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 an IT worker in Mayo on €19K. This week, a product manager on €141K per year living in Dublin.
We are a family of four (children are aged two and four), with both parents working. A lot of our week is spent trying to just keep the show on the road, but then we try to really enjoy our times together at the weekend. Whilst not thrifty, we are keen to reduce our spending and also our impact on the environment, so we are happy to use sites like Adverts to get toys for the kids as well as using things like cloth nappies and an electric car. These items have an upfront cost, but pay back over the years and are less environmentally damaging (it still freaks me out that EVERY plastic nappy takes 500 years to decompose).
My wife has just returned to work after being a stay-at-home mum, so we are also just starting to figure out what normal income looks like when her salary is added to the house, but then childcare is deducted, etc. It’s proving to be a period of adjustment in a lot of ways. I work from home full time; my wife works from home about two days a week.
Financially, I have a spreadsheet where I track most of our big outgoings and bills, etc. I have consumption data for all of our utilities since 2015, so this makes finding the best option/deal for me easier as I really understand how our household operates. We very much operate as a household budget, so I’ve included most of the money my wife spends too.
I also like to route a lot of our day-to-day spending through various prepaid cards that then give “cash” back in the form of cryptocurrency. It’s a total punt if they will be worth anything in the future, but I tend to get 2% or 3% back and it’s a shot to nothing. It also does help with a sense of what we are spending as they need to be topped up, so if they drain quickly then it raises an eyebrow.
Occupation: Product manager (not in tech!)
Age: 37
Location: Dublin
Salary: €141k basic (+annual bonus between €20k and €100k). Wife is €60k (+€3k bonus)
Pension: Employee contribution of 5%, employer 10%.
Monthly pay (net): Combined ~ €10,000
Transport: Own an EV (purchased outright), average consumption costs about €25 per month on our electricity bill. Tolls are about €10 a month after the EV discounts.
Mortgage: €1,450
Childcare: €2,200 (net for both children)
Electricity: €100 (this shouldn’t change over winter, as our consumption is steady, and we are on a fixed price plan, not a fixed discount one)
Gas: €50 (averaged across 12 months)
Bins: €20 per month
Phone bill: Two x €9.99 per month
Internet: €30 per month
Health insurance and Income Protection: Provided through my work
Life Insurance and Serious Illness Cover: €102 per month
Groceries: This is tougher to track. We do a big shop online every two or three weeks for about €200 but could easily spend €100 a week additionally on the bits and bobs as we go about life.
Subscriptions: Spotify – €18 per month, Netflix – €0 (shared account, in return I share Spotify), Disney+ – €45 a year, again split between two houses, Leinster season ticket – €300 a year
Kids activities (swimming, ballet): €50 per week
Various savings (AVC, College funds, Share Saving Schemes): €2,500 per month
Exceptional items: Fairly consistently we spend about €500 to €1,000 per month on exceptional items. E.g. more storage solutions from IKEA, attending a wedding, fixing a car dent, birthday party…
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7.30 am: Get the house up to drop the kids to creche. My wife and I are both working from home today, and the weather wasn’t great so dropped the kids to creche in the car. They are in different creches because we couldn’t get places for both in the same one, so a bit of a trek each morning and evening to be honest.
11. 00 am: Wife and I share a coffee in between our work.
1.00 pm: Lunch is last night’s leftovers in sandwich form. Yummy, although she doesn’t fully agree.
4.45 pm: I finish work and spin to shops to get a few bits (€7) before collecting the kids.
5.45 pm: Chicken wings and chips for dinner, then the usual bedtime routine for kids, asleep by 7.45 pm.
10.00 pm: Bedtime, but not before putting the washing machine on a timer to start at 7 am tomorrow to avail of night rate.
Sometime later: My wife bought tickets for a show for her mum’s birthday (€130) while I was asleep!
Today’s total: €137.00
7.15 am: Woken by four-year-old but was time to get up anyway. Said a silent thanks that everyone slept all night in their own beds last night. Wife is in the office today so takes the car, which means I’m doing the creche run on the bike and bike trailer today. I like the bike trailer, got it off Adverts.ie for €80 and it means we don’t need a second car. It’s also more reliable time wise as it’s somewhat independent of traffic. It does, however. make getting out in the morning a little more logistically challenging.
8.50 am: Got all the drops done and at my desk for 9 am – usual wfh corporate life.
10.30 am: I get a text that the two-year old’s swimming fees have come off my debit card. 10 weeks for €240.
1.00 pm: Lunch is some Autumn tomatoes from my greenhouse on toast, and also call my waste collection company because I think they can give me a better deal if I threaten to leave. They do, and just like that my bin costs drop from €20 a month to less than €10 a month for the next year. So, savings of about €130 per year. Not much but it all helps.
4.30 pm: Work finished, and off to do the collections on the bike. I’d homemade some pizzas and hummus at lunch for dinner, so pop them in the oven which allows me and my wife to play with the kids in the garden while dinner cooks.
8.00 pm: After their bedtime, I do a little browsing on Amazon. I got a bike for my daughter’s birthday on Adverts and I want to add some personal touches. Also get some LED strip lighting for the bike trailer as we enter winter. (€30)
9.30 pm: Early to bed and read a book for a while. Reading The Handmaid’s Tale which is quite a cheery read at bedtime…
Today’s total: €270.00 (€240 budgeted)
6.45 am: Woken by my son bright and early. Sometimes I don’t mind being woken a little early as it sort of gives everyone more time to get ready with less hustling! My wife got a taxi at silly o’clock this morning for a work trip (and bought new headphones at the airport (€30)), so I have the “luxury” of dropping kids to creche in the car. Terrible decision: what took me 40 minutes yesterday on the bike, takes me 80 minutes today. A few minutes late to work because of it.
12.30 pm: Lunchtime – poached eggs on toast for me, and buy a ticket for the Ireland ‘A’ rugby game (€20). Going to matches is one of my hobbies. I have a season ticket and usually end up travelling to some knock out games at the latter end of the season. It can be an expensive hobby though, and certainly tests the “exceptional items” budget in April and May. I also prep the dinner for tonight (chicken casserole) while dialling into a conference call.
4.45 pm: Having learnt my lesson this morning, no car for me. Stick the casserole in the oven then don the running gear and collect the kids in the running buggy. 6km in total, and home to a nice warm meal almost ready in the oven.
8.00 pm: Got both children to sleep, so a cup of tea and watch some more episodes of “Welcome to Wrexham” on Disney+ while sorting odd socks. A rock and roll evening for me!
10.00 pm: Book and bed.
Today’s total: €50.00
5.55 am: My turn to wake up first. Lie in bed listening to a podcast about Cleopatra – it was real life Game of Thrones stuff between her, her siblings, Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony.
6.45 am: Little man wakes up so I take him downstairs for breakfast and some playtime.
8.15 am: Drop the kids to creche in running buggy again, another 6km on the board. More satisfied than I should be that I get home just in time to have my shower on the night rate. Means it cost me about €0.07 instead of €0.22 (give or take).
10.15 am: Do an online Tesco shop between meetings to tide us over a bit (€115). Also subscribe to their delivery saver plan (€10) as we are using the service more now that the summer has passed, and we are both working again.
12.30 pm: Lunch is last night’s leftovers again, quick and easy. My wife and I also have been thinking about Christmas presents, and a good deal popped up on Adverts which we hopped on. €60 for a load of Sylvanian Families sets that would be ~€400 new at a glance. Delighted with that, and nice to have it sorted early. It’s also nice to not be drowning in packaging on Christmas Day.
3.00 pm: Take a gas meter reading and submit it online. Have a quick check on my utilities spreadsheet to see what our consumption since last bill has been. It’s not too bad, so next bill shouldn’t be bonkers. I also stick a ham on to boil while I’m downstairs. The 1.4 kg ham cost about €7 and will supply enough meat for a carbonara dinner tonight and a load of toasties over the coming days. Much more cost effective (and tasty) than sliced ham. The ham also keeps for ages (uncooked) in the fridge so is a handy one to have there for days like today when the fridge is a bit bare.
6.30 pm: Two-year-old has a sudden onset of a fever and doesn’t eat dinner so he goes to bed early but could be a long night.
8.30 pm: Four-year-old is asleep by now, so my wife makes the suggestion we go to bed early ourselves given the potential for a disturbed night is on the cards. Watch some Love is Blind in bed, and asleep by about 9 pm.
Today’s total: €185.00 (€115 budgeted)
8.00 am: Ended up sleeping in with our two-year-old doing the Calpol/Nurofen dance to keep him settled so wife does the drop off with four-year-old. Obviously two-year-old can’t go to creche today, but luckily today is a “Free Friday” at my work. Basically, once a quarter you can decide whether you work or not on a Free Friday. I’d planned to work, but will just chill with two-year-old instead now that he is sick.
10.00 am: I need to exchange something in IKEA so do that, and in an unusual turn of events, the item I return costs more than the one I was supposed to get so I make €15 profit on my return to IKEA.
12.00 pm: After a visit to the doctors with himself, spend €11 on medicine in the pharmacy.
1.00 pm: Lunch is ham and cheese toasties with last night’s ham.
2.30 pm: Himself is asleep, so I take the time to complete the IKEA assembly.
5.00 pm: The gas bill does arrive, and it’s €35 for the last six weeks. I don’t need to pay it yet so it’s not counted in today’s total. Other than that, an afternoon of survival with a sick grumbly child, finished off with homemade burgers, veg and chips.
8.00 pm: Went down easy all around. A bit like last night, all to bed early after some Netflix. But on the way to bed, I plug in the car to charge overnight on the night rate (a timer kicks in after midnight).
Today’s total: €11.00 (Net: -€4)
9.00 am: No surprise that we had a relaxed morning. Kids stayed in PJs and played in the house for the morning.
10.00 am: I unplug the car and see that about €3.50 of electricity went in overnight and that added about 200km to the range of the car. So at that rate, it’s €17.50 per 1,000km which is a lot better than our old petrol car!
12.00 pm: Weather is gorgeous so we walk to the playground for a run around. Little man is still sick but he seemed to enjoy the sunshine nonetheless.
2.00 pm: Back for a late lunch, and we had the last of the ham and a little left-over burger in sandwiches for our lunch.
4.00 pm: Did some Lego with the four-year-old then it’s time for me to head off to Leinster v Munster in the Aviva.
5.30 pm: Find parking in my usual spot that’s free and walked to the ground from there. Have also brought my coffee with me from home.
8.00 pm: Good match and enjoyed the catch-up with my friends and family. Unfortunately, had to leg it out of there to relieve the babysitter who was filling in to allow my wife head into town. Had time to nip into takeaway on my way home and get a red curry (€15), and some milk from the corner shop (€2.50). Unfortunately, I don’t get to eat said takeaway for an hour and a half as the two-year-old gets sick while I’m putting him to bed so I have to clean up and re-settle him etc. Ah, the joys of parenthood.
11.00 pm: Time for bed. I don’t usually ask but I asked my wife how much she spent in town that night for the purposes of this diary and she spent about €100 between food, drink and shared taxis.
Today’s total: €117.50
9.00 am: Today is usually swimming lessons day for the kids, but given all the illness in the house, we decide to knock that one on the head and chill again for the morning. Poached egg on toast all round to start the day, then faff around for a few hours in the house getting house stuff done until the weather clears.
11.00 am: It eventually does clear, and when it does, we cycle down to a different playground/parkland and spend a few hours there playing in puddles, being a unicorn; all the usual stuff.
2.00 pm: Lunch is again some of the kids leftover dinner from last night, this time with potato bread that we randomly had in the freezer.
3.00 pm: We bake some scones together as well as work on the Lego creations from yesterday. Two-year-old is still sick so had a monster nap today followed by a need for lots of cuddles and books.
6.00 pm: Dinner is meatballs and pasta which is a favourite in our house. Highlight of the weekend is the 15 mins that we all chill and cuddle on sofa eating the aforementioned scones watching a Frozen short of some sort (the one with Anna’s birthday party!). Nice end to an illness interrupted weekend.
Today’s total: €0.00 (and really didn’t think about it!)
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What I learned –
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