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 COO of a company on €245K living in Dublin. This week, a teacher on €48K living in Cork.
I’m a secondary school teacher in Cork City. I love my job but I’ve changed schools recently which means my contract for this year is slightly different and I won’t get paid during school holidays. I need to take this into consideration when I’m saving for the short and long-term! I’m very lucky that my rent is €350 as the landlord has not raised it since before I moved in (thank God for a very sound landlord!). When I get paid, I put aside some of the rent and my savings as soon as I can to avoid overspending. If I have money to spare, I prefer to save it to do things with friends or travel but I did a lot of travelling this year and so my aim now is to save enough in the coming months to be in a position to apply for mortgage approval next year.
My week-to-week routine doesn’t vary too much. I go to work, go to training and try to meet friends to go for walks/swim in the sea. On some weeks, a group of us go to a table quiz midweek but it depends, and some weekends I go home to see my parents – which I try to do once a month if I can. I’ve always been good at saving (shout out to the primary school student credit union account) and since my first ever job when I was making about €4 an hour after tax, I usually consider what I’m buying and put money aside if I want something.
I avoid online shopping for clothes except for Depop which has become a bit of a habit, but I justify it as it is second-hand. One area I find hard to manage is spending money on a food shop. I used to try to do one big weekly shop but when cooking for one this became overwhelming and usually food ended up going to waste. Now I do a bit of a big shop on a Sunday but I still pop into the shops for one or two things most days which probably leads to some overspending. Maybe this is a pandemic hangover where I got addicted to a social outing to the shops, who knows? Either way, I have found I use the food I buy and have less waste, even if I spend more than I need to.
Occupation: Teacher
Age: 29
Location: Cork
Salary: €48,334
Monthly pay (net): c. €3,100 (this varies as I won’t get paid for school holidays)
Transport: €80
Rent: €350
Household bills: c. €50 (we split bills four ways so this also varies!)
Phone bill: €20 pay as you go.
Health insurance: €90
Car Insurance: €450 annually
Groceries: €50
Subscriptions: €14.99 for Netflix (I’m the family member who provides the password!) €10.99 for Spotify (I couldn’t live without this, I’m in Taylor Swift’s top 1% of listeners)
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6.45 am: My alarm goes off every morning at 6.45 am and I allow myself until 7 am until I really have to get out of bed. I bring a packed lunch to school so I organise that before I leave the house.
8.00 am: I usually give a coworker a lift to work most days. The journey is only 10 minutes and traffic isn’t bad on my new commute! I like to be at my desk by 7.50 am to get myself organised for the day. I grab a cup of tea in the staff room and get to work.
11.00 am: I get a short 10-minute break and eat the yoghurt I packed for lunch at my desk as I have a busy day.
1.00 pm: I have the leftover Caesar salad I made last night with pitta bread. Our lunch breaks are short so I need to be organised to bring food with me. This can be a bit annoying the night before – or worse, in the morning when I’ve forgotten to do it! But overall it helps me manage my spending because I’m not running out to grab things at the last minute.
4.00 pm: On the way home from work, I stop to buy supplies as my white board markers have been running low on ink for too long and my pencil case, which I’d tried to repair in September, has died a death. I spend €4.47 on new markers in the book shop and then head to the euro store to find a pencil case. While there, I decide to pick up supplies for a student activity later in the week and my total is €5. Now that I’m in the shopping centre, I can’t resist some more retail therapy. I buy a loaf of sourdough for €3.80 which sounds like a lot, but it lasts the whole week compared to regular loaf of bread. I pick up some bits for lunch during the week and milk in Tesco for €7.47.
6.00 pm: I have salad with eggs on sourdough toast for my dinner and watch telly for an hour. I check the clothes I hung on the clothes horse yesterday to find, unsurprisingly, that they are still damp.
8.00 pm: I go to training, which gets me out of the house for an hour, and I’m glad of the mild weather after the stormy weekend in Cork.
10.00 pm: Just as I’m about to go to sleep and stop spending money I remember that I finished reading Intermezzo yesterday and buy a new book on my Kindle to read before bed. (€7.15)
Today’s total: €27.89
6.45 am: Thanks to my alarm clock, which lights up half an hour before it starts beeping, I wake up slightly earlier today and have time to make eggs on toast for my breakfast which I would prefer to have most morning over Weetabix, but I’m not a morning person so it rarely happens.
8.00 am: Back at my desk with my cup of tea. The first half of the week is the busiest for me in terms of classes so I like to get ahead of myself in the mornings to ensure the day goes relatively well once I get started!
1.00 pm: I’m on lunchtime supervision, so I use this time to look at my to-do lists and think about what work I can get through in my next free period. After the lunch break, I have a class free so I eat the soup and sourdough I brought with me and get through some of my to-do’s.
4.00 pm: When I get home, my housemate is already there. After the storm there are finally blue skies and we decide to take advantage of the nice evening and go out for a walk. We’re lucky that where we live, there are some nice walking loops, though like everywhere in Cork there’s also plenty of hills. Once again, I stop in Tesco and pick up eggs and chocolate milk which comes to €4.65.
5.00 pm: By the time we’re almost home from our walk, we decide to stop for coffee. I grab a chai latte (€4.20) and we rest our legs before heading back.
7.00 pm: My housemate uses HelloFresh sometimes and asked if I would like to try one of the meals so she cooks dinner and I wash up. Lucky me! We spend the rest of the evening watching ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’.
Today’s total: €8.85
7.00 am: I get up and have a shower to try to wake me up. My throat is sore so I make tea while I prepare lunch. Usually I only need a snack on Wednesday’s as we have a half day but today we have a meeting so I bring soup and bread for that too.
8.00 am: I stop for a packet of Strepsils (€4.45) which a really kind man in the garage helps me to locate. I have one which helps, slightly, and drink a cup of tea at my desk.
1.00 pm: Time for lunch and my voice is almost totally croaked by the time I finish my six classes. I have soup, which I’m extremely grateful for, and head to the staff meeting where I avoid speaking for two hours which certainly helps my throat rest!
4.00 pm: I drive home from work and stop off to fill the car up with diesel (€39.00). I prefer to fill the tank once it gets to halfway as I’ve been caught out once before by driving to absolutely zero and conking out. That’s a mistake you only need to make once!
5.00 pm: Engineers arrive to fix something on the windows in the house. My clothes are still drying and still damp, but on the bright side, the landlord drops in caramel squares which is very sound and I eat too many of them.
7.00 pm: Another friend offered to make me dinner (what a lucky week!) so I bring some caramel squares over to hers as dessert. We wanted to get together to plan our weekend at the Cork Jazz Festival. Last year we fell at the last hurdle and didn’t make it out for Sunday night, so I book us tickets to Kean Kavanagh (€55.88) on Sunday in order to ensure we’ll have to make it out this year. I also make a hairdresser’s appointment for the week before Jazz and pay €10 deposit. I come home feeling very organised and with a belly full of delicious pesto pasta.
Today’s total: €109.33
7.00 am: I wake up feeling worse again and take two of the ibuprofen my housemate gave me. None of us seem to have any Sudafed or cold tablets left, so I make a plan to grab them during a free class later in the day. Thursday’s aren’t as busy for me in regards to classes so I’ll have some time to get out to the pharmacy.
11.00 am: I pop out to the pharmacy and get Sudafed (€6.80). The pharmacy is beside an Aldi and God knows I can’t seem to avoid going into a supermarket when in the vicinity of one, so I pop in there and pick up a yoghurt and hummus snack for lunch as I forgot to pack anything today. (€4.75)
4.00 pm: By the time I leave work, my throat is killing me so I stop off and buy Ibuprofen Cold and Flu tablets (€10.00) which I don’t realise until I get home also contain the same ingredients as the Sudafed and I didn’t need both. Regardless, I take two and take to my bed for the evening.
7.00 pm: I’ve slept through some of the grog of feeling sick, but haven’t eaten and have no energy to make food. Although I’m not that hungry, I decide to order a burrito bowl from Zambrero on Deliveroo which comes to €17.09 with the driver’s tip. It’s been a long time since I’ve used any delivery app, so I’m surprised by how much it costs. Usually I tell myself that if I want takeaway I can have it, but I can’t get it delivered. In this case, being sick has given me an excuse this time around. I eat it but don’t feel much better.
10.00 pm: My housemate comes home late and pops her head in the door to check if I’m still alive and thankfully I am!
Today’s total: €31.84
8.00 am: I had a good night’s sleep thanks to the cold and flu tablets, so I get a cup of tea when I get to work and start to organise my day. I’ve planned a trip for some first years so I need to set work for the classes that I’ll miss while I’m gone.
10.00 am: We leave the school and I have an orange and a strepsil before taking another dose of ibuprofen to get me through the afternoon.
1.00 pm: We return around lunchtime and I head to the staffroom to eat the yoghurt I didn’t have a chance to have earlier. Another cup of tea and I’ve a class free before my final class of the day so I prep work for next week.
4.00 pm: By the end of the day, I’m feeling a lot better which I will later realise is just down to the regular doses of the cold and flu tablets I’ve been taking. I confirm with my friend that I’ll go to a quiz tonight as I’d flagged earlier in the week that maybe I wouldn’t make it. That Friday feeling seems to spur me on.
5,00 pm: My friend picks me up to drive to the quiz which is about an hour away. We stop for food along the way and I have chicken goujons and chips. He pays but I’ll get him back the next time.
10.00 pm: I buy a round of drinks for my teammates but only one of us is drinking so it’s €5. We actually won the quiz when it was on last year, which the MC pointed out and so now we’re coming under pressure. I find the whole thing hilarious and I’m pretty much no help except in the music round, but it turns out that teamwork really does make the dream work and we win! I am delighted with the box of Barry’s Tea that’s part of the hamper we get.
Today’s total: €5.00
9.00 am: I didn’t get to sleep till around 2am, by which time my routine of ibuprofen had worn off and I was feeling worse for wear. I wake up this morning and the exhaustion of the week and being sick hits me. My housemate is off to the Munster match in Dublin but comes to check on me and say goodbye.
1.00 pm: I drag myself out of bed after a morning of recovery. I decide to clean my bedroom and the bathroom to try make myself feel better and go for a shower after this to restart my day properly.
4.00 pm: I decide that if I don’t give myself a reason to leave the house then I won’t leave it, so I go to Penneys for some retail therapy. Usually, I only get basics in Penneys, but I had a skirt in mind so I just bought that, a slip and shoes (€42) which wasn’t too bad considering how many times I’ve gone in there for one thing and come out with more than I needed. I think now that my living space is limited in storage, I really try to avoid buying things I don’t need. For example, I keep two sets of bedsheets in rotation and can’t justify a new one until it’s needed and I’ve already decided I’ll get new pyjamas as a treat for Christmas. This sounds silly but nowadays we all buy so many new clothes all of the time that I really try to limit what I buy unless it’s something I need and will wear rather than just a new version of something I already have. I get a lot of clothes on Depop too which means having to look around and only buy what I need rather than just items I want.
6.00 pm: Back at home, I make eggs on toast for my dinner as it is simple and easy and I’ve still not been craving much when feeling sick. I have a cup of tea with this and sit down to watch the end of ‘Nobody Wants This’ on Netflix.
7.00 pm: The feeling of feeling sorry for myself continues and I decide to buy an eyeshadow stick online. The website offers free shipping for over €40, so I also get eyeliner and lipstick. The total comes to €58.85 and seeing as I haven’t gone out or been drinking this weekend, I decide it’s okay.
Today’s total: €100.85
9.00 am: I awake to find that I am still sick! I take two of my cold and flu tablets and roll over to try to sleep it off.
12.00 pm: I arise, a ghost of my former self, and grab Weetabix for breakfast before heading back to bed for another hour.
3.00 pm: Feeling slightly better, or at least deciding to force myself to, I meet my housemate downstairs and we decide to head to Aldi to get ourselves food for the week. I can only think as far as tomorrow, so I plan tonight’s dinner and lunch for the next day. Since school has started back, I’ve made it part of my routine to roast a small chicken on a Sunday evening as they’re only €4!! This usually gives me more than enough meat to last me through my lunches and dinners for most of the week. I also grab a present for my goddaughter from the labyrinth that is the middle aisle and my total comes to €26.60. Then it’s back to the pharmacy to top up on cold tablets and vitamins and my total comes to €33.50.
6.00 pm: The chicken is ready and I’m grateful for the wholesome goodness of a Sunday roast dinner. After I eat, I tidy up and carve the rest of the chicken into a lunch box for the week.
9.00 pm: I head to bed early, hoping for better health this coming week!
Today’s total: €60.10
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What I learned -
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