offers a 3% match but it is included in his yearly bonus so it's not guaranteed (confusing).
Savings contribution: We put $500 per month into our emergency fund. We also put about $860 a month into our “sinking fund,” which covers large and small annual or sporadic purchases such as vacations, gifts, Amazon Prime renewal, car insurance and renters insurance, etc.
Investment contribution: $875 per month into a taxable brokerage at Vanguard.
In total, we save about 47% of our gross income. We can do this because we keep our housing cost low relative to our high income, we don’t have any debt remaining, we don’t have any kids or parents who need financial support, and we’re very privileged in a lot of ways. We are hoping to FIRE within 10 years.
Debt payments: None.
Donations: We budget $100 per month for donations, which includes one-time donations as well as some reoccurring donations. My husband does pro bono work as well. I would like to increase this by quite a bit, but I still have a hard time budgeting for donations because I spent 7 years living on approximately $20k a year. To go from that to making more than 10x that amount within 3-4 years is obviously something that I am very privileged for, but it is still hard for me emotionally to comprehend at times.
Electric: ~$50-100 (billed every other month)
Wifi/Cable/Landline: An extortionate $87.12 for slow internet that only works for Zoom calls about half the time. Do I really live in one of the tech cities of the future?
Cellphone: $170 (This includes both service and paying off two new iPhones. We could have paid them off up front, but it was actually cheaper by like $50 to go on a payment plan.)
Subscriptions: BritBox ($7.70), Spotify ($16.50), HBOMax ($16.50), We Hate Movies Patreon (my favorite podcast - $8.81). My parents pay for Netflix and my sister pays for Hulu, and we all share.
Gym membership: None. K and I both run and do yoga with YouTube videos. Before the pandemic, we went to yoga classes pretty frequently in person. I’d like to do some online synchronous yoga classes but find it hard to make time.
Pet expenses: Varies, but I budget $50 per month and also include an emergency fund for my cat’s vet bills in our sinking fund. She’s 11 years old and probably asthmatic, so I know her vet bills are going to increase over time.
Car payment / insurance: We own our car outright. Insurance billed yearly is $2,097, about $174 per month.
Regular therapy: $0
Paid hobbies: Nothing regular, sporadic language classes and art supplies.
Other expenses: Right now I’m doing a certificate to hopefully help with a career change. The total cost for tuition is about $5k and we already saved it up (included in our 'sinking fund') basically through spending less during the pandemic. I’ve paid two quarters so far, and the last quarter (due in March) will be a bit more - about $2.3k.
__________
Day 1
Morning: I wake up at 5:30 am. Ever since the pandemic, my sleep schedule has been shot. At first, I was so happy not to have to leave the house at 7:15 for my 45 minute bus commute and I slept in a lot. But the stress (and maybe getting old?) has made me an early riser, no matter how much I try to sleep in. I do value my early mornings with just me, my cat, and my coffee, though.
I start work at 8 am and begin by triaging my emails. I have a bunch of deadlines this week, so it’s busier than usual. My job tends to be very seasonal, and sometimes I have a ton of work and sometimes I have none and can work on other longer-term projects. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and place a Whole Foods delivery order for the following day at 10:30 am. We made a meal plan and put everything in the cart the day before ($117.36, including tip).
Afternoon: I have my lunch break from noon to 1 pm. It doesn’t really matter when I take my lunch break, since I’m salaried, but the others in my office are hourly so in the before times we used to always close our office during the same time. I have a piece of leftover delivery pizza and some spinach risotto that I made a few days earlier. I also have half a brownie – the last one from a batch I made a few days ago (K gets the other half). He also has leftovers for lunch.
I should say at this point that both K and I are lucky enough to have been working almost entirely from home since early March. An area near Seattle was one of the first places to get hit by COVID-19, and my state and both of our employers have been taking it very seriously ever since. Working from home hasn’t always been easy since we live in a 600-square foot apartment. Also, there is a three-story townhouse being built directly next door to us and I can hear the pounding in my dreams at this point.
Around 2 pm, I go for a 2-mile run. I feel like some money diarists tend to toss off things like “oh, I went for an easy 7 mile run,” at the drop of a hat, so I want to be clear – running for 2 miles isn’t easy for me; it’s exhausting, annoying, sweaty, and generally gross. Also I am very slow. But it has kept me sane during quarantine.
Meanwhile, my husband goes to our local pet store to get an enzymatic cleaner (our cat peed in one of our suitcases… I think it’s probably a lost cause, but it was basically brand new, so worth a try) and special weight-loss cat food. Our cat is an 11-year-old rescue from the Humane Society and she is a chonky girl. We had to sign a waiver when we adopted her, saying that we understood that she was very overweight, lol. Our vet recommended a special diet food, rather than just restricting her intake as we have been doing, so we will give it a try ($78). My husband also stops buy our local wine store and picks up two bottles. We’ve been doing a dry January, so this will be our first drink for a while ($27.53).
I have a phone interview scheduled for 4 pm – just a preliminary interview with an internal recruiter. It’s the first ‘corporate’ job interview I’ve ever had, since I’ve been in academia my entire life. I’m trying to make a pivot into instructional design / training and development. I’m just excited to get an interview. It seems to go pretty well, but who knows. They tell me they will probably get back to me by the end of this week.
Evening: My husband whips up a random meal of fridge remnants – pesto pasta with sausage and a fridge salad with feta and bell peppers. It’s pretty tasty with a little Sauvignon Blanc. During dinner, we play a card game we call gin rummy, although it bears no resemblance to the actual game. After dinner, I make a chocolate cake with orange buttercream frosting and we watch Cobra Kai.
Daily total: $222.89
Day 2
Morning: Up early again, a piece of toast for breakfast (very exciting). We’re out of eggs until our Whole Foods order arrives. I’m working on creating some tedious but necessary spreadsheets this morning.
Noon: Our Whole Foods order arrives around noon. Excitement! They’ve given us a half-rotten bag of romaine lettuce and substituted pecans for hazelnuts. I should probably just double mask and go to Trader Joe’s myself (our regular spot, only a 5-minute walk from my apartment). I’m just getting anxious about these new variants.
I have leftover meatloaf and spinach risotto again for lunch. Lots of meetings and more organizing spreadsheets in the afternoon. Around 3 pm, I go for my daily ritual - a 20-minute walk around my neighborhood. It’s still raining slightly but I need to get out. Halfway through the walk, I get an email from my apartment manager telling me the apartment will no longer accept debit card payments, direct deposit, or credit card payments for paying rent. In other words, only checks or money orders (?!). Ugh. Our lease is up in 4 months and we will not be renewing our lease. Our last apartment manager was a gambling addict who may have been stealing people’s identities, but by God, he kept things working. Ever since they fired him, this place has been going downhill.
Evening: I check my bank statements to update my budget spreadsheet and realize that I have been billed the wrong amount of rent. They actually charged me less than they should have. I don’t trust my apartment manager not to start charging me a late fee or something for this, so I call them up. They are baffled by how to fix this, which you would think would be the one thing you would want to get right, if you’re renting out apartments.
K cooks dinner – steak with a Roquefort sauce and glazed brussels sprouts. It’s from a French cookbook we recently bought and it is delicious. I work on classwork for my certificate program while he cooks. After dinner, I do the dishes and buy the 13th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I watch the first episode – lots of shocking twists and turns! I’m planning to watch the rest of the episodes together with my younger sister, M ($22.01).
Daily total: $22.01
Day 3
Morning: K has an 8 am dentist appointment, so he takes off early. He already paid for the work last month, so there’s no charge. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and get to work checking my emails. It’s 8:20 am and the construction crew building a townhouse next door is blasting mariachi music. I’m glad someone is having fun. At least the sun is coming out.
Someone at work has made a critical error, but it wasn’t me, thank God. I was the one who found out about it, but it’s still going to cause a big old headache for me. I’m ready to be done with this job. K and I go for a run so that I can exhaust myself enough to no longer be furious about said careless error.
Noon: I have leftover spinach risotto and meatloaf again – exciting. I’m busy at work but frankly, not a lot going on other than that. Still no word about fixing my rent payments. I’m not really willing to pursue this any further at this point.
Evening: I start making chili (Turkey Chili from the NY Times) and cornbread (from my new cookbook, Jubilee). K is doing some work on our investments when he announces that, somehow, a transfer was scheduled from our checking account to our savings account of $55k (?!) We obviously don’t have $55k in our checking account, so we start frantically trying to figure out what’s going on. Numerous phone calls later, we still don’t know if that was a hack, if my husband somehow mistakenly scheduled the transfer himself, or if the bank messed it up. Either way, it doesn’t seem like any harm was done since the bank with our checking account just declined the transaction. But it seems really strange and worrisome. We get to work changing the passwords on all of our accounts, just in case it was some kind of hack.
After dinner (and chocolate cake), I have a Zoom happy hour with a local friend. We occasionally see each other outside but it’s nice to have a longer chat from the comfort of our living rooms. We both love murder mysteries, so we signed up for a service where a company sends us letters with clues and we try to solve the mystery together. It’s a fun way to stay connected and look forward to something during the pandemic. The service costs about $15 per month, but I paid for it in lump sum for 3 months, so it’s not included in my budget above. I drink some wine and we vent about work (we work at the same place) before getting started on the puzzle.
Daily total: $0
Day 4
Morning: I sleep in a bit, which is nice. Get up around 7 am. My parents are both getting their 2nd vaccine today – they’re both in their 70s and I am so relieved. I send my mom a “congratulations on being vaccinated!” text and we chat for a bit. I have leftover cornbread with honey and butter for breakfast – soooo good.
Work is not particularly exciting today, but someone sends me a last-minute request for something that does not need to be so urgent. I feel annoyed. Still no word from the interviewers on Monday, and I’m beginning to suspect I wasn’t selected to move forward. Too bad. K pays for a Wordpress website for the year (it’s a work-related website, but sadly his work doesn’t reimburse him). It costs $92.48.
Noon: The mariachi music is particularly loud today. I stand out on my balcony in the sun for a while and watch the workers. It’s been interesting seeing a house go up next door in real time, especially since I’m at home all the time. The workers are balancing on the top of the third story wall without, as far as I can see, anything like a safety line. It seems unsafe, but I presume they know what they’re doing.
We booked a cabin for the upcoming weekend in the Hood Canal region of Washington to do some hiking and birdwatching. I want to be as safe as possible and not go to any grocery stores or risk spreading COVID in any way while I’m there, so I place another grocery order with Whole Foods just for some special treats for the weekend. The cabin has a small kitchen and a grill, so we’re planning to make a fancy steak salad on Saturday. I order chips and hummus, some fancy cheese and meats, Tate’s cookies (I’ve heard a lot of good things about these), a baguette, and the ingredients for the steak salad. I also order a few staples I forgot in our last order, like sweet potatoes, more coffee, and half and half. It comes to $87.41, including tip, but that does include like $30 worth of steak. For some reason, I can’t order a small amount of steak online, so I’m planning to freeze half of it for later. (I include this purchase in our vacation fund budget, rather than under our regular grocery budget).
Around 2 pm, K makes a quick trip to our local wine store to buy an Oregon pinot noir and some port to enjoy at the cabin ($59.45). This store has an outdoor walk-up counter where you can tell the owner what you’re looking for, and he brings you some options (the store is way too small to allow customers to enter during Covid). It’s fun to chat with another human being, even briefly.
Evening: After work, we spend a little time rebalancing our investing and retirement accounts. We decide to put more money into bonds and a little bit into REIT’s as a hedge against a potential crash or recession in the future. Then I start making dinner – Broken Eggs (Huevas Rotas) from the NY Times cooking site. You basically cook the potatoes in a skillet in water, spices, and olive oil, and then sauté them to crisp them up once the water evaporates. Then you add onion, lots of garlic, and finally some eggs. It is delicious. I eat it with leftover cornbread while watching RuPaul’s Drag Race season 13 with my sister – we watch the first two episodes. It’s full of twists and turns. A note about this – we have an elaborate procedure for watching shows together developed during quarantine whereby we start the show at the same with an earbud in one ear, while FaceTiming. I also have chocolate cake, of course.
Later, I get an email that I’ve signed up for HBO on Amazon Prime. I definitely have not. I text my mom, who shares my account, and she tells me she signed up by mistake. I cancel right away and luckily they won’t charge us for it.
Meanwhile, K is doing an online Japanese language class over Zoom. He’s been interested in learning ever since we went to Japan last January. I lived in Japan for 3 years so I was able to take us around to a lot of more obscure places and he really enjoyed the trip – it was a blast.
K starts a YouTube yoga class (from Do Yoga With Me – my favorite channel) and I join him for part of it before bed around 10 pm.
Daily total: $239.34
Day 5
Morning: I get up around 7 am and we go for a run first thing. I prefer running early in the morning because there are fewer people to avoid during COVID. We do a different route today – it’s longer (3 miles) but has fewer hills. It’s a slog, as always, but I feel good when I get back right around 8 am. I jump straight onto my computer to start checking work emails and my husband makes us avocado and egg toast for breakfast - it is absolutely delicious.
We talk about how our bathroom smells distinctly mildewy (yay for being a grown-up because I guess this is what we talk about now) and we buy two big buckets of DampRid on Amazon ($26.60). I’ve found this to be a necessity in Seattle. Mid-morning, I take a break from work and start packing for our trip to the cabin.
Noon: I have leftover potatoes and cornbread for lunch, and my husband has the leftover chili. We finish getting ready to leave and head out right after lunch, taking a half day. The only problem is that I have attend a meeting at 3:30 pm, so we head out hoping to get there in time. Our cabin is near Quilcene in the Hood Canal region of Washington, about a 2 hour drive or a 2 hour ferry ride + drive. We are initially planning to take the ferry both ways, but realize that we mistimed the ferry departure, so we drive the whole way instead. Luckily, there’s little traffic mid-day, and we arrive at our Airbnb around 3:00 pm.
The Airbnb is beautiful! It’s a small cabin handmade by the owner, whose house is next door. It’s very rural, with a beautiful view. It’s tiny, but has a little kitchen and a waterfall-style shower with river rocks on the floor. It’s a great place to get away for a short time. Luckily, it also has good reception and I’m able to sit in on my meeting with no problems. My husband also does a little work, and then at 5 pm we’re free!
In our planning, we decided to get takeout on Friday night, since the little kitchen isn’t designed for any serious cooking. We call ahead to a local restaurant to order burgers (one of only 2 restaurants in the whole town). It’s around 5:30 pm and the place is deserted. It’s a microbrewery, but they tell us they haven’t been making beer since COVID-19 hit. None of the workers are wearing masks when I walk in, but they put them on when they see I’m wearing one. I pick up our order - a few bottled beers and burgers and fries ($49.52 including tip).
Back at our Airbnb, we watch Big Trouble in Little China and enjoy our very messy, but delicious, burgers (it costs $4.39 to rent). The movie is very campy but fun. I love silly action movies, as you will see with my other viewing choices. We wrap up the night in a very exciting fashion, eating chocolate cake and watching old episodes of the original Star Trek.
Daily total: $80.51
Day 6
Morning & noon: When we wake up around 8 am, the weather is looking thankfully clear and even sunny! We were expecting rain, so we’re really glad. We decide to go hiking today, and we head out before even having breakfast, with snacks and lunches packed. Our first destination is a hike called Mt. Zion, but unfortunately, we run into enough snow 2 miles before the trailhead that we decide to turn back. We don’t have any traction for our Subaru and don’t want to risk getting stuck on a very narrow mountain road. Instead, we drive another hour or so to the Lena Lake trailhead, a very popular and less strenuous trail. It’s about 7.5 miles roundtrip with 1200 feet of elevation gain.
By this time, it’s around 11:30, but luckily there is still parking. It’s a great hike up, and we run into relatively few people. We always mask up whenever we pass anyone, as does about 50% of the people we meet. The others… not so much. Around a mile from the lake, we start to run into snow. It’s turned into a beautiful sunny day, and I’m loving seeing all this snow! It’s a bit slippery, but not too bad. We make it to the lake mid-day, and it’s super jammed – there’s only a small viewpoint accessible, so everyone is crowded in there. I feel a bit uneasy with all the unmasked people, but we manage to find a spot away from the crowd and sit down to eat our lunch of apples, chips, and energy bars. There are a ton of robber jays there (Canada Jays) which try to eat our chips. It is fun watching them, but I’m annoyed to see some kids feeding them – it’ll just make them that much more aggressive. Bad trail manners.
On our way back down, we get stuck behind a group of 5 unmasked adults, who refuse to cede the narrow trail to faster hikers. I’m a slow hiker myself, so, to be clear, I’m not angry at slower walkers being on the trail but have some self-awareness and let people pass! especially if you’re going to go hiking in a big group during a pandemic! We finally get back down and head back to our Airbnb.
Evening: Back home, we explore some of the trails our Airbnb host has set up around his extensive property, and then relax on the deck. The sun is breaking through the clouds and it feels wonderful to sit out in nature and feel the sun on my back. We open up a bottle of wine and have a few pre-dinner snacks (more chips and hummus). For this night, we brought ingredients to make a steak salad. Our Airbnb host has kindly set up a charcoal grill for us, so we grilled the steak and toast some bread on the side.
We eat dinner while watching the truly terrible Jean Claude Van Damme movie Bloodsport and finish up the very last of my chocolate cake. It’s amazing that anyone ever let Van Damme act… or should I say ‘act.’ I also have a Tate’s chocolate chip cookie or two, accompanied by a little port. My husband and I are truly very old people at heart, so we finish up the night watching a few episodes of Columbo.
Daily total: $0
Day 7
Morning: Unfortunately, K had insomnia last night, so he sleeps in pretty late. I drink coffee in bed and enjoy looking at the view out our big windows. Once he’s up, we get packed up and write a thank you note for our host. It was a great stay.
One of my big hobbies is birding and K enjoys wildlife photography, so we go out to look for some lifers! (The first time you see a new species of bird). Did I mention we are very old people in (relatively) young bodies? We first go to Dosewallips State Park and see some bald eagles, great blue herons, lots of various ducks, and a flock of Canada Geese, which, strangely, includes a domesticated gray goose. He’s much larger than the Canada Geese and seems to be watching over them. It’s kind of cute. Unfortunately, a lot of the birds are too far from shore to be seen clearly.
Our next stop is Point No Point (I love all the sad & disappointed names that early Westerner explorers gave places in the Washington/Oregon coast), a popular birding spot. We see a ton of birds here, and I can understand why it’s so well-known - Red-Breasted Mergansers, Western Grebes, Common Goldeneyes, Pacific Loons, and a few others I can’t identify yet. Most excitingly though, we see a whole pile of otters! They’re lounging around together on a rock just offshore and a ton of people are watching. We watch as they all slip off the rock and go hunting in the shore. It’s my first otter sighting in the wild, and it’s so cool! We also see some seals and possibly a sea lion. It’s a great spot for wildlife. We eat some snacks (hummus, chips, some sliced meat & cheese) before we head out.
I really want to come back to this area another time and explore further, but K has decided that we need to get back home in time for the Big Game. We take the 3:00 pm ferry back to Seattle ($16.40) and get home around 3:45 pm. I veg out at home while my husband watches football. He’s a Patriots fan but he still loves Tom Brady (??) so he’s happy to see Florida win. I don’t understand sports team loyalties at all, but whatever, I’m glad he’s happy. We order from a new Indian place called Spice Box and get vindaloo, roganjosh, and vegetables pakora – so tasty ($53.96). Happily, there’s enough left over for lunch the next day, since I have no plans for what we will eat yet!
I’m really dreading work the next day, as I know that it will be obnoxious. I want to get out of my job so badly, but it doesn’t look like I’m going on to the next interview stage for the job I interviewed no back on Monday. I’m feeling kind of down about it. I try to stay positive and promise that I’ll apply for at least 2-3 new jobs next week. I bake up some frozen cookie dough I had in the freezer and feel sorry for myself. We end the night by watching another episode of Columbo.
Daily total: 70.36
Food + Drink: $395.23
Fun / Entertainment: $26.40
Home + Health: $26.60
Clothes + Beauty: $0
Transport: $16.40
Other: $170.48
Grand Total: $635.11
I think this week was pretty normal for us. Obviously we spent a bit more than usual due to the weekend cabin trip, but nothing outrageous. Our largest consumer spending category is definitely food and drink – we live in a very busy area of Seattle with tons of restaurants and bars so believe it or not, we actually used to spend even more on eating out. We still try to support our local places by getting takeout or delivery during the pandemic and even occasionally getting a few drinks outside. I spent more than usual on groceries due to stocking up for the weekend away.

Hi Everybody, [Long post ahead. So read at your own peril. tl;dr for the project below.]
We are the people behind the Army of Spies DApp proposal currently in Catalyst Fund 3. We're longtime Cardano super fanatics. We're hoping that we're going to get really good feedback on our project in Catalyst. But, we also want to reach out to the rest of the Cardano Community who might not be actively perusing the projects in the Catalyst Fund 3. Mods, please let me know if this somehow shouldn't be posted here. Anyway, I'm going to post our proposal and plan below. We would love any and all feedback that anyone could provide. Obviously, there are monetary grants involved in Catalyst. But, we are actually just as excited for our little project just to see the light of day after working on it for so long. Our first draft of the whitepaper for this project was way back in Early 2018. We've put a ton of thought and effort into it since then including many drafts of the smart contract which is currently in Marlowe. We are slowly learning as we go. We also know our little project has a long way still to progress. So, we'd love any and all feedback if people here would be willing to give it a look. Obviously, we're editing this and making changes as we go. So this is all subject to change and revision.
Army of Spies
“...but at the length truth will out.”
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
tl;dr
Army of Spies is a Cardano based non-fungible native token product that creates a compensated “Curator” role in a smart contract powered marketplace that brokers obscure, or difficult to acquire, information. Blockchain derived finality and permanence of Curator role ownership will drive decentralized market growth via the efforts of each newly minted Curator. Army of Spies ultimately serves a public good as a decentralized public blockchain-based approach to the efficient allocation of information resources and erasure of non-mandatory information asymmetries powered by crowdsourced and bounty-based information discovery. The obscure, or difficult to acquire, information addressed by Army of Spies typically falls outside the reach of traditional blockchain oracle providers.
Table of Contents

1. Philosophy & Use Case
2. The Army of Spies User Experience
3. Under the Hood of Army of Spies
4. Marketing Strategies
5. Securities Law Compliance Strategies
6. Founder Team
7. 2018-2025 Roadmap

Philosophy & Use Case
Our modern world, albeit drastically transformed by the internet over the last decades, is still a world of secrets and information asymmetry. Some secrets are necessary. Some are not. Among the unnecessary secrets are three broad categories of obscure or difficult to acquire information (“ODAI”): 1) information that someone doesn’t want revealed but has no legal or ethical right to protect, 2) mundane information that has value but is difficult to acquire, and 3) information that may hold an idiosyncratic value to one person but may still be inconvenient to acquire. These types of ODAI typically fall outside the grasp of traditional blockchain oracle providers. Let’s first describe these three categories of ODAI.
1) Information Someone Doesn’t Want Revealed
You don’t need to know the launch codes to the nuclear weapon arsenal of your favorite superpower. But, you do need to know if your elected officials are taking bribes from foreign corporate interests. It’s probably not okay for you to have the gate code to Taylor Swift’s estate. But, it’s probably okay for you to know the real identity of the land developer secretly buying up all the parcels of land on the same block as the corner store owned by your family. Some secrets are necessary. But, information is a valuable resource and its efficient allocation is generally a net positive for the progress of a technologically based society. In the case of those bits of information that are not mandatory secrets, the hidden hand of the market should guide disclosure. The whistleblower should be rewarded for telling the world that the politician is corrupt, and watchdog groups will gladly raise funds to secure the disclosure of that information. Someone who sees Kit Harington with long hair on the streets of London should be able to accept a reward for that information from a Game of Thrones superfan on the other side of the world. The shop owner should be able to ask if anyone can identify the looter on his security cameras who stole the inventory that cost his or her life savings. The peaceful side lines protester should be able to ask if anyone can identify the person who permanently blinded her with a traffic cone recklessly thrown at her head. A small time merchant should have a means to discover if the real buyer behind the strawman offer they just received was actually from their biggest competitor or from a random individual.
2) Mundane Information that is Difficult to Acquire
There are also less sensational more day-to-day categories of mundane information that might be valuable but difficult, costly, or inconvenient to acquire in isolation: you might want to know how long the line is at your favorite bar on Friday night at 10pm, but it might not be convenient to drive all the way downtown to find out. You might want to know if there are a lot of girls or guys at the bar, but you might know that you can’t trust the hostess on the other end of the phone line when you call the bar. You might be willing to pay a small fee to know exactly what size fly professional fishing guides are using on a trout stream near your hotel, but you might be unwilling to pay for a day of guiding that would normally be the entry point for that disclosure. The purchaser of a vintage motorcycle should be able to find out the old-timer secrets about what brand and type of modern oil contains the right additives for his engine without spending days combing through old Reddit posts. You might really need to know how much it costs to hire an experienced cardano smart contract developer. But, you might realize that you can’t trust the answers you get on Reddit.
3) Information that holds Ideosyncratic Value and is Simultaneously Inconvenient to Acquire
There might also be information that is only valuable to you but still inconvenient to acquire. You might want to know if your significant other is really at the gym with his friends or at the bar by his office with that one woman he works with. It might be valuable to understand if the cute barista who works at your local Starbucks on Monday mornings flirts with everyone to feed the tip jar or if she is actually just after you.
For a small reward, any intrepid bar goer will gladly shoot you a pic or video of the line out front, the crowd inside, or of your significant other in the corner with his beautiful coworker. The college student who lives a block away will gladly go see if your significant other’s car is parked in front of the apartment of a female “friend” for a small bounty. The trout guide can make a few quick bucks by disclosing what size of fly to use, and you can get that isolated bit of information without buying a whole day of guiding. Someone who has owned your make and model of vintage motorcycle for decades will gladly give up their favorite oil for a few bucks. Someone who recently had their family’s property purchased by a certain land developer will happily tell you how much the land developer paid per acre if there is compensation for that information.
Would this level of availability of information be a tidal shift for modern society? Maybe. Is it probably inevitable over a long enough timeline given that there is a hi def video camera in every pocket? Yes. In the future, there will be no more secrets. You WON’T be able to park in front of your mistress’s house anymore. But, you WILL be able to get verifiable insider information on how much that land developer is really willing to pay your family. We’ll all just have to adjust our behavior to conform to a world with greater transparency. The only question is how we manage and allocate that information discovery and transparency. Army of Spies is a project aimed squarely at efficient market based allocation of information resources via the creation of a decentralized public blockchain-based global marketplace for information transactions. Army of Spies will not aim to facilitate any information transactions that might constitute, encourage, or aid criminal activity, illegal political espionage, illegal corporate espionage, or any other information transaction deemed illegal by U.S or European authorities. But, Army of Spies does aim to facilitate the erasure of non-mandatory information asymmetries.
Why Can’t Traditional Blockchain Oracles Provide ODAI Efficiently?
Oracle providers in the blockchain space have created wonderful projects like Chainlink and Ergo to provide a bridge between real world data and the blockchain world. However, these Oracle solutions are more appropriate for reaching readily available public information such as crypto prices, the weather, and who won the latest sporting event. When it comes to ODAI, there may only be a handful of people in the world with access to the ODAI. How many people have caught fish on your favorite stretch of your favorite river in the last few weeks since the temperature changed and know exactly what fly to use? How many people are in that club right now where you think your significant other is hanging out with their ex? How many people hold information about exactly which modern oil will not hurt the engine of your particular make and model of vintage motorcycle over the course of 100k miles? It also isn’t predictable who will hold ODAI and be able to provide it at the right time and how long it will take to identify someone who does have the ODAI.
Oracles and oracle pools can be easily constructed and operate efficiently where it is predictable where information will reside. An oracle who will provide data about who won the MMA fight on Saturday night can be easily identified ahead of time and incentivized to provide that answer. However, the ultimate best provider of ODAI is often comparatively unpredictable and is best identified through a highly decentralized bounty and curation model as used in Army of Spies. Being a traditional blockchain Oracle is a job undertaken as a routinized future information processing task. The provider of ODAI just happens to already have that information or just happens to be in a position to acquire it more easily than others. The magic of Army of Spies lies in efficiently creating an exchange of value between that person and someone willing to pay for the ODAI and curating possible multiple competing sources of that ODAI.
Why does Army of Spies Require Crypto?
Army of Spies is a crypto-mandatory project in that erasure of information asymmetry can only be carried out via a broadly decentralized system. This manifests itself in three broad themes.
1) Lack of centralized data storage is vital to avoidance of death by regulation. Parties seeking erasure of information asymmetry of any kind may easily find themselves in an adversarial relationship with state actors wielding the regulatory hammer. Such parties ultimately live under threat of seizure and shut down of their centralized data storage and processing. Just as cryptocurrency has only survived regulatory fatality via decentralization, so shall Army of Spies.
2) User confidence in Army of Spies is only be possible where there is no centralized data to be discovered by adverse parties. Private entities holding user data are regularly subpoened for such data by state actors. Centralized user data storage is also subject to the illicit acquisition of user data by bad actors through security exploits. In our modern litigious society, users also face completely legal discovery of their data via litigation by other private parties. Centralized servers are especially vulnerable to all three of these threats to user data. These combined weaknesses of centralized data storage mean that a system for transactions in obscure information can only operate efficiently on a decentralized basis.
3) Finally, adoption of the platform will not take hold if there is a chance the financial side of the information transaction could be reversed once the info is already conveyed. You can’t take back info you have already delivered to someone’s brain if they cancel their payment for that info after delivery. Immutability is king in transactions that remove information asymmetries. There needs to be a guarantee that the compensation will be delivered once the information is revealed.
The Army of Spies User Experience
Let’s get into the gritty details of how Army of Spies will actually work from the user perspective.
The Intel
As a user, you will decide that you want to know a secret (the “Intel”). This secret might be what size caddis fly you should use to catch brown trout on the Weber River this weekend, if your significant other is working or with his or her ex, or what type of modern oil you should really use in your vintage motorcycle.
The Intel Bounty
You will also decide how much that secret is worth to you. This amount (the “Intel Bounty”) is the sum that will go to the person providing you with the answer to your question. You will go to the Army of Spies website (www.armyofspies.net) which will list all the different topical categories under which your secret might fall (the “Intel Categories”). You will select the most appropriate Intel Category for seeking the Intel.
In eventual iterations of the website there may also be information listed about the particular curator (the “Curator”) of that Intel Category. There could be ratings and reviews of that Curator along with the number of successful Intel Bounties the Curator has completed, how quickly they are completed on average, and the average size in USD or ADA of the Intel Bounties completed by that Curator.
Once you have selected your preference as to a particular Intel Category, you will click on a link to navigate to the forum set up by the Curator for that Intel Category. You will be the person creating this particular Intel Bounty (the “Bounty Maker”). The forum setup by the Curator of the chosen Intel Category (the “Curation Forum”) will display the address of the smart contract (the “Smart Contract”) related to that Intel Category and Curator. You will send your Intel Bounty there in the chosen amount of ADA. You will then post your description of the Intel you are seeking (the “Intel Request”), the amount of the Intel Bounty you sent to the Smart Contract, and the ADA address from which you sent the Intel Bounty (for matching purposes). The Curator of that Intel Category will then confirm (using the ADA address you posted) that the stated Intel Bounty has actually been sent to the Smart Contract. This is where the Intel Source begins their work.
The Intel Source
Someone who knows the secret you are trying to uncover (an “Intel Source”) will then see your Intel Request and the Intel Bounty offered in the Curator’s Forum. The Intel Source will then post their proposed response to the Intel (the “Proposed Intel Response”) along with their ADA address. Their Proposed Intel Response and your Intel Request, will always be visible to everyone. There might also be other Proposed Intel Responses provided by other Intel Sources and they will also be visible to everyone. Not creating an “only the Bounty Maker can see the answers” architecture is intentional and probably key to adoption. New users will want to see the quality of Intel being provided before committing to pay a bounty for Intel in the same Intel Category.
The Curation Bounty
The Curator will be the ultimate judge and jury of which Intel Source wins the Intel Bounty (the “Winning Intel Source”). The Curator will also receive a share of the Intel Bounty (the “Curation Bounty”) equal to 10% of the Intel Bounty. The Curator will also act as moderator of the Curation Forum. The Curator will decide how long the Intel Bounty remains open and how many Intel Sources will be allowed to provide Proposed Intel Responses. The Curator will be able to promote his or her particular Curation Forum in whatever manner they wish. The Curator will also be strongly incentivized to provide a good experience to both Bounty Makers and Intel Sources alike since both will, in eventual iterations of the Army of Spies website, be able to review and rate the Curator for other Bounty Makers and Intel Sources to see. This same rating and review system will create a large disincentive for Curators to wrongly award Intel Bounties to undeserving Intel Sources or strawman sock puppet Intel Sources. This will discourage both dishonest curation and negligent curation by Curators. If either is happening, reviews and ratings will be negative and Bounty Makers and Intel Sources will just go to similar topical categories with better curation.
How Does One Become a Curator?
The Army of Spies website will sell non-fungible Cardano based tokens (“Curator NFTs”) corresponding to each Intel Category. The holder of the Curator NFT for each Intel Category will officially be the Curator of that Intel Category. The Smart Contract for each Intel Category will reference the Curator as whoever controls the address currently holding the relevant Curator NFT. So, the Curator position for each Intel Category will be easily transferable with the disposition of the relevant Curator NFT. Anyone seeking to buy a Curator NFT will simply search the Intel Category catalogue on the Army of Spies website. If the proposed Intel Category is not already taken or filtered as illegal by Army of Spies, the prospective Curator will be able to buy the desired Curator NFT. In the minimum viable product version of Army of Spies this will likely be done by contacting Army of Spies through the Army of Spies website and sending the prescribed amount of ADA for that Intel Category. In later iterations of Army of Spies, it is hoped that a more decentralized Smart Contract based purchase method will be developed.
The Intel Category corresponding to the Curator NFT will be strictly defined by the exact letters and numbers chosen by the prospective Curator as the name for the Intel Category. One person might choose to establish an Intel Category for “Tamarindo, Costa Rica Land Developers” while another might choose to establish an Intel Category for “Land Developers in Tamarindo, Costa Rica”. Both Intel Categories will be allowed and will correspond to different Curator NFTs that may be held by entirely different Curators. Both Intel Categories will appear in the list of topical categories on the Army of Spies website.
Upon purchase, the holder of the newly minted Curator NFT will be able to direct the link for that Intel Category to the Curation Forum setup by that particular Curator. Curators may choose to setup any type of forum they choose. This may be their own Subreddit, a self-hosted forum on a stand-alone website, or any other forum of their choice. It would be easy enough for Army of Spies to run centralized forums hosted on a controlled server. But, this would create a single centralized choke point that could be shut off by regulators and destroy the decentralized resilience of Army of Spies. Curators will also be able to promote their Curation Forum in any manner they want.
The Bounty to the Winning Intel Source
The Winning Intel Source would, of course, receive the remainder of the Intel Bounty which would be the Intel Bounty minus the Curation Bounty (i.e. 90% of the Intel Bounty).
Credentials and Evidence
Intel Sources may choose to bolster the strength of their Proposed Intel Response by providing evidence of credentials that would establish the veracity of their Proposed Intel Response. These credentials could be proof of education (e.g. here’s my diploma supporting that I’m an entomologist who knows what size flies are actually on the river right now), proof of expertise (e.g. here’s my Facebook account proving I’m a fishing guide who works on the Weber River every summer), or proof of experience (e.g. I’m not an expert on fishing but here’s a VLOG I did yesterday while catching a fish on the Weber River) .
In some cases, it may be more appropriate for Intel Sources to provide direct evidence of the Proposed Intel Response instead of credential based support for their answer. For example, the Bounty Maker who wants to know if her significant other is hanging out with his ex in a certain bar would probably happily accept a photo or video of her significant other furnished by an Intel Source. Likewise, the Bounty Maker who wants to know the length of the line in front of Bar X right now would probably prefer a video of the Intel Source in front of that line providing some proof of date and time as opposed to any Intel Source’s credentials as a bar line expert.
Credential and Evidence Challenges
In some cases, Curators may also wish to challenge the validity of any credentials offered by Intel Sources (e.g. that is not really your facebook account because I know of that guy) or any evidence furnished by the Intel Source (e.g. that wasn’t the line in front of Bar X tonight...that was Tuesday night...I know because the sign says 99 cent tacos and their website says that only happens on Tuesdays. Eventual iterations of Army of Spies, could even allow for Bounty Makers to offer an additional bounty (a “Credential Challenge Bounty”) for a Curator to disprove the credentials of an Intel Source.
Blacklisted Bounties
Army of Spies will not aim to facilitate any information transactions that might constitute, encourage, or aid criminal activity, terrorism, human rights violations, political espionage, or corporate espionage. To moderate these types of transactions in a decentralized system like Army of Spies, the Curator will have the ability to designate any Intel Bounty as a “Blacklisted Intel Bounty”. In such a case, the Intel Bounty will be returned to the Bounty Maker and the Intel Bounty and Bounty Maker will be moderated out of the Intel Category forum. If any Curator is refusing to designate illegal bounties as Blacklisted Intel Bounties, those elections will be reflected in the eventual ratings and reviews on the Army of Spies website and law abiding users will be able to avoid the topical categories controlled by such Curators.
Smart Contract & Curator NFT Architecture Considerations
At its core, Army of Spies will be run via Smart Contracts corresponding to each Intel Category. The initial intellectually tidy impulse would be to make every Intel Bounty its own smart contract. However, the rigor of constant automated Smart Contract generation for each new Intel Bounty in a distributed computing environment probably precludes such a scenario. Current thoughts revolve around a strategy of a single Smart Contract with inputs for each Intel Bounty creation and outputs for each Winning Intel Source and relevant Curator. Of course, this could create a significant “involuntary bug bounty” equivalent to the value of all Intel Bounties currently offered and residing in the smart contract. Initially, this risk can be mitigated by limiting the amount of any Intel Bounty to an amount of ADA equivalent to a low value such as $20. The Curator NFTs are planned to be created via the minting policy instructions laid out at:
https://developers.cardano.org/en/development-environments/native-tokens/how-to-use-multi-asset-tokens-in-the-cardano-node/.
Basic Adoption Strategy
The Army of Spies adoption strategy will be akin to that used by other NFT projects such as Unstoppable Domains and Decentraland. The buyers of the NFTs providing access to build on the ecosystem will also be the initial users of the assets built on the ecosystem. For example, a quick web search for news regarding Unstoppable Domains shows it has sold hundreds of thousands of NFTs corresponding to blockchain based domains in the last few years of its operations. Thousands of actual websites have been built on these domains. However, actual user demand to peruse these websites would probably be extremely scant if you didn’t count users who came into the ecosystem because they bought one of the NFTs corresponding to a domain or were considering it. People buy access to build on the ecosystem or at least to speculate on the NFT granting that right. Those same people then become the initial users of the things built on the ecosystem.
This could be seen of Decentraland on its initial launch as well. How many users were wondering around the Decentraland map on launch day who didn’t own some kind of NFT related to the project or weren’t at least taking a peek to decide if they should speculate on a LAND or an NFT based username or etc? We can only guess. But, probably not a gigantic percentage. The initial users were largely NFT owners or people deciding if they should buy an NFT related to the project. This usage of the project then drives more purchases of the various NFTs in the project (from hats, to usernames, to LANDS, to Estates) which then drives more usage which then drives more NFT purchases in a beautiful self-reinforcing cycle.
Army of Spies will be the same. Purchases of the Curator NFTs will be the spark that ignites the combustion that initially pushes the pistons. Whether purchasers are planning to build out an actual Curation Forum or just speculating on the NFT to sell it at a higher price down the road, those purchasers will likely also be the initial Bounty Makers and Intel Sources using Army of Spies.
To kick off this self-reinforcing cycle, Army of Spies could be marketed on an incremental grass roots basis by making simple organic explainer posts, one Subreddit at a time, in all types of topical Subreddits. These explainer posts would be tailored to each subreddit and describe how, for example, anyone in the “Porsche 911” subreddit could simply purchase the Curator NFT for “Porsche 911” and turn their interest and knowledge of the topic into a possible money making venture. Someone in the “Denver” subreddit might want to purchase the “LoDo Denver Bars” Curator NFT and curate bounties related to things happening in those bars.
Initial purchasers of the Curator NFTs will be making the acquisition as an investment in future access to the ecosystem. This future access characteristic of the purchase along with the decentralized ethos of the crypto space is likely to weigh in favor of an acceptance of the premise that Curators should host their own Curation Forums instead of some more centralized architecture.
Acceptance of this “do-it-yourself” approach is already exhibited by buyers of Decentraland Lands who would possibly have to build something on their lands and by Unstoppable Domains customers who would have to build out websites on top of their decentralized URLs. These purchasers are buying a piece of finite access to the ecosystem on a bet that the ecosystem will develop into something more or that someone will use that finite access to build something on that purchaser’s piece of the ecosystem. In the crypto/blockchain space these types of NFT products are actually a very attractive value proposition in that they present an already functioning consumer crypto product in an endless sea of thousands of blockchain coin products that only purport to one day serve as the rails on which functioning products would operate. Army of Spies will present the same value proposition in that a purchaser of a Curator NFT will be able to immediately set up their own forum and start trying to drive traffic there (in addition to whatever traffic they receive from the Army of Spies website) or they can simply hodl the Curator NFT until the ecosystem develops. You see many examples of both strategies with Decentraland “LANDS” NFT holders and Unstoppable Domain URL holders today.
The Army of Spies Smart Contract
Below is the Marlowe code for the current draft of the Army of Spies Smart Contract. This code can be viewed in a very visual Blockly format if dropped into the Marlowe Playground at https://alpha.marlowe.iohkdev.io/#/simulation.
When
[Case
(Choice
(ChoiceId
"Intel Bounty"
(Role "Bounty Maker")
)
[Bound 0 1]
)
(When
[Case
(Choice
(ChoiceId
"Bounty Amount"
(Role "Bounty Maker")
)
[Bound 1 1000]
)
(When
[Case
(Deposit
(Role "Bounty Maker")
(Role "Bounty Maker")
(Token "" "")
(ChoiceValue
(ChoiceId
"Bounty Amount"
(Role "Bounty Maker")
))
)
(When
[Case
(Choice
(ChoiceId
"Curator Intel Source Selection"
(Role "Curator")
)
[Bound 0 1]
)
(If
(ValueEQ
(ChoiceValue
(ChoiceId
"Curator Intel Source Selection"
(Role "Curator")
))
(Constant 1)
)
(When
[Case
(Choice
(ChoiceId
"Intel Source Claims Intel Bounty"
(Role "Intel Source")
)
[Bound 0 1]
)
(If
(ValueEQ
(ChoiceValue
(ChoiceId
"Intel Source Claims Intel Bounty"
(Role "Intel Source")
))
(Constant 1)
)
(When
[Case
(Choice
(ChoiceId
"Confirm Intel Source Won"
(Role "Curator")
)
[Bound 0 1]
)
(If
(ValueEQ
(ChoiceValue
(ChoiceId
"Confirm Intel Source Won"
(Role "Curator")
))
(Constant 1)
)
(Pay
(Role "Bounty Maker")
(Account (Role "Intel Source"))
(Token "" "")
(Scale
(9%10)
(ChoiceValue
(ChoiceId
"Bounty Amount"
(Role "Bounty Maker")
))
)
(Pay
(Role "Bounty Maker")
(Party (Role "Curator"))
(Token "" "")
(Scale
(1%10)
(ChoiceValue
(ChoiceId
"Bounty Amount"
(Role "Bounty Maker")
))
)
Close
)
)
(Pay
(Role "Bounty Maker")
(Account (Role "Bounty Maker"))
(Token "" "")
(ChoiceValue
(ChoiceId
"Bounty Amount"
(Role "Bounty Maker")
))
Close
)
)]
3500
(Pay
(Role "Bounty Maker")
(Party (Role "Bounty Maker"))
(Token "" "")
(ChoiceValue
(ChoiceId
"Bounty Amount"
(Role "Bounty Maker")
))
Close
)
)
(Pay
(Role "Bounty Maker")
(Party (Role "Bounty Maker"))
(Token "" "")
(ChoiceValue
(ChoiceId
"Bounty Amount"
(Role "Bounty Maker")
))
Close
)
)]
3000
(Pay
(Role "Bounty Maker")
(Party (Role "Bounty Maker"))
(Token "" "")
(ChoiceValue
(ChoiceId
"Bounty Amount"
(Role "Bounty Maker")
))
Close
)
)
(Pay
(Role "Bounty Maker")
(Party (Role "Bounty Maker"))
(Token "" "")
(ChoiceValue
(ChoiceId
"Bounty Amount"
(Role "Bounty Maker")
))
Close
)
)]
2500
(Pay
(Role "Bounty Maker")
(Party (Role "Bounty Maker"))
(Token "" "")
(ChoiceValue
(ChoiceId
"Bounty Amount"
(Role "Bounty Maker")
))
Close
)
)]
2000 Close
)]
1500 Close
)]
1000 Close
A Look Forward to a Potential Army of Spies 2.0
A Potential Future Army of Spies 2.0 with More Decentralized Curation within Topical Categories
The original vision for Army of Spies involved curation voting and curation staking by multiple curators even within a single Intel Category. Attempts were even made to model out this architecture in Marlowe. Eventually, the vision of the NFT Curator as detailed above won the day for Army of Spies 1.0. However, the original vision of curation voting and curation staking will be excerpted here for conceptual background on possible future deployment in an Army of Spies 2.0 evolution.
The Potential Army of Spies 2.0 Decentralized Curation Bounty & Curation Staking
In this model, there will be no NFT based curator, and other regular users perusing the forums (the “Curators”) will be allowed to vote on whether or not the intel provided is sufficient. Only an Intel Source receiving enough votes (a “Winning Intel Source”) will win his share of the Intel Bounty. The Curators will also receive a share of the Intel Bounty (the “Curation Bounty”) equal to 10% of the Intel Bounty for voting for the correct answer. To avoid the problem of straw man curators (i.e. an Intel Source creating a second, or third, or nth account to vote for his own intel even when it is obviously not sufficient to be the bounty winning intel), each Curator will be required to stake 1% of the Intel Bounty in order to vote (the “Curation Stake”). Curators who vote for an answer that does not get sufficient votes (the “Losing Curators”) will have their Curation Stake slashed. Curation Stake slashing will involve forfeiture of the Curation Stake and transfer of such stake to the Bounty Maker in majority with a small sliver going to AOS. Each Winning Curator will receive a share of the Curation Bounty equal to the Curation Bounty divided by the number of Winning Curators plus a return of their Curation Stake. In other words a Winning Curator can expect to receive a sum equal to the Intel Bounty divided by the number that is equal to the product of 10 multiplied by the number of Winning Curators. Such Winning Curator will also see a redemption of their Curation stake (which we have already defined above as 1% of the Intel Bounty). Let’s go back to our example of the fishing question and the 100 unit Intel Bounty. If there were five Winning Curators, the sum due to each Curator would be:
10 units/ 5 Winning Curators
= 2 units reward per Winning Curator
+ 1 unit as the return of their Curation Stake
= 3 units.
In order to further mitigate strawman curation, there will also be a second round of curation voting where no stake will be required. This second round will only happen when an Intel Source has already passed the first round. This round of curation voting will subject any strawman curators to the tyranny of the crowd. Here we will be leveraging outrage culture. If anything is true of the online landscape today, it is that people love to call other people out for breaking the rules. So, we will allow a larger number of people to vote in this second round and they will not be required to put up a stake to do so. In this “tyranny of the crowd round”, the voters will only be allowed to vote against the result obtained in the first round. Since the second round only happens if an Intel Source passes the first round, this means that in the second round, votes can only be cast against the particular Intel Source.
If dishonest curation is still occuring under this system, the Curation Stake could also always be increased until an optimum balance is struck between deterrence of dishonest curation and participation in curation.
So, in summary, curation voting will look like this:

1. a first round of staked curation voting;
2. if the Intel Source doesn’t receive sufficient votes in the first round, that Intel Source has lost and is out;
3. if the Intel Source does receive sufficient votes in the first round, he or she progresses to the second round;
4. this second “tyranny of the crowd” round will be unstaked and votes can only be cast AGAINST the particular Intel Source; and
5. the Intel Source has reached the finish line and will collect the Intel Bounty if there are not sufficient votes against the Intel Source in the second round.

Army of Spies 2.0 Curation and Intel Provision Rankings
In order to further incentivise honest curation, the AOS platform could eventually also display the number of times any given Curator has been a Winning Curator along with the number of times that Curator has been a Losing Curator. Likewise, all Intel Sources will have a ranking showing how many times they have been a Winning Intel Source and the number of times they have been an Intel Source who did not get the highest number of curation votes (a “Losing Intel Source”). These rankings will be shown to other users giving curation votes so that they can take into account the credibility of the Intel Source and the other Curators voting for a particular Intel Source.
Army of Spies 2.0 Blacklisted Transactions Bounties
Army of Spies will not facilitate any information transactions that might constitute, encourage, or aid criminal activity, terrorism, human rights violations, political espionage, or corporate espionage. To moderate these types of transactions in a decentralized system like Army of Spies, there will have to be a bounty for identification of any “Blacklisted Intel Bounty” to incentivise Curators to flag such Intel Bounties. To avoid the strawman curator issue with such Blacklisted Intel Bounties (i.e. the Bounty Maker creating sock puppets to get an illegitimate Intel Bounty past the Blacklist Curation), the Curator who wins the bounty for flagging a Blacklisted Intel Bounty (a “Successful Blacklister”) will be randomly selected from the whole cohort of Curators who vote for the flagging of any particular Intel Bounty. The Blacklist Voting will also involve a “tyranny of the crowd” vote where an Intel Bounty that has passed the first round of BlackList voting can still be blacklisted by non-staking voters who can only vote against the Intel Bounty but not in favor of it passing. The Blacklisted Intel Bounty will be equivalent to a percentage of the Intel Bounty posted by the Bounty Maker. Another sliver of the Intel Bounty will also be forfeited to AOS. This will mean that the Bounty Maker would forfeit some or all of the offered bounty with no info in return. Flagging of Blacklisted Intel Bounties will require the normal Curation Stake of 1% of the Intel Bounty. The Curation Stake of Curators who attempt to dishonestly or inaccurately identify a Blacklisted Intel Bounty (i.e they voted to Blacklist but the group decided otherwise) would then go to the Bounty Maker with a sliver going to Army of Spies..
Proposed Utilization of Funds
Any funds awarded to Army of Spies in Project Catalyst Fund 3 will be used to procure the services of devolopers who can assist with smart contract development, the NFT minting policy, web development, and the overarching architecture connecting all the pieces. While the current team has been dabbling in Marlowe (and a tiny bit in Plutus) for the last few years, they would like to benefit from the expertise of someone close to IOHK or Emurgo or otherwise qualified to tell them what they are missing and help solve the inevitable problems that will be discovered. The Fortune 500 procurement experience of one of the current team members is expected to be very valuable in obtaining these services in a timely fashion and at prudent costs.
Roadmap
Milestone 1
-Refine Curator NFT Concept and Marlowe smart contract.
-Refine architecture for the interaction of the various roles with the Marlowe contract.
-Procure services of developers to fill any missing gaps between NFT minting policy, smart contract, and website.
Milestone 2
-Buildout AOS website with: 1) functionality for NFT Sales; 2) catalogue of topical categories; and 3) explainer and other marketing content.
-Begin Curator recruitment by using organic Subreddit by Subreddit posts.
Milestone 3
-Slowly bootstrap adoption by focusing on Curator recruitment, one subreddit at a time.
-Market directly in any and all suitable subreddits for potential Curators matching that topical interest category.

Section 0: Background
Hi everyone! I’m trying to tailor this a bit more to reflect the UK Money Diary style where I give context on the week before and reflect on it after. I also added in some of the questions from the recent thread about what Refinery29 should ask diarists (see here).
I wrote this the week of Thanksgiving; my partner and I stayed in NYC instead of going home to either of our parents’ homes. We wear masks and stay socially distant when we leave the house. I’m thankful that we live close to a park and live on a block where we know and enjoy talking to our neighbors.
This was a relatively normal week for us during a pandemic, save for me spending a bit more than normal and it being Thanksgiving. We’ve both lived in the city since college and have so-so relationships with our families, so we didn’t leave for “home” when the pandemic hit.
I also just named my boyfriend instead of giving him an initial. He’s the only person I actually saw this week, but the initials always throw me off when I read these.
What do money and success mean to you? What are your end goals?
It helps me to see money as a tool. I never resonate with people who say “money doesn’t buy happiness” because to a certain degree, it does. Money enables me to live the life I want.
I’m pursuing FIRE (financial independence, retire early) and hope to be financially independent (able to live off my investments) by my early 30s. To do so, I save 60%+ of my income per month. I want this because working for 40 years isn’t sustainable for me—I have a very cushy tech job and still get anxiety and rage about waking up every morning to work, the rat race, and being paid inequitably to male peers. I’d like to give myself the option to leave this world as soon as possible.
As an alternative, I could see myself successful if I open a product consultancy, where I advise early-stage startups on product management, what to build for their MVP, and product-market fit. I’m really interested in tech ethics and the questionable practices in venture capital, so I’d love to be in a place where I could be picky about what clients I take and help truly mission-driven businesses thrive. I could see this also working as a small business incubator—why not apply what works in startups to small businesses?
I don’t yet have a firm picture of what I’d like my life to look like when I retire. I’m interested in spending a lot of time reading, traveling to new places for extended periods of time, and potentially writing a book. I get extremely interested in niche topics. Right now if I had to guess, I’d be writing a book about the ways multi-level marketing companies (MLMs) manipulate women.
Are you a spender or a saver?
Definitely a saver. My partner is more of a spender, and we’ve influenced each other well. Seeing him spend money on himself for video games helps me realize I can spend more money on myself for things I just want (see my big purchase for myself this week).
In turn, seeing me save a lot of money has motivated him to up his 401k contribution and overall savings. He’s also interested in FIRE, although I’d say my timeline is more aggressive.
If you could go back in time, what's the one piece of financial advice you would give to your past self?
Learn about investing, look up the terms you don’t know, and start doing it as soon as possible. Ask questions to people you know or on the internet.
On to the diary!
​
Section One: Assets and Debt
Investment Balance
$131,175

• Retirement (includes 2 company 401ks and 1 rollover IRA): $55,730
• Brokerage: $27,233
• Roth IRA: $25,439
• Managed account: $17,923
• HSA: $4,850

Equity if you're a homeowner
N/A, I rent in a HCOL city. No plans to own anytime soon
Savings account balance
$10,270
Checking account balance
$3,433 in checking account for bills

• This fluctuates, but I try to invest anything over $2k. I’m pretty conservative with my checking account buffer, and don’t worry much about the interest I’m “losing,” especially because interest rates are so low right now

$2,518 in checking account for rent

• I keep a holdover account that’s connected to Venmo and Zelle to pay rent

Credit card debt
N/A. There’s $1,348 currently on my credit cards, but I pay them all off in full each month. My parents signed me up for a credit card as soon as I was old enough and taught me about how important it was to pay in full. In fact, I think this was so hammered into my brain that doing anything other than that each month was never an option. Because of this, I’ve always thought of credit cards as similar to debit cards—only spend money you have.
Student loan debt (for what degree)
I was fortunate to go to college on a full scholarship, including living expenses. I studied psychology and sociology, and I graduated without any student loan debt.
​
Section Two: Income
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $6,570/month
I maxed out my 401k early this year, so for 8 months I was contributing $2,500/month out of my paychecks. That ended in September, so it changed my monthly take-home from about $4,650 to $6,570/month.
Deductions:

• 401k: $0/month (was $2,500/month)
• Medical: $128/month
• Dental and vision: $11/month

Income Progression

• I started in customer support right out of college, making $40,000/year + overtime, which ended up being about $52,000/year (thanks OT!).
• About a year later, I moved into an entry-level product role at the same company and received a raise to $60,000/year.
• The next year, I moved to a new company for a half-step promotion where I was making $82,000/year + 15% yearly bonus. The bonus was dependable enough that it was assumed as part of our total compensation, so let’s call it $95,000/year.
• Early this year, I switched companies again (noticing a theme?) for a promotion and now make $122,000/year.

I don’t have any other sources of income outside my main job. My partner makes a similar amount to me—about $117,000/year with bonus.
​
Section Three: Expenses
I live with my partner and we don’t have combined finances, but split many expenses 50/50. We use Splitwise to log transactions. He’s more laid-back about being paid back, but I’m much more “I don’t want to owe anyone anything, and I don’t want anyone to owe me anything” (I know, rigid, but I’m working on it!).
Splitwise is nice because it’d be ridiculous to Venmo request each other for a $4 coffee, but we can see how expenses are adding up. If someone has racked up a few hundred dollars of spending for both of us, the other person will cover our expenses for awhile. It works for us!
Rent
$2,200 for a 2 bed, 1 bath apartment in Brooklyn. We split rent 50/50.
Renters insurance
About $7/month for my portion. This covers all our possessions plus my boyfriend’s watches. He pays 75% of it because half of the monthly cost comes from the extra watch overage.
Savings contribution
I try to have about $10,000 sitting in my savings account at any given time, because it makes me feel safe in case of an emergency. I also like the freedom it enables, in case I wanted to leave my job and take a significant amount of time off. This is already at the $10k I want, so I don’t contribute to it monthly.
Investment contribution
It varies but on average I contribute $2,500/month to my brokerage account and Roth IRA (combined).
Donations
I try to donate about $200/month, but it’s pretty sporadic. This month I donated to the Yellowhammer Fund and Northwest Abortion Access Fund. One of my major goals for 2021 is to step up my donations and create an actual strategy around them, potentially involving a donor-advised fund.
Gas/electric
Our gas is $20-25/month and electric is $50/month. I pay gas and Will pays electric, both go in Splitwise. About $37/month total for me.
Wifi
Our wifi is $60/month, which goes into Splitwise—I pay $30/month.
Cellphone
I’m still on my parents’ phone plan—sheesh! This is convincing me that I should Venmo them for it each month.
Subscriptions
I pay for Hulu with ads, $5.99/month. My boyfriend pays for Netflix and we share a Spotify family plan with a couple of his friends, which I chip in $4/month for.
I also pay for the budgeting software YNAB (You Need a Budget) which is $84/year. I only pay it once a year in September.
Medical
I recently had to go to the emergency room for an overnight stay and follow up with some specialists. (I’m okay!) Because of that whole shindig I’m expecting to max out my deductible (and potentially my out-of-pocket-max) right at the end of the year. This will be about $4,000, but none of the claims have come through yet so I’m not sure of the exact total. I have a category in my budget for my deductible, and the rest will come out of my emergency fund.
Physical therapy
This month I’m starting pelvic floor physical therapy for dyspareunia (pain with intercourse).
I’d tried everything the internet suggested (“just relaaaaaax”) before getting the courage to find a new ob-gyn and ask her about it. She had some recommendations, but ultimately physical therapy was the “last resort” option that I’m now exploring.
My new physical therapist comes highly recommended but is out of network with insurance. Each session is $250, and I’ll go once every 2-3 weeks for the next few months as part of treatment. If you’ve worked through this problem (or are experiencing it now!) I’d love to hear your experience.
​
Section Four: Additional Questions
Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?
Absolutely. My dad was the first in his family to attend college and my parents made pretty calculated decisions about where they would live so I could go to the absolute best public school possible. Over 90% of students at my high school attend a 4-year college, and we start talking about it freshman year. To say college was encouraged in my environment is an understatement.
Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money? Did your parent/guardian(s) educate you about finances?
My dad has worked in finance since I was about 10. He’s always been really knowledgeable about both higher-level economic concepts and the minutiae of personal finance. My family is frugal, too: we clipped coupons and got clothes on super-sale at Kohl’s and Goodwill. I know there was a period of time when he became self-employed and money got very tight for a few years, but the bulk of those worries were largely kept from me.
Did you worry about money growing up?
Yes. While we were comfortable, we lived in such an affluent place that our family was in “the middle class” of the town and it made me worry more about money than I probably needed to. Think The Stepford Wives for context.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net?
In college, I became maybe 80% financially independent as I had a scholarship and worked part-time during school and over the summer, but I was still on their insurance.
I remember being frustrated in college because even though I knew I was extremely privileged, my friends in college had their parents pay their summer apartment rent and gave them an “allowance” of spending money, and I was “limited” by the options I could afford with the job I had. My dad told me at the time, “This is frustrating but it’s preparing you for actually having to live off the money you make in the near future.” (Great, great advice Dad.)
I’m technically still financially dependent on my parents for my cell phone bill, but otherwise I pay for everything: rent, insurance, utilities, food, therapy, and all wants in the form of clothing, workout classes, etc. I could ask my parents for money if I absolutely needed to, but would use it as a last resort.
Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain.
I have an account (mentioned above) that a family friend who’s a hedge fund manager, well, manages. I believe the initial deposit was $1000 over 10 years ago, but that money wasn’t mine either, it’s all a gift. It’s not very liquid—it’d take me several months (and some very good reasoning) to get any of that money withdrawn, since it’s supposed to be for “the future” (which I guess I could argue is now?).
I might receive a small amount of money when my grandmother passes, but it’d probably be around $1-2k, if at all.
​
Day 1 Wednesday, November 25, 2020
8:30am Wake up and shower, take my vitamin C gummies, then make coffee. I wasn’t much of a daily coffee drinker until my offices had it for free, and now I’m definitely addicted. I don’t really care if the coffee is shitty or not, I just put some milk in it and it’s great. Right now I’m trying to drink half or three-quarter cups so I can attempt to pull back my addiction a bit. I log onto work at 9am.
11:30am Eat leftovers from last night for lunch—quesadilla + Spanish rice. There’s an incredible Mexican restaurant by us, and now I am ruined for the tacos, quesadillas and nachos from any other place.
12:30pm Will picks me up in the U-Haul. We’re driving about 20 min away to pick up a butcher block desk he bought off Craigslist, which ends up being from a small office that’s downsizing. The desk is $150 which he pays for. We love the office’s style (and the owner is super nice!) and walk around while he shows us what else he’s trying to get rid of.
We end up buying an extra-large ZZ plant and two side tables from him for an extra $120, way less than we would have paid for the quality elsewhere. My half will be $60, and I’ll split the U-Haul too, $44.51. $82.26
2:45pm That ended up taking a lot longer than we expected! We get back and unload the van, then I bring stuff inside while Will returns the van to the U-Haul location. I jump back onto work—so much for a slow afternoon before Thanksgiving. AWS is down, which powers a lot of our engineering work (and a lot of the internet!) so a lot of our teams are basically twiddling their thumbs. We chat about how to message the outage to customers.
5:45pm Will starts making dinner (braised chicken and veggies) and I sit down to read with a strawberry Chobani, but I end up just reading Reddit and searching for new podcasts to listen to.
7:45pm Dinner was great! Now…ice cream.
9:43pm I remember that my mom sent me ideas for her and my dad’s Christmas presents, so I order on Etsy and Amazon. My dad gets a mug with an Ernest Hemingway quote (“write drunk, edit sober”) ($21.54) and a book on writing ($16.63), and my mom gets this food warming tote contraption she wanted ($43.52). We’ve been paring down Christmases over the years—this year I asked for the Europe version of Ticket to Ride. $81.69
11:15pm I finish up the first episode of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City with some white cheddar Cheez-Its to snack on. After, I start on the dishes from dinner. I listen to the Product Market Misfits podcast while I do dishes—the episode with Kristen Anderson from Catch is great, highly recommend if you’re tired of just hearing stories about stereotypical Silicon Valley tech companies.
Day 1 Total: $166.69
Day 2 Thursday, November 26, 2020
10am Wake up super late since I stayed up scrolling on my phone too late last night. We make coffee and set out for a long walk around 11:15am.
12:05pm At the end of our walk, we swing by our local liquor store and buy 4 bottles of wine (red, white, rose, champagne). Will pays, total is $63.15 for everything. We haven’t had wine in the apartment for ages and I’m excited to have some stocked up. $31.57
12:30pm Get back from the walk, shower, then turn on football. I actually don’t really care about any NFL teams (I like college football a lot more), but it’s such calming background noise for me that I find myself looking for games when I have downtime. We also recently found out that Will’s friends’ dog only has a few months to live, so we order some jerky treats and a squeaky toy for him. $14.07
2:30pm We head out to the restaurant we’re going to for Thanksgiving lunch, a local place a short walk from our apartment. They’re doing a prix fixe menu of the classics—turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, and a phenomenal tarte Tatin with ice cream for dessert.
We eat outside under heat lamps. It’s super cozy. With our bottle of wine and tip the total is $208 (I try to tip over and above the norm because it’s a pandemic and Thanksgiving). My half will be $104.
5:53pm Get back from the restaurant. We have a ton of leftovers which is awesome (I think it’s excessive frugality, but I almost expect to stretch takeout or restaurant meals into two meals). Exchange some texts with my friends about their socially-distant Thanksgiving celebrations.
I turn on the Washington vs. Cowboys game right at the halftime show, which is Kane Brown with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. They’re all wearing masks (except for Kane) and it’s so odd to see them dancing in masks. I mean, I’m glad they’re wearing them, but it just seems like we could have gone without the halftime show this year.
9:21pm I order contacts from Contacts Direct. I got a new prescription but didn’t have a great experience with the eye doctor, so I’m hesitant about this order—only ordered one box of 90 lenses for each eye instead of a year’s worth of lenses. I’ve been getting headaches pretty frequently, so I’m hoping getting a new pair of glasses and alternating those (instead of wearing my contacts for 16 hours a day, every day) will help. $29.98 after insurance benefits
Day 2 Total: $179.62
​
Day 3 Friday, November 27
8:56am Wake up super last minute, run to sign onto Slack and then start grinding coffee beans. I’m online and drinking a big mug of coffee by 9:10. (So much for half cups.)
10:45am Come up for air from work and grab the stuff to make a bagel. Everything bagels and plain cream cheese are my go-to combo.
12:03pm I grab a bag of clothes to drop off at the donation bin and a couple library books to return. The library is about a 25 minute walk so it’ll be a nice lunch break diversion.
12:56pm After the library I stop by the grocery store for some paper towels and sponges, since we’re almost out. Total is $22.62, my half is $11.31
1:09pm When I get home I jump back into work and put the USA vs. Netherlands game on my second monitor. By the 75th minute, the US is up by 2 goals so they start putting in some younger players—it’s fun to see Midge Purce and Sophia Smith play! I also throw some bagel bites in the oven for a quick snack and promise myself dinner will be healthier.
4:23pm I zone out of work and start playing Among Us. I end up playing for over two hours. We open a bottle of wine at some point and I get super tipsy.
6:50pm Turn on the tail end of the Notre Dame vs. UNC game. It turns into Jeopardy, which turns into Wheel of Fortune, which I’m not mad about. P isn’t as into the game shows and leaves to microwave a plate of leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner and play video games.
8:40pm Finally getting hungry after my bagel bites and Cheez-Its this afternoon and make a plate of Thanksgiving leftovers—turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans and cauliflower. Yum.
Will and I end up getting in a tiff about the mess in our apartment so we take a break, cool down and talk it through. I watch a couple episodes of Sister Wives and go to bed around 1:30am.
Day 3 Total: $11.31
​
Day 4 Saturday, November 28, 2020
10:05am I stayed up late (again) so it’s nice to sleep in. I play Among Us for awhile and have a couple rounds where I’m the impostor and get some great kills and wins. I run out into the living room and celebrate with Will. We laugh because it’s silly how much we love the games we play. Around 10:45 I start making coffee.
11am We desperately need new sheets because our fitted sheet has a huge hole at Will’s feet (and it’s growing). I search a women’s personal finance group I’m in on Facebook for recommendations and we end up buying a queen sheet set from Belk. Total was $100.71 with their sale. $50.35
1pm I was planning on returning a package to the post office today, but forget it closes at 1pm on Saturdays so I decide to run to Target instead. I have a lampshade to return and want to look for a shower caddy as well. I also have an old iPad to return, which Will tells me I can do at Best Buy. He finds an old iPod and flip phone I can take too.
Take the MTA there ($2.75 for a single fare). When I get there, it’s a madhouse and I remember that I have sillily (is this a word?) decided to come on the weekend of Black Friday. I stand in the returns line for about 15 minutes and get $10.89 back, but ditch the idea of trying to look for a shower caddy. The checkout line looks like 100 people long. -$8.14 because of return
Next I go to Best Buy, but who am I kidding—the line to get in the store is even longer than the Target checkout line. I walk back to the subway and get on to go home. $2.75
2:30pm Since Best Buy was a no go, I search for electronic recycling around me on the way home just to see where I could drop off the devices I have. Apparently there’s an EcoATM not too far from my subway stop. It’s more for selling devices, but if they can’t give you money for something, they’ll recycle it, which is exactly what I wanted. I put each of the pieces in the scanner, and end up getting a whopping $2 total (for Will’s old iPod). Still cool because I was just expecting to recycle it all. I’ll give Will the $2.
2:44pm There’s a Dunkin nearby so I pop in to grab a couple donuts ($2.90). There’s a woman outside asking for money, so I give her $5 cash. $7.90
3:00pm Last stop—our favorite deli is nearby and Will mentioned he wanted to get bacon there recently. I get a 1/2 lb and salivate on the way home. This is one of those things I won’t put in Splitwise because it’s small and because it’s fun to get for P as a tiny little present. $3.50
3:45pm Once I’m home I’m super hungry from only eating carbs all morning so I have a snack of carrots, hummus and some pepperoni. I head back out to drop off a bag of clothes and shoes at a drop box a few blocks away. The neighbors are outside at the park near our house so I stop and chat with them for a few minutes. Their kids are the cutest.
6:47pm For dinner I make a ham and cheese sandwich (panini style with rosemary butter) and more carrots and hummus. I put on another episode of Sister Wives. These people are so fascinating to me—first off, I think the husband is completely full of himself. But I’m also so curious about the wives. There are a lot of talking head testimonials where the parents explain that they’re “oppressed” because they’re different and want to go public so the world can see polygamy as a valid family style (I’m only on season 2).
I know they’re probably playing up the “we love our other sister wives and have so much fun together even without Kody” aspect because people expect sister wives to be catty and hate each other, but I can’t help but wonder why they need to be in plural marriage to get the same friendship they seem to value so much. I also doubt they’d extend the same grace and tolerance they want to people who are “different” because they’re LGBTQ, or “different” because they’re in an open relationship or marriage.
9:15pm I mix together oatmeal chocolate chip cookie batter and put some cookies in the oven. While I’m waiting, I browse Zocdoc for well-reviewed providers—I want to make a podiatrist appointment for a lingering toe issue and an audiologist appointment for a routine hearing screening. I got the idea to make these appointments since I’ll hit my out-of-pocket max with the hospital visit, making them free or very discounted. I make two appointments for next week.
I also lust over a Farm Rio puffer jacket that feels overpriced but I just love. Maybe I’ll buy it tomorrow since they’re having a 30% off sale.
Day 4 Total: $64.50
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Day 5 Sunday, November 29
8:58am Wake up and switch between scrolling on Reddit and playing a few Among Us games. After a bit Will gets out of bed and makes coffee for us.
9:45am Will finishes the movie he started last night and we start on breakfast. We’re making the bacon I bought yesterday, breakfast potatoes with onions, and a fried egg for Will (I can’t stand the taste or smell).
11:00am Yum! Breakfast was great. I watch a couple episodes of Sister Wives and mull over buying that ridiculous but amazing puffer jacket from Farm Rio. I’ve still been thinking about it since last night and I might take the plunge.
1:25pm I get a jolt of motivation to work out and do a 20 minute Sydney Cummings video on Youtube. I heard about it from a recent Money Diary posted here! After it’s done I’m so, so tired. I stretch and unpause my episode of Sister Wives.
2:22pm I help Will move the butcher block slab for his desk out to our backyard. We live on the first floor of a single-family home that was converted into apartments, so we get the backyard too—it’s awesome to have outdoor space in the city. P works on sanding it and applying poly for the next couple hours.
5:07pm Will suggests pizza for dinner and I am always, always down for pizza. I order pickup from the spot down the street—one grandma, one cheese and 2 orders of garlic knots come to $38.60. We’ll have leftovers for tomorrow too. $19.30
5:50pm We pick up the pizza and dig in. While we’re eating we turn on the Chiefs vs. Buccaneers game; Will has a few players on his fantasy team in this game.
6:57pm I sign up to write letters to Georgia residents encouraging them to vote in the Senate runoff elections in January. This is through Vote Forward—I did 20 letters for the general election in November and want to participate again. I’ll print the letters at a local coffee shop since we don’t have a printer at home.
Will sends me this Reddit comment about campaign finance since we’ve been talking about it recently. I decide I’m convinced by the argument and set up a $5 monthly donation to Brand New Congress. $5
8:19pm After texting back and forth with my friend all day, I buy the puffer jacket—so excited. She encouraged me to get it and is pumped for me too. $228.64
I also notice my paycheck has started processing in my checking account (I get paid tomorrow), so I enter the amount in YNAB and budget it all. I earmark about $1500 to go into my brokerage account tomorrow. I won’t include it here as “spending” since it’s included in the overview section above.
Day 5 Total: $252.94
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Day 6 Monday, November 30
8:43am Wake up and turn on my Slack. Will started the coffee process and I finish it up by pouring the water into our Chemex and letting it steep (I know there’s a coffee-centric word for this...).
8:56am I check my Citi card and my YouTube TV trial rolled over—I was going to cancel it this morning, which I thought was the last day. I email support to see if they’ll refund me, because (I promise I’m not just saying this!) I did have a pretty bad experience. The Roku app was glitchy for us every time we watched something. Maybe they’ll feel nice today! $64.99
9:35am After responding to a few work messages, I run out the door to the post office to avoid a long package line. I did the Warby Parker 5-day home try on and have to return my box of glasses today. I found a pair I really like and am excited to get in the habit of wearing glasses again, instead of just my contacts.
Thankfully the line is only a few people long. The employees are also super nice every time I go, so I try to be really pleasant too. The lines are usually long and I’ve seen more than one adult have a fit at this post office. It’s rainy today and I couldn’t find our umbrella, so my flimsy rain jacket gets pretty soaked through on the walk back.
11:35am My podiatrist appointment is supposed to be tomorrow morning, and they call me to tell me since I haven’t hit my deductible, I’ll have to pay out of pocket for the visit. I explain that I’m 100% going to hit my deductible, the claims from the hospital just haven’t processed yet. I ask her to bill my insurance first for the visit, then I can pay whatever ends up not being covered (if anything). She agrees!
Maybe this is standard, but I’ve never had it happen before—even if I haven’t hit my deductible, I’ve always been to offices that bill insurance first, then I pay the remaining balance.
1:05pm Lots of meetings today. I break for lunch and heat up the braised chicken with veggies. It’s definitely on its last good day, so I’m glad I used it up. Still yummy!
2:20pm Woohoo! Get an email that my YouTube TV charge was refunded. -$64.99
Will ran to Home Depot today to buy some tools for his desk and also got a shower curtain liner since ours is ripping. I go to put it up in the bathroom but my arms are so sore—like I got my flu shot type of sore.
5:05pm Sign off work after trying to wrangle a supremely frustrating SQL query. I don’t get it but figure I can ask our analyst team for help tomorrow. Will will have a late night working, so pizza and Sister Wives is in my near future.
While watching, I update YNAB to reflect the end-of-month balances for my investment accounts. I get a huge dopamine hit by seeing my net worth number go up. I’m also anticipating it going down a bit next month because of my medical bills, so I relish the moment.
8:09pm It suddenly dawns on me that my arms are sore because I worked out yesterday. It’s so rare now that I literally forget when I do it. Ha!
9:15pm We watch the Eagles vs. Seahawks game and I absentmindedly play Among Us. I end up getting ...bullied by a person playing it? They get mad that I figured out they were the imposter and start saying all these schoolyard-type digs throughout the next couple rounds, but level 100 of cruel.
I’m embarrassed by how sad it makes me but think maybe it’s a good thing I don’t immediately know what to say to bully people back. Such a weird experience. I end up going to bed around 11:30.
Day 6 Total: $0
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Day 7 December 1, 2020
7:07am Wake up late for my alarm at 7. I’m up a lot earlier today because my podiatrist appointment is first thing. I get dressed in the dark, kiss P goodbye, grab my water bottle and run out the door to the subway by 7:30. $2.75
8:10am Get to my stop and swing by Starbucks before the appointment. I get a vanilla latte and the bacon cheddar and egg sandwich. Total is around $10 but I have a gift card loaded onto my Starbucks app.
My spending here went way down when I switched jobs to an office not close to a Starbucks, and then stopped going into an office at all.
8:30am My appointment goes great, if a little painful when she numbs my toe. I had to get an ingrown toenail removed. I danced ballet and pointe for years so I’m (unfortunately) used to them, but this one was terrible. The doctor and I bond over both being dancers with bad feet and they schedule me for a follow up two weeks out.
She actually says there’s been a rise in these procedures because people aren’t getting pedicures since the pandemic and aren’t cutting their toenails well! Wild.
I look silly on the subway in December wearing Birkenstocks and socks with a huge toe bandage. It looks like one of those cartoon characters who stubs their toe and it becomes 10x bigger than their other toes. $2.75
9:40am I get off at the stop before mine to stop at Rite Aid. I grab Neosporin, band-aids and epsom salt and check my notes for anything else she mentioned about caring for my toe. $12.97
10:00am When I get home, I hop into work and working with our engineers on a promotion for the New Year. I also catch up with Will since he stayed up late last night and I got up early for my appointment. He says he ended up staying up until 3:30am (!!) cleaning up his tools, working on his desk and putting up the shower curtain. I’m floored that he is functional right now after waking up at 8.
12:15pm Heat up the last of the pizza for lunch, along with hummus and carrots.
5:20pm Work is average-paced for the rest of the day. Not doing nothing, not totally over my head. Will puts in potatoes for baked potatoes to have later, which we’ll pair with a salad. We’re getting close to needing a grocery run again, so the meals are becoming more of a mishmash.
We listed a couple things on our local Buy Nothing group last week, so a woman comes by to pick up a wifi router we can’t use anymore. Would totally recommend looking up if there’s a group in your area—they’re usually on Facebook.
6:30pm After dinner I watch more Sister Wives and look up RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit one of my friends shared for Giving Tuesday. They buy unpaid medical debt from collections, so $1 ends up paying off $100 of someone’s medical debt. I give $50 to the Arkansas campaign, which will clear $5,000 of medical debt.
As Will said earlier today, “medical billing in America is a racket” so I really hope this helps clear a burden from an individual or family. Doing this reminds me to check my insurance portal, which is steadily going up as each separate claim comes in. Ahhhh, modern healthcare! $51.49
At the end of each day please tally up your daily expenses. Then at the end of your diary please tally up all expenses in the following categories:
Total: $719.33

• Grocery + Dining Out: $157.77
• Fun + Entertainment: $0
• Home + Health: $164.67
• Clothes + Beauty: $228.64
• Transportation: $11.00
• Gifts + Giving: $157.25

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Reflection This week felt like a big spending week for me. I checked YNAB and since January, I’ve spent about $1600 per month, not including rent—so about $400/week. That’s why this week’s $719 feels so high!
Writing this diary helped me understand how many things I have going for me. I’ve recently been in a huge funk—about my health, my performance at work and my relationships with family, friends and P. Going to the hospital, needing physical therapy to have sex and being in a pandemic will do that to you.
I was able to zoom out a bit and understand how stable and gratifying my life is. That being said, I’m so glad this community exists. I really love it and learning about all your spending and saving habits. Thanks for being here and sharing :)