This week: “I’m a 27-year-old food content creator from London. I work for an online food retailer, where I keep the website and products updated, which includes producing all the photography, copy and recipe content. I also work as a freelance food stylist and photographer and as a chef at a restaurant on an ad hoc basis. I absolutely love working in the food industry and the low salary is made up for by the perks of the job (eating a lot of delicious food most days).
My boyfriend, B, and I have made the decision to go travelling at the end of this year to make up for lost time during the pandemic. I have always wanted to travel for an extended period and never really made it happen so now feels like the right time as our flat tenancy finishes. I am definitely far from a natural saver and have always lived paycheque to paycheque. I am very grateful to have inherited some money a few years ago when my grandad sadly passed away and know that I am fortunate that both of my parents would help me if I was in a sticky financial situation. Most of my money goes on enjoying delicious food and drinks in London (what’s the point in living in London, if not for the food?) and booking weekends away to festivals and city breaks.”
Occupation: Food stylist and photographer
Industry: Food
Age: 27
Location: London
Salary: £28k
Paycheque amount: £1,800 after tax. I sometimes get extra money from freelance projects and ad hoc chef work, this varies from £100-£400 per month after tax.
Number of housemates: One: my boyfriend, B.
Pronouns: She/her
Monthly Expenses
Housing costs: £825 for my half of the rent.
Loan payments: My student loan is at around £55k plus ever-increasing interest.
Savings? £12k in ISAs and savings accounts that I don’t touch. £1,900 in my own personal savings, which I dip in and out of when I overspend my salary. I also use this as my weekends-away fund.
Pension? Yes, I think I pay about 2% and my employer pays 4%? I need to check this!
Utilities: £72 council tax, £63 energy and gas, £36 water, £31 broadband (all split with my boyfriend).
All other monthly payments: £21.95 phone bill. £50 car insurance, £64 gym, £16 for my website provider for freelance work. Subscriptions: £9 Smol, £25 Pret (essential for early-morning chef hours), £5 Refugee Action, £5 Tree Aid.
Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?
I moved to Manchester to study events management. I had a really fun time at university but not sure I learned too many practical skills from my degree and also didn’t end up going into that industry so I sort of resent the massive loan that I took out for it (but also don’t know if I will even pay it all off before I’m 50 so try not to worry too much about the skyrocketing interest rates).
Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money?
I don’t remember talking about money much as a child. I feel very lucky that I grew up in a happy, financially stable house. I started to receive pocket money when I was a teenager, which I learned to save for things that I wanted like CDs (retro), clothes and makeup. My parents both encouraged me to do work experience, which hugely impacted my work ethic and desire to earn money from a young age.
If you have, when did you move out of your parents’/guardians’ house?
I moved out to go to university when I was 19 but returned in the university holidays. I had to leave my placement year abroad six months early for family reasons so I moved back to the UK and lived between my mum’s house and my dad’s house during that time (they both live separately outside of London now). When I finished university I moved in with friends, as I wanted to stay in London where I grew up.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself? Does anyone else cover any aspects of your financial life?
I became financially responsible for myself when I finished university and moved into a flat in London. During university I paid for everything with loans and a grant but I wasn’t asked to pay any rent when I was home for the holidays. My grandparents paid some initial costs for me to move abroad for my placement year and then I paid for everything while I was there. I worked through university, doing waitressing for catering companies and brand promotion jobs, and made sure I had a job lined up when I graduated from university so I could move out straightaway.
What was your first job and why did you get it?
I childminded for a few families on my street from the age of about 14. My first proper job was at Wimbledon – a lot of my local friends worked there for the championships every year so I applied and was given a Saturday job in the museum shop when I was 17, as well as working at the championships every summer until the end of university.
Do you worry about money now?
Yes and no. Day to day I don’t hold back from saying yes to going out with friends and experiences as I like to enjoy myself and live in the moment. I worry a little about long-term financial savings as I don’t tend to save any money on a monthly basis on my current salary. I also find myself comparing my salary to my friends who are in corporate, higher paid jobs – I wish I didn’t and I have to remind myself I am in an industry I absolutely love and hopefully there will be some career progression in the next few years.
Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain.
My grandad left my sister and I some money when he passed away, which has since been put into savings accounts and I hope will gain interest for the next few years and start encouraging me to save for a deposit for a house in the future. I am very grateful for this and know that he worked so hard for my family to be able to have financial stability. My dad also very kindly bought me a car during the pandemic, which I am very grateful for as it is super useful for when I am driving long trips to see either of my parents and for carting around photography kit and props for shoots.
7.10am: Alarm goes off and I jump in the shower. I have to get out of the house as I’m driving to an antique fair this morning to do some prop-hunting.
8.30am: Start the 40-minute drive with a stop-off to fill up £25 worth of petrol (which is only half a tank with the recent price increases). Also get £50 cash out in case I find anything to buy at the antique fair.
8.50am: Arrive at the fair and queue for a slightly average coffee, regret not making my own this morning. £3
9am: Look around the different indoor and outdoor stalls and see a lot of eerie antique babies and lots of amazing food-styling props. I hadn’t anticipated how expensive it would be so take lots of photos and will see if I can get similar pieces cheaper on eBay instead.
9.30am: Fall in love with a chunky wooden board and haggle the seller down to £25. Also buy an old white baking tray with a blue trim for £4. Decide to return in a couple of weeks with a more precise budget and cash from my work.
11am: Get home to a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, chorizo and mushrooms, and make a coffee. B leaves for work and I get on with some emails and photo editing.
2.30pm: Stop for a snack: an Aldi vegan chicken burger in a pitta with homemade tzatziki and salad. Being in the food industry, I love to eat and try everything I’m offered but I also want to try and reduce how much meat I eat. But definitely not convinced by the texture of this burger at all…
2.45pm: Eat outside on our terrace as it’s sunny finally and listen to an interesting podcast about using psychedelic mushrooms for mental health conditions. I ingest about five hours of podcasts a day because I hate a second of silence and spend a lot of time editing. Normally I purely listen to very lighthearted comedy podcasts but sometimes factual ones like this are a nice change.
6pm: Finish up with work for the day and tidy the flat. I am the messiest person in the world and can turn any space I live or work in into a chaotic mess within minutes. Open a bottle of delicious red that I got in a wine case I bought last week (subscription service addict example one) and put on an episode of MasterChef where the food obsession continues.
8pm: B gets back from work and I start cooking dinner. I blitz up a coriander and mint chutney, make some rice and reheat some lamb curry I made at the weekend. Chat over dinner, making plans to drive up north to visit his family at the weekend, and book a restaurant for Sunday evening.
10.30pm: We finish watching Anatomy of a Scandal on Netflix and decide I don’t really think it lived up to the hype but still an interesting watch. Get into bed and attempt to read my book but manage a couple of pages before falling asleep.
Total: £57
6.15am: Alarm goes off for the gym but absolutely have to snooze it today, mentally promising myself that I will go for a swim after work instead.
7.40am: Shower and put on a pair of very comfy black dungarees and leave the house for the day to get the bus to a local coffee warehouse as I need a top-up of beans. I also order myself an oat flat white to have there while I do some WhatsApp admin. £11.05 for my half of the beans.
8.55am: Arrive at work and make myself some toast. Write my to-do list for the day – today involves a lot of writing about sashimi and tuna, and editing photos of our new Chinese products which I shot (and ate – perks of the job) last week.
11am: Time to stretch my legs and walk to the post office to send a Depop order. I am gradually trying to sell the one million items of clothing in my cupboards to contribute to travelling funds.
1.30pm: Stop for lunch. I feel very lucky to have a proper kitchen at work so can spend half an hour cooking at lunchtime, which I find very relaxing and makes a change from looking at a screen. Chop up and fry aubergine and tomatoes I brought in from home and make a deliciously carby bowl of spaghetti.
2pm: Browse a skincare website and end up buying Egyptian Magic Cream, two types of CeraVe moisturiser and a tinted moisturiser. I have suffered with acne since I was a teenager but my skin is finally not being so stroppy with me so I am happy to invest in products that I know work and make me feel good. £34.78 in total but B will pay me for his share of the moisturiser so only £17.
6pm: Home time! Walk to the station with a friend from work and hop on the bus to the gym to go swimming (my travelcard pays for my commute to work and all buses in London).
8pm: Go to M&S for dinner inspiration. End up buying king prawns, yakitori chicken and Korean pork belly in a three for £10 deal. While I wait for B to get back I start making dinner, which is a speedy version of chicken paella, chucking in lots of veggies that need eating.
9pm: Spend the rest of the evening listening to music, finishing the red wine I opened yesterday and looking at some potential destinations for travelling (very exciting!).
10pm: Book tickets to go to Alton Towers on Monday. We will already be up north that weekend and I have been wanting to go on a rollercoaster since before the pandemic started. £34 for my ticket.
11.30pm: Do my skincare regime, get into bed and fall asleep instantly. During the week I can literally fall asleep in under 10 seconds – maybe need to get to bed earlier!
Total: £72.05
7.10am: Wake up and have a quick shower and put on my favourite orange dungarees and head out to meet my mum for a coffee.
7.40am: Enjoy my favourite Gail’s chocolate and almond croissant and an oat flat white and have a final catch-up before my mum heads overseas for a couple of months (she works in travel so is constantly in different corners of the world). My mum kindly pays for my breakfast.
8.15am: Listen to Off Menu podcast while I walk to the station and their endless discussion about fizzy water makes me crave it so I stop in my tracks at Tesco and buy a can of fizzy Evian to drink on the train to work. 75p
9am: Arrive at work and write a to-do list for the day. Today is recipe day! We have lots of wild garlic at work so decide to make a video on three ways to use wild garlic: making a wild garlic oil, butter and mayonnaise. Also make a pea and asparagus risotto with wild garlic. Film the recipes and take some photos for our social media channels and the website.
6pm: Walk to the station with a friend and then meet my sister at Pret to give her some meal prep I made for her. She lives locally to my work and is a very hardworking teacher. I love batch cooking and always make super big portions so I can share food with her. I also give her a portion of the wild garlic risotto I made earlier.
6.15pm: I am meeting a friend for dinner in Soho so part ways with my sister and get on the Tube. Will be charged later in the week for the Tube as my travelcard doesn’t cover Zone 1.
6.45pm: Arrive at the very popular noodle restaurant and get in the queue (no reservations at this place). Eye up the specials board while I’m waiting.
7pm: My friend arrives and we get a table soon after. Everyone is seated at the bar that overlooks the kitchen. Spend ages trying to decide what to get and settle on a red wine and a prawn tempura udon broth.
8.30pm: Outstay our welcome at the queue-heavy restaurant so pay the bill. £24.42 each.
8.45pm: We head to a bar nearby that my friend knows which I’ve never been to before. An unlikely door leads us downstairs to a surprisingly cool bar which is playing good music. Pay for a glass of wine for both of us and chat for another hour. £12
10pm: Pop into the newsagent on the way home for some chocolate and end up with two Happy Hippos and an Aero because apparently I have the palate of a 5-year-old. £2.38
10.30pm: Catch up with B and watch an hour of TV before falling asleep on the sofa and then dragging myself to bed via my skincare routine.
Total: £39.55
7.10am: Wake up and lie in bed, scrolling on my phone for 15 minutes. I usually try and swim two or three mornings a week but finding it impossible to get up early this week!
7.40am: Get ready and chuck on some jeans and a hoodie. Walk the longer route through the park to get to the station. When I get off the train, head to Pret to pick up a coconut flat white in my Chilly’s reusable cup (a very good present from my sister). It’s payday today so also treat myself to a cheese and tomato croissant. £2.95
9am: Make myself a cafetière of decaf coffee for the morning and finish writing the recipes up from yesterday. Help out with a few customer service calls as there are only two of us in the office today.
12.30pm: Take a break for lunch. Cook up some prawn dumplings that I was shooting earlier in the week and share with my friend in the office. Still hungry after that so make an avocado flatbread and watch 15 minutes of MasterChef before heading back to my desk.
1.30pm: Spend the rest of the day writing some blog content and planning shots for next week.
4.30pm: Friday beer time at the office! Wind down for the day and finish off emails before having a chat with everyone in the warehouse.
5pm: Leave work to go home via Sainsbury’s as I need to exchange my SodaStream gas tank for a new one. £13
7pm: I am super tired so need a night off for R&R. Spend an hour cleaning up and tidying the flat so I can feel calm and collected when I start chilling and cooking. Put on a funny podcast, light some incense sticks my mum bought me recently and get the tidying done as quickly as possible. Pour myself a glass of wine and start cooking the Korean pork belly I bought this week, with egg fried rice and garlicky stir-fried tenderstem broccoli.
9pm: Eat dinner with B and have a couple more glasses of wine. Play Scrabble (an ongoing championship) while listening to music.
10pm: I book tickets to a festival I spoke to my friend about earlier, plus a car parking ticket. My half comes to £208.
12am: Bed!
Total: £223.95
9am: Wake up quite late and read my book in bed instead of scrolling. Notice have been charged £5.10 for the Tube on Thursday.
9.40am: B works on Saturdays too so I make breakfast for us both. Pop to the high street to get bagels, eggs and bacon from Sainsbury’s. Make us both a bagel and a coffee. £7.13
11.30am: B leaves for work and I sit outside on the terrace with a tea. I speak to my mum, who is flying to Australia today, and then to my sister. I am meeting some friends to go to an art exhibition later today so decide to have a few hours of personal admin before this.
12pm: I dye my hair a peachy colour (which looks very pink to me), paint my nails, exfoliate, fake tan, etc. while listening to a podcast. Put on a cute green top I got in Mexico and some floaty trousers as it looks hot outside.
1.30pm: Leave my flat and walk through the sunny park to an area with lots of charity shops. Buy myself a red smock dress, a yellow corduroy skirt from Weekday and a black and white checked dress. Don’t feel too guilty for these purchases because the money goes to charity and I very rarely buy fast fashion. £22
2.30pm: Before I get on the train into central, I buy a sparkling water (in a can to be slightly more environmentally friendly. Note to self: I need to start making sparkling water to go with the SodaStream B bought me). £1.10
2.40pm: Get the train to a food market near where I am meeting friends and buy myself a dosa chaat with extra paneer. Someday I would quite like to own my own food truck so I love going to food markets and supporting the businesses there. £8.50
3.30pm: Meet my friends and grab a takeaway half-pint from a craft beer stand, which we walk and talk with so we get to the exhibition in time. Arrive and have to queue for a long time to go into the art installations. The artist’s work is really cool but the amount of queueing for the size of the exhibition makes it feel a little underwhelming. £3.15 for the beer.
5.30pm: Leave the art gallery and wander down the South Bank in search of a quieter place to have a drink and a bite to eat. It’s super busy in Borough Market so my friend ends up ordering a pizza and we get some more takeaway pints nearby and take them down to a spot near the river. Enjoy these before we all part ways for the evening. £6.50
7pm: Head home on the Tube and then train.
8pm: When I get home B is back from work early. Catch up about our days and have a few glasses of wine from the bottle I opened earlier in the week. Decide to make a tasty prawn, chorizo and chilli pasta from ingredients we already have in the fridge. Watch an episode of Taskmaster before falling asleep on the sofa (a theme in my life) and retreating to bed at 11pm.
Total: £53.48
9am: Wake up a bit later than anticipated and pop over the road to Tesco to get some bits for breakfast, including jam and peanut butter. I make a separate trip to Sainsbury’s because I am fussy about bagels (New York Bakery Co. only pls). £10.13
11.30am: After breakfast and a very slow getting-ready process we leave the house to drive up to Birmingham. B is driving on the way up so I am resident DJ in the car, playing lots of new music off playlists of the festivals we are going to this summer.
1pm: Stop off at a service station where I get a vegan sausage roll from Greggs, B gets a cheese and onion pasty, and a juice to share. £4.60
2pm: Arrive at B’s aunty’s house to say hello to his two cousins and some of B’s friends who I haven’t seen in nearly three years as they were living abroad, plus the pandemic. They have both just run a half marathon and I am quite envious of their commitment to running.
4pm: Drive over to B’s mum’s house where we catch up for a few hours before heading out again for dinner.
6.30pm: We have a reservation at a local Thai restaurant where we enjoy beers and lots of plates including chicken satay, salt and pepper squid, tiger prawns, panang curry and a massaman curry – very delicious! B pays for this as I am going to pay for filling up with petrol after dinner.
9.30pm: Fill up the car with petrol in anticipation of another long drive to Alton Towers tomorrow. B’s mum serves up delicious lemon cheesecake and we watch some TV together before going to bed at midnight. £45
Total: £59.73
9am: Woken up by the smell of sausages and coffee!
9.30am: Get ready to drive to Alton Towers (I worked at Disney World on my placement year and although I didn’t love every element of the job, I did really enjoy being able to go to the parks every day and haven’t actually been to one since I worked there in 2016). I notice that I have been charged £7.80 for travel on Saturday.
10am: Say goodbye to B’s mum and get on the road and I drive the hour and a half up north to Alton Towers. After a very twisty-turny route we arrive and enter the park with our pre-paid tickets. Buy a rip-off price bottle of water as I forgot mine but accept that anything in the park will be ridiculously priced and don’t intend to get any other snacks. £2.40
12.30pm: Only have four hours to get around the theme park so speed through a few warm-up rides, including the rapids, where we get unintentionally very wet. We queue for a few rollercoasters and love all of them – I’m a big child at heart. Wicker Man, Thirteen and Galactica are my rollercoasters of the day!
4.30pm: It starts torrentially raining, which is our cue to leave. Get back to the car park completely drenched and change into some different clothes before heading off on the long drive back to London.
6pm: I am starving (and a drama queen about it). Spot a McDonald’s just before we get on the motorway so slam the brakes and stop there. Order a five Chicken Select meal, B orders a Big Mac meal. Eat in the car – very glamorous – before getting back to the driving. B pays.
7pm: Starting to get a McDonald’s/rollercoaster-induced migraine (I’ve suffered with migraines for about eight years and I still haven’t learned my lesson to avoid migraine triggers). Stop off at the nearest service station so that B can take over the driving. I also get us two oat flat whites from Starbucks (needs must) and some overpriced painkillers for the headache. £9.70
8.30pm: Arrive home finally! B runs me a hot bubbly bath with candles, which is heavenly, and I watch Made in Chelsea in the bath (anyone else’s guilty pleasure programme?). Feel ravenous again so make some cheese on toast and have a tangerine and some berries because this week has been unusually beige on the food front.
10.30pm: Definitely time for bed after a very exhausting but super fun weekend. I’m hoping my migraine cures itself overnight.
Total: £19.90
Food & Drink: £132.76
Entertainment: £242
Clothes & Beauty: £39
Home & Health: £29
Travel: £82.90
Other: £0
Total: £525.66
Conclusion
“The overall spend was more than a general week because I bought an expensive festival ticket and went away for a night. Petrol costs have risen a lot so it was a big cost this week with all the driving. I’m definitely not any closer to saving a significant chunk of money yet but I have lots of freelance payments due to come in soon and consistent chef work on the horizon to supplement my spending. I usually do at least one extra shift a week so this diary wasn’t representative of that (which saves me money as I’m not spending when I’m working at the weekend).
I can see that most of my money goes on food and drink but I think it is so important to prioritise socialising and eating out after such a rough few years cooped up at home. I probably won’t buy any more clothes or skincare products for the rest of the month either so I’m not too worried about how much I spent and think I will be able to achieve some savings by the end of the year if I keep track of my spending on a weekly basis.”
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