WELCOME TO HOW I Spend My Money, a series on The Journal that looks at how people in Ireland really handle their finances.
We’re asking readers to keep a record of how much they earn, what they save if anything, and what they’re spending their money on over the course of one week.
Are you a spender, a saver or a splurger? We’re looking for readers who will keep a money diary for a week. If you’re interested send a mail to money@thejournal.ie. We would love to hear from you.
Each money diary is submitted by readers just like you. When reading and commenting, bear in mind that their situation will not be relatable for everyone, it is simply an account of a week in their shoes, so let’s be kind.
Last time around, we heard from a private healthcare agency manager on €65K who is expecting her first child. This week, an accounting manager in Dublin earning €86K a year.
I’m 36 years old and living in Dublin. I’m an accountant, so I’m obsessed with money but not very good with it. I’m living with my missus of 10 years, and we moved into our first owned (mortgaged) home about six months ago.
We pumped basically all of our savings into the house back in August, and there are still a few things we’d like to do to it (get an office shed in the back, fix up the garden level – which is kind of unlivable at the moment, maybe do up the garden).
We’re both into our sports, and we pay well over the odds for the golf club, but it was sooo hard to get into and it’s sooo convenient. We’re normally in the gym three days a week and try to do something at the club two or three days a week (which is the only way it’s close to being worth it).
We don’t want to merge our finances. The general rule is survival stuff is 50:50, I pay for all the recurring extras. If we go out, I’ll pay this time and she’ll pay next time, and then we pay for our own individual expenses. As you can imagine, it’s fairly loose, but we did a little audit last year to make sure there were no skeletons in advance of buying the house, so I’m happy for it to continue.
I think we’re fairly sensible with 80% of our spending, but it’s that last 20% where we’ll just splurge because the money is there that breaks my heart. We’ll debate for 10 minutes over the two cheapest kinds of rice and then drop 500 quid like it’s nothing on something that’s admittedly fun but too expensive.
We have a dream of saving up enough to sustain ourselves for 18 months and both taking a year out and travelling the world when I hit 40, but it’s all talk right now.
Occupation: Accounting manager
Age: 36
Location: South Dublin
Salary: €86,122 from job, about €35K a year from other freelance stuff
Monthly pay (net): €4,300 from job, €1,400 from other freelance stuff – total €5,700
My partner is a teacher and brings in €2,900 a month
Transport: €125 on petrol, probably an annualised amount of €40pm on maintenance
Rent: None anymore
Household bills: Electricity – €60, gas – €30 (split 50:50 with my partner)
Cleaner: €48.75 (45 quid every two weeks, split 50:50 with my partner)
Phone bill: €0 (through work)
Health insurance: €0 (through work)
Groceries: €225 (split 50:50 with my partner)
Subscriptions: Prime – €8.86, Netflix – €8.99, Audible – €8.94, Hayu – €5.99, Microsoft 365 – €8.25, TV license ☹ – €13.33
Internet: €50
Mortgage: €920 (split 50:50 with my partner)
Gym membership: €0 (we use the UCD gym, which I currently have a student card for)
Golf and leisure club: €225
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8.00 am: It’s a holiday today. Every day should be a holiday. We’re up by 8 am (because she’s a teacher and she makes me) and we have our breakfast that we have every day – porridge with peanut butter, honey, compote and a chopped up banana. We jog to the golf club for a game of tennis which was actually really nice (we joined when we moved here because we wanted to meet people – I play golf and we both play tennis) and, lo and behold, we meet a nice couple who we play a few sets with. We head into the golf club for some coffees with our new besties (€0 because there’s credit at the bar with the membership) and we make plans to have dinner maybe some time (my wife is better at these sorts of things).
11.30 am: We stroll home and put some music on. I read the paper and catch up on a few bits of tax admin – the new Revenue site is actually OK. The noise of housework makes me feel guilty so I finish a job I’d started on Saturday which was insulating and laying down some boards in the attic so you could walk around (€210 for the boards and insulation – all of it bought last week). Still a fair bit left in the job, don’t finish until almost half three, pretend that it was more physical than it actually was when I come downstairs so I get some sympathy.
3.30 pm: Lovely chickpea and spinach curry for lunch, last of last week’s batch cook which is always the nicest.
4.00 pm: We chill out for the afternoon. We watch a documentary about Michael Jackson that makes me sad and a couple of episodes of a travel show.
6.45 pm: It’s nearly 7 pm before we know it. Day wasted. I text my brother who lives down the road to see what he’s up to – he’s wasting his day too which makes me feel better. I offer to walk his dog just for something to do, and 10 minutes later he greets us outside his apartment complex with the air of a man who has hurriedly gotten dressed – that also makes me feel better.
7.00 pm: Lovely walk with the dog. We get ice creams and a puppuccino (don’t tell your father) (€9) and toy with the idea of smuggling the dog into a pub for a pint. We’re out for a solid two hours and drop the dog back to Rip van Winkle.
10.00 pm: We do a bit of work in front of the TV when we get home – neither of us is bothered about dinner because we had lunch so late so we have tea and crumpets (toast is for amateurs). We watch some news about a terrible earthquake in Turkey and Syria and do a tax-efficient donation to the Red Crescent (€250) and we’re in bed by 11 pm.
Today’s total: It seems cheating not to count the attic materials so €469
6.30 am: We’re always up early because she has a crazy long morning routine and it’ll make me grumpy all day if I have to listen to it. Breakfast at 7 am, out the door at 7.15 to the gym.
8.30 am: I’m back at the house. Emails, excel files, miro boards, teams calls, and a weekly team meeting where no one has any updates. MY WEEKEND WAS FINE, KENNETH!
1.00 pm: Lunchtime – go out to get ingredients for a batch cook and some num nums and eat a sesame snap for lunch on the way back (€37). The afternoon is spent working and cooking, no calls bar one 32-minute “virtual coffee catch up” that makes my teeth itch; I get two big things done so I’m pretty pleased with myself.
4.20 pm: No after-school stuff today so my lady waltzes in at 4.20 pm. She normally takes 30 minutes to depower from the chaos of teaching once she arrives, but I get a little smile today because she can smell that I’ve been cooking.
5.30 pm: I finish up and we have our tofu katsu curries. There are two more in the fridge along with six portions of chilli between the fridge and the freezer. Nom nom nom nom. We watch an episode of Below Deck – watching trash TV in short bursts and then saying “well that was trash, let’s do something productive” is my life hack.
7.30 pm: She gets a call to go to the cinema at 8.30 pm from one of her friends, so I frantically WhatsApp around looking for something I can do while she’s out so I don’t look tragic and the best offer I get is from two of the guys who are going running and doing outside circuit training. Cringe. But beggars can’t be choosers, so I swing kettlebells in public while old ladies walking their dogs trot past. Rad.
10.30 pm: I’m back before her and I do a little laundry before bedtime. Film was Tom Hanks being grumpy and then becoming happy. 3/10.
Today’s total: €37.00
7.00 am: Get up and have breakfast at 7.30 am. I’m in the office today and we have external meetings so I’m wearing a suit – the whole thing felt a little 50s America. Since I was leaving earlier I left my breakfast mess for my wifey to clean up.
8.00 am: Everyone just talks to me when I’m in the office – highly annoying – but I rise above it today. Do a few light tasks before the presentation at 10 am.
11.00 am: Killed it. Except I called the budget the forecast at one point, but no one is ever really listening so I got away with it. Also, they’re basically the same.
1.00 pm: Team lunch (€42 but I can expense it back, so I’m not counting it). Again, lots of chat.
2.30 pm: There’s an interpersonal dispute in the office that somehow I’ve been dragged into, that took 30 mins to sort, until next week when someone sighs the wrong way and it all kicks off again. Need a walk and grab a coffee (€3) so it doesn’t look like I’m just leaving the office because the office is trash. The afternoon is spent 50:50 between job work and freelance work and I sack work off at 6.30 pm.
6.45 pm: I coach a rugby team and Wednesday evening is when we train, so I go home to get changed and I’m on the pitch at 7.15 pm. I only have two pieces of advice – “hit the ball at pace” if you’re a back and “stay on your feet” if you’re a forward.
9.00 pm: I’m showered and changed and I meet my wife for dinner at a tapas place. She’s looking amazing, the place has a great chilled atmosphere, and it’s a nice time.
11.30 pm: We head home €100 poorer.
Today’s total: €103.00
6.30 am: Get up feeling the 70% of a bottle of wine I had last night. Only plain porridge for me today.
7.15 am: Out to the gym. It’s always worth it afterwards, but it was tough going today. I detour on the way home to the golf club and get a steam so I’m not at my laptop until 9.20 am. The perfect crime.
9.30 am: Normal work for the morning and I get a fair bit done.
1.00 pm: Last katsu curry for lunch and spend an hour or so on freelance stuff.
2.00 pm: Similar vibe to the afternoon except someone I used to work with is in Merrion for a meeting and we grab a coffee (€6) and a catch up for 45 minutes.
6.00 pm: Hockey training today so the wife isn’t in until 5.45 pm. I finish up at 6 pm. We have some sweet potato fries (airfryer gets less use these days but is still amaze) covered in chilli and avocado.
7.00 pm: I reluctantly get ready for our third session of Chakra healing. It’s not really my thing, and I almost vetoed going back after the first session, but I’m practising being more open to new things that I don’t understand in 2023. 90 minutes of chanting and stretching and sitting quietly aren’t the worst thing in the world, but I can’t shake the paranoia that each session costs, like, €100 – I don’t know and I don’t want to know.
9.00 pm: It’s late enough when we’re back so we settle in front of the TV. We watch a zombie show with no zombies in it, just two old men who fall in love and then end their lives.
10.00 pm: I have a half day tomorrow because I’m doing some college work and my wife is going to a spa overnight with her sister, so we try and see if we can grab lunch or something, but the times don’t align.
10.30 pm: We go online and look at city breaks for March or April but nothing is jumping out. We almost panic book something because we’re paranoid that we’ve gotten boring. We each have to come back on Saturday with a city and light itineraries for three days and if neither of them jump out, we’ll go begging to see if any of our friends are going anywhere and try and tag along.
Today’s total: €6.00 (my wife paid for the magic cleansing- the cost of that is none of my business)
6.30 am: Up and working at 7.30 am and you’d better believe I let everyone at work know it. Everyone got an email at 7.30 am saying: “BTW I’m working and it’s 7.30 AM, can you believe how hard I work?”.
8.00 am: In fairness, I’m an efficiency machine today, full productive goblin mode, little red “do not disturb” light on my outlook.
12.30 pm: I’m done with work and it’s hit a few balls at the golf club and a steam.
3.00 pm: I’m back home scarfing chilli on tortilla chips with sour cream and jalapenos. Do some college work and freelance stuff until about 8.15 pm, power through it, no breaks. Got a few texts about how great the spa was and how I was missing out. Nice try Satan, not today.
8.00 pm: My brother and the dog are over, and the two of them combined eventually stop the productivity train, we have some beers and watch the PGA tour (we watch it on my brother’s Sky Go on an old Xbox – no stealing here). He makes more chilli nachos at around 10 pm and I go on a run for more booze (€28). It’s a late one and he ends up staying over even though he’s only a 5-minute walk away.
Today’s total: €28.00
7.30 am: I’m up early and out of the house by 8 am to grab a few extra bits for breakfast (€9). Dirty fry it is. I swear my brother to secrecy as I suspect this isn’t good for my chakras.
9.00 am: I kick him out at 9.30 am because I have an online class until 1 pm. It’s fascinating stuff, job design and overhead application, piecework and labour rates, sunk and incremental costs. But the lecturer is actually engaging so it’s not so bad.
1.00 pm: More work assigned and class finishes a little early so I’m able to give a proper clean to the house before I’m out to visit my mam and dad. They’re about 30 minutes away and I’m persona non grata if I don’t visit my mam at least once a week. I buy some takeaway soup for lunch and a bunch of flowers for her (€18) BECAUSE I’M A GOOD BOY. No news from dad as per, but mam has plenty of news about the coming and goings of neighbours and wellwishers. I get a bit of heat for not doing anything with the garden yet (dad is not impressed by my attic endeavours – “30-minute job” apparently), but I diffuse that when I tell dad that my brother didn’t get dressed until 7 pm on St Bridget’s day. It was me or you bro.
3.30 pm: On the way back home, I get a text from one of the lads. Two people have pulled out of his team for an obstacle race next week in Wicklow, do we want the tickets? “Yes we do,” I say without checking or thinking (€90).
4.00 pm: I get back before my wife. Rats, she’ll think I was sitting around doing nothing all day and I don’t have time to start a chore when she walks in the door (she was definitely circling the area waiting for me to come home) so I’m on the back foot. We’ve no plans for the evening, I’d be happy to watch the golf but the discussion turns inexorably around to “doing something”.
5.00 pm: We find some tickets to The Commitments at face value in, what seem to be, decent seats. After a debate on the nature of man, and with my new pro-new-things attitude I Revolut the money (€126) and after five bone-shaking minutes receive what appear to be legit tickets. Faith in humanity restored.
6.00 pm: We decide to make a night of it, all in. So we coif and doll ourselves up and we go to a teppanyaki restaurant. High-energy fun ensues, two cocktails, a bottle of wine and we eat what we are given (€130 – not paid by me), we barely made it to the Olympia on time.
11.00 pm: Couple of scoops and a boogie after the show (€70) and we get a taxi home (€20) somehow at about 2 am.
Today’s total: €333 – my missus paid for the meal which was €130, but I’m not counting that
7.45 am: Tee time at the golf club at 8.15 am so I obviously wake up at 7.45 am with nothing prepped. You can be late if it’s your mates but if it’s a random fourball of retired serious-looking men you look like a bit of a prat. Arrive in a panic at 8.20 am, which is just within the margin of error.
12.30 pm: Biffed the first two holes because of the panic and alcohol, but recovered by the back nine, must have looked like a thirsty boy knocking back the water but the rest of the group saw the funny side. One of them added me to their golf Whatsapp group so I can’t have been as bad as I think I was. See a text before I head into the steam room asking if my wife should bring my tennis gear so we can have a few games and I look at the text for at least three minutes before replying “OK”. Grab a club sandwich from the clubhouse (free on the account) because I guess I’m not getting home for lunch.
1.15 pm: We’re on the court fairly sharpish, and I’m roundly humiliated – straight sets. Crowds gather and point. I try to blame a pulled muscle in my wrist but she’s acting like the victory is no big deal which makes it 100x worse. We get two lemonade-y things and drink them on the verandah thing (pretty sure we’re almost out of money on that card) until we cool down and start to feel the cold.
3.30 pm: Back at the house we’re getting ready to go to Sunday dinner at her parents’, this is the perfect time to go through the proposed city breaks, I take a punt on Istanbul which didn’t go down well and the idea of going to Tallinn in March didn’t float my boat. So we were back to square one. A city in Sicily or Naples was mentioned, and we decide we will do some research. I also mention the obstacle race, as though I hadn’t already committed us, and she says she’ll think about it (which means no), so that’s something to work on next week.
5.30 pm: Lovely dinner served, always lovely dinners up at her dad’s but then they sit on the sofa and watch TV for like two hours. Broadcast TV! Antiques Roadshow and Countryfile vibes. I get on the phone and order some clothes online (€95), and I semi-commit to a golf weekend with the guys in April. My sister’s birthday is coming up so I text her and she sends me a link to what she wants. Three clicks later it’s bought. My wife says it would mean more if I stressed out and went through hassle buying her something she might not like. She just doesn’t get it man. (€62.50)
7.30 pm: Have a bit of a rant on the way home about them all watching TV in silence for two hours. That makes me feel a bit better. We stop off for some groceries (€0 – I didn’t pay for them) and I go across the street to the wine shop and get two lovely bottles (€47) for the week ahead.
8.30 pm: We’re at home cooking for the week, periodically looking at dogs we could adopt, houses we should be living in down in Sneem, diets we should be on, and Googling the weather in Italy in April, and decide to bite the bullet and book two flights to Naples for a long weekend in April (€275). The rest of the evening is spent looking at travel shows on YouTube and Netflix.
9.59 pm: Rush out to the local garage before it’s closed and buy some choccie bars, both of us pretending we’re doing the other one a favour by acquiescing. I get a Dairy Milk and she gets some posher chocolate from the Netherlands that’s too thick. The fact that her bar defo isn’t as nice as mine makes mine taste even nicer. Filled up the car too while there (€68.75).
11.00 pm: I’m half asleep on the sofa so it’s time to lock the house up and get down for the night. The bedsheets got changed by the sheet fairy while I was at golf this morning and getting into bed with fresh sheets is, no lie, the best thing I’ve done all week.
Today’s total: €548.25
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What I learned –
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