Accountability: July 2025

Profile

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

Spending & Saving

My goodness, things seem to be a little chaotic and extra these days. I started July by returning from my Portugal adventure. Amazingly, my school reimbursed me in a timely fashion and that trip has already been refunded, which was fortunate as it’s been an expensive month – at least I was expecting it and had planned pretty well for knowing that it would be.

I had been hoping to pick up a second summer class to adjunct, but the class did not have enough students enroll and it got dropped, so I am down to one class of adjuncting till September, when I am scheduled to do two. Maybe it was fortunate to have that workload cut in half over the summer, but the money would’ve been nice.

Cocktails in the City, one of my favorite summer events, was earlier this month. We pretty much just sit around in a nice little park and drink cocktails from the best cocktail bars in London for the day with friends. As expected, it was like $100 day of drinking but still worth it.

During a supervisor meeting earlier in the month, I was told to turn in a full draft of my thesis by the end of the month, which was a little panic inducing since I thought I was just working on the final chapter and had more time to go back and do revisions to the other chapters. So when I wasn’t drinking Cocktails in the City, the early parts of the month are kind of just a blur of me and my thesis. I wrapped it up the morning my best friend got into town and sent it off with a deep sigh, as I began recalculating how much I could push back my submission date without needing a new visa when I got the feedback from my advisors that it’s garbage, because I did not feel great about the whole thing.

But I shoved that into the back of my mind and went on grand adventures with one of my best friends. In what is always the most expensive trip of the year. Probably largely because it’s the one that’s usually two to three weeks. We went up north and saw Alnwich Castle and their poison garden, walked Hadrian’s Wall and explored Kirkstall Abbey and Sherwood Forest on the way back to Peterborough. Then we spent a day a Highclere, which is the fancy old house where they filmed a lot of Downton Abbey. We then went over to Croatia and Montenegro for a long weekend and swam in the Blue Caves and went on a Game of Thrones filming tour, which was pretty cool. We ate a lot of ice cream. When we got back from that adventure, we spent a day exploring Cambridge and we went punting. We finished up the trip with two days in London, checking some more side quests off our list and seeing Rachel Zegler sing Evita from the street and Operation Mincemeat, which was really good.

I also got excellent news from the emails I shouldn’t have been checking during all of that, that my supervisors are happy with my thesis and just sent over a pile of comments I have to deal with but agree I am on track to submit in September. Which is wild to me because I was sure I was at least a little behind from the old timeframe. Evidently, I caught up somehow.

I also ordered a small ton some clothes for the trip to Egypt because I am in a small panic about being in the desert in August and going into a pyramid and not passing out but how could we not go into a pyramid?? So I wound up doing my best to buy like I did for Iceland – clothes that I would actually want to keep and wear regularly, especially if hot weather is involved. Some of those clothes doubled and came to Croatia on the BFF trip as a test drive.

My money goals now are to make sure I can make it through the rest of the summer without dipping to savings (I used a tiny amount to pay off my credit card this month) and then hopefully by the end of September begin to focus on maxing out my HSA. I am aware I have potentially overdone it with the traveling this year but I struggle to regret it when I don’t know when I might have this kind of time freedom again in the future.

And you can always make more money, right?

Expenses this month:

BFF Vacation – $1060.10 Rent – $865.44 Egypt – $628.91 Food – $389.88 Trains – $279.58 Utilities – $202.89 Clothes – $154.24 Entertainment – $149.33 Ubers – $143.31 Stage Managing – $90.60 Charity – $42.61 Blog – $37.00 TfL – $27.11 Gifts – $19.97 Toiletries – $17.40 House – $16.73 School – $14.83 Bus – $12.89 Portugal – $5.59

Total Spending in July:  $4,158.41

Hustling

This month’s income:

Adjuncting – $1921.76 Digital Producing – $669.91 Portugal Reimbursement – $328.26 Blog – $120.15

Income This Month: $3,040.08

Goals

Onwards to the goals!

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

 

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