This week: “I’m a 24-year-old secondary school teacher in Hertfordshire. I’m in my third year of teaching and moved out of my mum’s house just over a year ago. I live with my partner, C, who works in finance. He earns a little bit more than me. We’ve been together almost two years and have lived together for almost 14 months (we moved in together VERY early but it’s worked out great so far). I spend a little more than C because he doesn’t drive so I have petrol, insurance, services, MOT etc. to consider. To make up for this, he usually pays when we eat out or will cover other additional expenses.
Generally I would say that I’m a spender but I’m trying to be a saver! I have a few money goals that I’m working towards at the moment. Long-term goals are to save for a deposit for a house (a chill £30k going by house prices in the area) and a newer car (or at least one with A/C). Short-term goals are to save for a nice holiday with C, as we haven’t been abroad together yet. I work two evenings per week tutoring and work late on the other days. I try not to bring work home but C is very understanding if it does happen. We try to keep a structure throughout the week and relax a little at the weekend. This is when we spend the majority of our money.”
Occupation: Teacher
Industry: Education (public sector)
Age: 24
Location: Hertfordshire
Salary: £29,000 plus £3,000 per year in tutoring (subject to tax)
Paycheque amount: £1,750 per month plus £300 per month for tutoring
Number of housemates: One
Pronouns: She/her
Monthly Expenses
Housing costs: £425 each for rent.
Loan payments: £11 student loan, taken out of paycheque.
Savings? £50 to emergency pot, £400 to ISA/house deposit, £300 to tutoring pot, £250 to car pot.
Pension? I pay 8.6% of my salary into my pension and my school matches this. I have about £5,000 in my pension at the moment.
Utilities: £200 each for bills (council tax, TV licence, water, electricity, Wi-Fi and contents insurance).
All other monthly payments: £25 phone bill, £25 gym membership, £25 car warranty. Subscriptions: £10 Spotify, £6 Netflix, £7 union fees.
Did you participate in any form of higher education?
I went to university at 18 and took out student loans to pay for it. In my first year I received a maintenance loan and grant to supplement my part-time work, however the grant was removed in my second year. I wish I had spent a year out before going so that I could have saved money. It was very expensive and working full-time on top of university to manage living costs was stressful.
Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money?
In the space of a few years we went from living on benefits while my mum raised me with no child support from my dad to a comfortably middle class income. I was always taught to be frugal and be sensible with purchases but the only financial advice I was taught is that all debt except for a mortgage is terrible and I should avoid it at all costs.
If you have, when did you move out of your parents’/guardians’ house?
I moved out temporarily for university between 18 and 21 but I moved out for good when I was 23. It was the best thing I ever did. My relationship with my mum improved so much when we didn’t live under the same roof.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself? Does anyone else cover any aspects of your financial life?
I paid for all of my outgoings as soon as I started at McDonald’s at 17 but I wasn’t truly responsible until I moved out, about a year ago. I paid reduced rent for my room at home once I had a full-time job and this really helped me save as I was learning to drive at the time and I was able to throw most of my wages at that instead. I paid £200 per month for my room at my mum’s, as well as general housekeeping. I paid for my own bills and groceries.
What was your first job and why did you get it?
I worked for my mum at 13, delivering leaflets for her business one day a week, plus every day in the school holidays.
Do you worry about money now?
Yes. I worry about my car breaking and not being able to fix it. I worry about stretching my money each month and I worry that I’ll never be able to save enough to get a mortgage. I try to find a balance between saving for the future, working to build up my teaching experience and enjoying my youth. Some months are more of one than another.
Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income?
Yes, I received about £7,000 from my parents when I was at university. I was told I had to use it for a house deposit but I had to dip into it to afford my rent as I had a £2,000 shortfall between my rent and my student loan and job. I have since repaid that and added more.
7am: My partner C and I have breakfast after the gym. We usually try to go to the gym four days a week, getting up at 5.45am to go before work.
7.15am: I pack my lunch and a protein shake to drink on the way to work. Thankfully the traffic isn’t too bad today and I set off to arrive by 8.15am.
1.30pm: Lunchtime! It’s been a manic day already, with two year 9 classes, a year 7 and a year 10. I eat my packed lunch (Quorn chicken salad sandwich, crisps, Fibre One bar, grapes, Babybel, Party Rings and a Diet Coke – I’m aware that I eat like a child) while I run debate club with my friend J. We allow the students to choose their debate but we often help them with counterarguments and structure. We both feel very working class but the students are generally quite affluent. We have a quick chat at the end about a student who aspires to be a landlord, like his father. We grimace, knowing that we’re both renting and saving desperately to get our own places.
5pm: I stay ’til 5pm to plan, print and mark, as well as reply to my emails. I also respond to an enquiry from a year 11 parent at another school about last-minute tutoring before the GCSEs. I’ll wait until I can speak to C as it will be yet another evening away from home for 12 weeks or so.
5.15pm: I drive home, intending to stop at Aldi to do the weekly shop. While I’m stuck in traffic C calls to ask what time I’ll be home. He usually has a five-a-side football game but it’s been cancelled so I pick him up and we do the big shop together. It’s a rare treat and he gets some things I wouldn’t usually pick up. We get lettuce, grapes, apples, cheese, snacks for our lunches, crisps, sponges, cleaning wipes, vegan sausages, mince, Quorn chunks, chips, pizza, bread and Diet Coke cans. I get very excited because Aldi now stocks imitation Quorn dinosaurs (I warned you that I eat like a child) and grab two boxes to try. We’re both veggie, which keeps our food bill low but means that we have to do a separate shop for some Quorn items that Aldi doesn’t stock. We usually go to Sainsbury’s as it’s the nearest and it generally has a good stock. The shop comes to £50. C pays and I transfer him £25.
10pm: Sleep.
Total: £25
5.45am: Up again. The temperature has dropped and our heating system is atrocious (a fun combo of terrible heating, terrible windows and a letting agent that couldn’t care less). There is no unit to control the storage heaters, which look like they’ve come off the ark, so we have to turn them off and on again when we need them. C uses a mop handle to turn on the radiators.
7.30am: A successful back and biceps day. Once again, protein shake for breakfast on the drive to work and lunch is packed. I’m a creature of habit.
1.30pm: Thankfully today is slightly less intense. I still have a five-period day but I get a full lunch break and form time is a simple PowerPoint about GCSE options so I can get lots of other things done. I eat my lunch in the staffroom with the other English teachers. I’ve only been at my new school for a term so I’m trying to show my face when I can. I get mistaken for a sixth former again, which is nice I suppose.
6pm: I leave work at 4pm to tutor a year 7 student. I usually help with homework as well as social skills. We work for 90 minutes, with a few brain breaks in between. I’ve been working with this student for about a year and he is lovely but 90 minutes is a long time. His father doesn’t seem to understand his ASD (autism spectrum disorder) diagnosis so his stimming (self-stimulating behaviour) isn’t supported. I try to normalise it but he wants us to focus on school.
7.30pm: On the way home I pop to Sainsbury’s to get the Quorn chicken slices for my sandwiches, £1.50. You have to pay 80p to park so I walk. It takes forever because I have to walk the long way as they’ve shut the cut-through to prevent teenagers loitering. Understandable but annoying.
8pm: C makes us a spaghetti bolognese which is absolutely incredible. Then we have an ice lolly and an early night.
Total: £1.50
5.45am: You know the drill. Legs today, which HURT. I go up another 5kg on hip thrusts though, so it’s not all bad. I’m so close to bodyweight!
7.30am: Protein shake and lunch packed. More traffic today so I take the long way round, which means I don’t have my shake until I get to school at 8.30am. My year 9 boys laugh at my ‘gains’.
1.30pm: Lunch is a slightly more stressful affair than usual, concluding with a member of the SLT coming to do a bag search. I eat my lunch in the staffroom so I can pop to the assistant head’s office to ask what’s going on but she’s in a meeting the whole time. I talk to the other teachers and they’re shocked. Thank god I had a TA in the room, she’s only in once a fortnight.
5.30pm: I manage to talk to the assistant head and it’s fine. The item has been confiscated, parents informed and the student had no ill will. I usually stay late before I tutor at 5.30pm but I’m frazzled. It’s parents’ evening tomorrow and I have no idea what to wear so I head to town for a mooch about.
6.15pm: I don’t find anything I like but I find vegan sausages on sale, plus a bottle of my favourite porn star martini mix. I also grab a snack, a card, dinner to take to my mum’s and my favourite pasta bake sauce. £20
6.30pm: Head to my tutoring session.
8pm: After tutoring I drive to my mum’s and walk her dog. She works late so she gets in at about 9pm. We chat for about an hour and eat dinner together.
11pm: I arrive home and fall into bed, where C is already stealing the duvet.
Total: £20
7am: I wake up but snooze my alarm. I know it’s a bad idea when I do it but I’m too cosy under the blankets. I finally get up at 7.15am and frantically get ready for work.
7.30am: It’s only as I’m getting ready that I remember I have parents’ evening so I need to look presentable. I spend 10 minutes trying to tame my hair and realise I have no time to make lunch. I grab my protein shake, I’ll have to get something from the canteen for lunch.
1.30pm: I forgot that the canteen is only accepting prepaid lunch bookings because we close early for parents’ evening. I head to a nearby bakery and get a vegan sausage roll, a brownie and a Diet Coke. I’m hoping that the sugar, carbs and caffeine will get me through the next five hours. I see most of my year 8 class in there. The chorus of “Hi Miss!” makes the lady behind the counter laugh. I hide in my car and eat my lunch. £3.57
6pm: I’ve just spoken nonstop for four hours. I have two year 9 classes and I was fully booked. The school are very concerned about wellbeing and I’m given a 15-minute break but the parents keep coming so I work through it.
6.15pm: C is making a curry for dinner, which always puts me in a good mood. I mean to stop at Aldi and get poppadoms but I’m so exhausted, I totally forget.
7pm: We have a jalfrezi with peppers, onions, Quorn chicken, peas and potatoes. I found mini naans and Indian-inspired Quorn chicken sticks in the freezer so we put them in the air fryer. We eat watching Gogglebox.
8pm: We watch an episode of Mindhunter and we’re in bed by 9pm.
Total: £3.57
5.45am: Gym again. I feel a lot better after an early night and the weather isn’t as cold. We get to the gym and I work on my chest. I’ve been stuck at 20kg chest press for about eight months, no matter what I do. I finally manage to go up – only for six reps but I’ll take it!
6.45am: We head home, shower, protein shake, lunch, head to work, all that good stuff.
11.30am: I have a free period before lunch, which is dangerous. It’s chip day in the canteen and the smell is enticing. My packed lunch doesn’t seem as appealing. I plan my lessons for Monday, send work to students with COVID, call a parent about lack of engagement, send a positive email to make up for the negative call, print, reply to some enquiries and make some of my own.
12pm: I go to get my lunchbox and when I get back I realise that I dodged a bullet with the canteen lunch. The chips look good but the main they accompany looks unpleasant. I teach year 7 last period, which is always chaos, but we get through and this means no more Shakespeare for them until next year! They’ve done very well with it but I find A Midsummer Night’s Dream a bit dry. I’m glad to see the back of it.
4pm: Early finish for me and I finally manage to get my car washed. It was so dirty that I could hardly see the licence plate. I think it must be the new petrol, it’s never been this dirty so quickly. £6.99
5pm: Get home at the same time as C, get into our cosy pyjamas, make dinner (spicy vegan sausage pasta) and watch Mindhunter.
7pm: We crack open the porn star martini mix and have a glass each with some leftover chocolate.
11pm: We head to bed.
Total: £6.99
9am: We have a lie-in and stay cuddled under the duvet for an hour or so before we eventually get up. While C is making us breakfast, I call the estate agent. We’re trying to arrange for the electrician to visit for the radiators but we need a plumber too as our water tank is leaking. He says he’ll be round in about an hour so we tidy up and eat a bagel for breakfast.
2pm: We drive to C’s dad’s to drop off his present. His 60th birthday was last week and his present finally arrived. It’s a record player and a personalised record of a charity CD he made a few years ago. We drop it round and stay for the football game that’s playing. C’s dad offers us a clothes rail that he has in his room, which is perfect. We need to wait a few weeks for it but it saves us buying a new one and it’s much nicer than the one we were going to get.
4pm: We drive to Ikea and have lunch. We get the veggie meatballs with mash and peas, plus a Sprite, pink lemonade and a cake each. It comes to £15 but C pays.
5pm: We mooch around the display rooms at Ikea. Our flat isn’t as sensibly organised as it could be. I chose the flat and moved in. C came to stay during the lockdown because we wouldn’t have been able to see each other, then he stayed. We’re really happy it worked out but the furniture choices I made were for me living in a one-bed flat, not for both of us, so there’s a lot of clutter.
6pm: We pick up four white boxes, a pair of suction hooks, a collapsible colander, a Tisken basket for kitchen essentials, suit bags, a photo frame, tea lights and holder, tape measure, food clips, hangers, a little trolley for random kitchen bits, a whiteboard eraser and some more meatballs. We’re hungry again so we go to the fast food bit. We get chips each, plus C gets a veggie hot dog, a chocolate doughnut and we share a bottle of water. I pay for everything because C paid for tickets for us to go to see Phantom of the Opera next week so it evens out. £107
9pm: I immediately unpack and start organising the kitchen. It’s been stressing me out and it feels good to fix the problem. C plays FIFA, partly because the kitchen is too small for us both to be organising and partly because this is one of my favourite pastimes. It’s a long-running joke between us that whenever he goes out with the boys he comes home to a flat that looks entirely different and he’ll be asking where everything is for weeks.
9.30pm: I give him the tour and he compliments my organisation. I know it isn’t important to him in any way but it’s still sweet. We get some snacks out and watch an episode of Mindhunter but I’m a bit freaked out so we switch and watch Bridgerton instead.
10pm: We finish the porn star martini mix so we each have a few pink gin and lemonades. I’m tipsy after a few. I usually don’t drink unless I’m having a proper night out and we haven’t had many of those recently.
2am: Head to sleep.
Total: £107
12pm: We snooze on and off all morning. There are no real plans for the day except washing and cleaning.
12.30pm: We get up and C makes us vegan bacon sandwiches. I have mine with BBQ sauce, he has his with brown sauce.
2pm: We potter about all afternoon, cleaning and tidying.
5pm: We watch another episode of Bridgerton before I get my Mylee gel kit out. I used to get my nails done every three weeks at a salon but it was getting expensive and the opening times were really inconvenient with work. I’ve got a lot of new nail varnishes due to Christmas presents and January sales but I’m on a no-buy for nail stuff (except cuticle oil) until Halloween.
5.30pm: I pop my Bose headphones on and watch Call the Midwife while I do my nails. C plays FIFA and I show him my progress. We have a lovely Sunday evening routine.
8.30pm: I get ready for bed and we watch a mukbang video before we sleep. C has booked us in at a Korean restaurant soon so we’re excited to try the delicious food in our mukbang.
9.30pm: Sleep
Total: £0
Food & Drink: £50.07
Clothes & Beauty: £0
Home & Health: £107
Entertainment: £0
Travel: £0
Other: £6.99
Total: £164.06
Conclusion
“I think this was a pretty standard weekday routine for me. If I’m in a routine, I’m doing really well but it doesn’t take a lot for me to fall off the wagon. Suddenly work, sleep, food, water and spending would be all out of whack so I think I’ll look back over this when I’m wanting to spend unnecessary money. I would usually have to pay for petrol and we would probably have a little bit more food as a treat. I wouldn’t usually spend so much in Ikea so the next few weeks might be a little leaner to account for those extra purchases.”
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