Throwaway for obvious reasons...
So I will start this story by saying that I don't think I am a good person, and a story with some collateral damage. But this is a story about one bad person getting revenge on another bad person.
Backstory: I[34m, now] was raised by a single mom because dad passed away when I was younger, but I had many male role models in older brothers and he left behind a generous life insurance policy, so I largely had a good upbringing. However, I was not ever very social and from my early teens I spent a lot of time in front of my computer. This habit got worse as I went to college and it resulted in me spending 80% of my time gaming, working, reading, or whatever on a screen. As a result, I was not very attractive and quite obese at the age of 20. For these reasons, I never really dated and did not even lose my virginity until I met my exfiance. On top of this, I was raised very religious because my mom became really religious after the death of my father so I always thought it was a bad idea to "play the field". The only thing I had going for me was that I had become somewhat proficient in several coding languages and expanded on these in college. I would not say that I am a good IT person or coder, but with a little bit of coding knowledge and a lot of creativity you can create residual income streams and I had a decent job in IT where I could work from home 3 days a week. At the age of 24, I was still overweight and a social reject, but through my mom I met a woman from her "bible study" that would eventually become ex-fiance[36f, now]. We hit off and started dating. She had a 2 year old son at the time and they became the only thing in my world that I cared about. It did not take me long to get physical (LOL) all those years of pretending I was "saving myself" went out the window when I finally had the chance to lose it. To be honest, she really broke me out of the shell I had become more sociable within a couple months of meeting her. I even took on a fatherly role for her son and within 6 months of dating she got pregnant. Being the religious person I was, I immediately proposed and wanted to marry before the birth of the baby. Then she dropped a bombshell on me.... she was still legally married.... to a guy in prison. This did not bother me too much as she had always talked about her troubled past and I thought I would be the one to save her from it anyways so I just took this as it came with the territory. She began the divorce proceedings shortly and we planned to get married as soon as those were finished. I was riding high after the baby was born and I thought I had really carved a place for myself in the world. I even started losing weight and spent less time online than ever. She was always kind to me and I thought we let each other know everything we were thinking... boy was I wrong.
There were a few red flags that I was too love struck to see. 1.) She told me early on that the only reason she got involved with my church was that she was on probation and had pending court cases and thought it would help her case. 2.) Despite me earning a comfortable 6 figure income with side projects and my main IT job, she insisted that she keep her part time job and my mom had to help me take care of the kids to deal with it. 3.) She knew WAY TOO MANY PEOPLE - like what suburban mom with a secretarial job has 200 contacts in her phone? 4.) We kept delaying our marriage due to sick relatives or other issues (although she did go through with the divorce to the prison guy)
Then something happened that shook me out of her spell. She got pregnant for a second time and this time with twins. We had only been with eachother for ~4 years and we were about to have 4 kids. 2 more than I thought I would ever have. She claimed she was on birth control at the time, so we were not using condoms. Anyways, after the twins were born I started seeing my doctor about a vasectomy and my exfiance encouraged it. I wanted to get some swimmers frozen before the the operation because we could completely change our minds in 5 years. So I go in for the visit and the doctor comes out to tell me that my sperm count was low and they were mostly immobile, but this problem might be temporary and I should try to eat a healthier diet and stuff for a few weeks and come back. When I came to the second appointment and the same problem arose, the doc started doing some investigating, but you know where this is going. SO... the doctor says that its likely that I am infertile (this turned out to not be completely true, as I now have a child that I KNOW is biologically mine, but it still propelled the following events.) I mentioned that I had 3 biological children and the doctor looked anxious and started talking, but I was in shell shock and did not really know what he was saying. I think I left the doctors office before they were even done with me. I did not even get in my car, I just walked until it started to get dark and eventually called an Uber to get home. My fiance was worried and already asleep inside and I just lied to her and told her my car broke down, phone died, and I was at the mechanic late and forgot to let her know. I fell asleep and woke up the next day and immediately got on the computer to research similar stories and started to give myself false hope. The first post I read was about how fertility assessments are not true and I should 100% get a test. I thought for sure this would show the doctor was wrong, but I got the test back and within a week I knew the kids were not mine.
The first person I told was my mom, I went to her house and cried for the first time in my adult life. She consoled me and then told me a story that I was never meant to hear. Essentially, I am the product of an affair myself and that dad actually died from an overdose on pain meds after he found out. Well, I don't know why the f#$% my mom thought this would comfort me, but in reality it just gave me an unhealthy view of women for a while. After the story and calming down, she insisted that I "man up" and honor my commitment to these kids because "I am the only father those kids had ever known". Up to this point I had always been a pushover, and I really considered her words to me for about 24-hours before I completely snapped. I called my fiancé and told her I had to stay the night at my moms house because of a family issue and she offered to make us dinner which I declined. At this point, the twins are about 6 months, the boys are 2.5 years and ~5 years old. I won't lie and say that I felt nothing for these kids, but it was hard to look them in the face and I knew I was done being their father. I knew this would tear them up and damage them, but I couldn't stand to hear them say "dadda" to me because every time it was like a knife in my heart. I kept my cool and did not expose anything and my mom did not say anything I assume because she thought I was "manning up". I spoke to an attorney, because I wanted to get myself off the birth certificates of these children and I thought I could seamlessly slip out of this situation because we were not married. Unfortunately, after going through the paperwork and financials, since I had tangled much of our finances and I "took on a fatherly role" I would be responsible for at least the boys child support and she would get equity in the house and my side businesses. Basically, the lawyers said that I would likely be on the hook for something like 25% of my income for many years to come. I pretty much ghosted my lawyers after paying them their initial fee, because I did not like the idea of state-enforced cucking.
The revenge starts here. I started to make a plan to disappear and leave them all with as little as possible. The start of this was destroying all of my passive income streams and getting myself fired. Getting myself fired was easy, but it got a bit cringe, basically did some of the stuff from office space, smashed an office printer in the courtyard, didn't do anything while working from home except send memes to coworkers, but I did not do anything to clients because my boss was actually a friend of mine, but my office mates had a good time watching this. After this, I did not even try to file for unemployment and began living off our savings. My exfiance let me handle all the financials despite both of our names being on everything, so she did not notice our accounts slowly draining of money and the financials going to chaos because I left her checking account filled with a few thousand (credit card debt skyrocketed because I stopped paying our cards LOL). I sat there for months wondering if I should end it and follow in the footsteps of my would-be father, but ultimately decided against it. I got ancestory test kits for the kids in an effort to find who their actual father was, because I was hoping to get them away from my ex, but this resulted in even weirder findings. Essentially the oldest child was a cousin/half-brother to his siblings and so the prison guy's brother must have gotten her pregnant, also I did not see any family members from the test that I thought would be a good fit. So that was the end of that investigation. I also tried to distance myself from my mom, as I had become disgusted by what she did to my dad and her newfound cheater allegiance with my ex. I formulated a plan to get away, FAR AWAY, from everything by just vanishing on a "hiking trip". I really hyped up this hiking trip and claimed I would be in the (insert location here) for a week alone with my thoughts in the trails. Before the trip I took the then ~6 year old out for ice cream and cried for the second time in my adult life. The 6 year old was obviously distraught over seeing his "dad" cry and started trying to calm me down. I guess I was crying that I had to leave him, and I told him I was sorry dozens of times but I think he was just confused about the situation. I was more concerned about losing him, because I knew he was not my child and I was able to form a bond anyways.
I left that afternoon and actually made my way to the lodge and checked in. Now the next part I will mostly skip because I am not sure if it was legal or illegal or whatever but cut to 6 months later and I have a new name and live in a new city where I was able to restart my IT career and was slowly working toward my old income status again. I started stalking my ex on facebook and other social-media. I won't lie, it was cathartic to say the least. The chaos of them trying to get into accounts must have been hell and she figured out that our comfortable finances were not so comfortable after all. Begging for money on facebook is sooooo trashy. Once again I won't mention the legal stuff, but a lot of people went looking for me and I considered phoning the police to let them know that I was okay, but decided against it (eventually had to pay a hefty fine for this, but it was well worth it). I worked on myself for a long time and got into great shape. Lost my religion and descended into a hedonistic lifestyle. I became unrecognizable. I continued stalking this woman for about a year when I heard she was dating a new guy and got pregnant almost immediately. Of course, my mom was still in her life taking care of my "supposed children" while she was doing god knows what. Then on the one year anniversary of me leaving she posted a memorial page... for me. This made me decide that my revenge was not quite done and I decided to call up my brother and let him know I was alive. My brother and I had drifted over the past 10 years, but he was blood and was always there when I was younger. I told him why I did what I did and we caught up and I asked him not to tell anyone yet and he agreed. But then he told me about my mom and my ex-fiance suing my insurance company to honor my life insurance. Somehow, she had managed to keep up this policy going despite its hefty cost. The payout would be substantial (7 figures) and she would be awarded the premiums that she had paid since my alleged death if she won.
Well I am not the kind of uncivilized person that would defraud an insurance company so I started my plans! I drove the 1000mile journey to my old city when I heard she had an upcoming hearing and listened to "highway to hell" half the way down.
I went to the court early and sat down. Now at this time I had grown a beard, lost 60 pounds and generally looked good. I looked so different that my fiance and mother passed right by me in the court without giving me a second look. I thought they would be meeting in a big court room and I was already planning to barge in and yell something about objecting and being a cringelord like usual. But they ended up going to a small room with some lawyers from the insurance company. I decided frick it and knocked on the door several times until they opened it. They were all confused to see this scraggly dressed man with a beard and I simply said "I believe you are trying to settle the issue of whether I am dead". My exfiance realized it was me almost immediately and let out a gasp or something. But the lawyers were just confused. Everyone ended up stepping outside the room and a whirlwind erupted and the bailiffs were called over. MY ex screamed and slapped me and they had to actually put handcuffs on her! This was a big deal for the insurance company I guess and the lawyer's boss/client actually showed up and asked for statements and everything. Even a detective showed up and I started to regret coming but I gave my statement and did not really lie about anything, but I was vague about where I was currently living. I ended up staying in town for almost a month, and it was a crazy month in a cheap motel. I showed evidence of my ex's cheating to anyone who cared and I tried to meet with the kids, but the youngest did not know me and the then 7 year old told me to "fuck myself", which is fair I guess. The police were pissed off and started civil litigation for the costs of searching for me, a detective or soemthing actually flew in from another state to question me. Luckily this whole time I did not get arrested for anything as I did not want my fingerprints being linked to my new name an such. Essentially I had to pay a large fine and immediately paid the fine in cash to the surprise of the police. As far as I was concerned I was done with this town. My ex-fiance served me a civil lawsuit for multiple different things and my mom helped, but I was a leaf in the wind long before anything came of it. I am back in my new city and never plan to go back. I stopped spying on them after a few months of ruining her insurance plans and moved on with my life. This happened some years ago and I am much better off now, but I am tired now and need to go to sleep. If there is interest I will let you know what happened with me after all this.
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UPDATE:
Hello everyone, thank you for taking interest in my life. I only want to do 1 update and lay it all out. Mostly I just wanted to let people know where I went with my life, because a lot of people seem interested. I might answer a few questions in the comments if someone has a burning question.
I am not going to say anything about how to disappear because we can't discuss potential crimes on this board, but look up the case of how **Jack Barsky a former KGB spy entered the US and obtained credentials. Literally millions of undocumented immgrants do this to be able to work for companies in the US as well. Uncle Sam just wants those taxes paid. I'm not sure about the details of the insurance investigation and how they were looking for me, but I never got so much as a phone call from them before I met them in person.
I have no intention to try to seek revenge anymore, because I believe "violent delights have violent ends" now. As far as I am concerned, my ex-fiance's life is hard enough and anything else I did would just hurt the kids. After everything blew up with my ex, I left the town and did not reach out to my brother anymore and even stopped checking up on the situation with my Ex. Having no family and friends and starting over in the world is lonely and terrifying, but equally exciting and hopeful.
So how did I reset my life upon reaching a new city? Well I had a lot of money in cash that I used to stay in a motel for a few months while I got all my documents in order and looked for work. Because I thought that my home computer would be searched when I went missing, I could not really plan much of this stuff beforehand. I realized that without a college degree linked to your name, it was difficult to find a job with my skillset. So I decided to just make my own company and post advertisements about setting up custom dispatch software, editing videos and presentations, among other tasks. I only received a few different jobs doing this and it did not even pay my living expenses. After I did a few jobs for the same company, I made friends with a project manager and got hired at a reasonable salary. To this day, my finances are only about 70% of what I was making before, but I am happy with what I have.
I spent a lot of time finding people with similar stories on the internet and eventually got involved with a Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) group. We basically just talked shit about women all the time and the positive feedback loop made me a pretty resentful/misogynistic person. I went so far as making fake accounts to harrass women online, so I don't want to go into anymore details because I am a bit embarrassed and remorseful now. I got on Tinder and started hooking up with women to make up for lost time. Throwing money around and lying to them became a way of life for me and I would cheat on basically every woman I got with because I thought they were all doing it too. I got caught and I would pretend like I didn't understand why they were mad with me until they left or tried to forgive me just for me to do it again. Not proud of this either.
A couple of years ago one of the women that I was sleeping with regularly got pregnant and came to me all excited with the news. Now I immediately accused her of cheating and threw her out of my apartment and there was just a look of shock on her face. Remember, I thought I was infertile so in my mind I just put another THOT in her place. I continued to mock her for a bit and even messaged my MGTOW buddies about what I did. I openly confessed to cheating on her and showed her proof. I agreed to a paternity test while she was still pregnant just because I didn't want her to get the courts involved and I was shocked with the result. I cried and tried to hug her and she screamed threw some papers at me and told me she never wanted to see me again. I went home and drank, happy that I was going to be a dad(for real this time) but sad who I had become. Like I said, I don't want you to root for me because I am not a good person.
For the remainder of the pregnancy, she would not even speak to me long enough for me to explain my actions, but I totally understood why. When the baby was born(a girl), I showed up to the hospital to sign the birth certificate and at the same time met with her lawyer (which turned out to be her sister) to go over child support stuff that we had already spoke about. I went for a "hail marry" and offered to sign any paper they wanted if she would just have coffee with me for 30 minutes to explain things (She wanted full custody and generous payments). I never got a lawyer because I just wanted to make amends and I thought a lawyer would throw up obstacles to try to protect me or my finances.
I met with her for coffee and to my surprise she let me speak uninterrupted for almost 20 minutes. I did not completely tell her the truth about my past, but she understood why I wanted a paternity test, but did not excuse my behavior in mocking her, throwing her out, and cheating. I signed the papers, but begged her to let me see my daughter and be part of her life. She said that I was unstable and that I needed intensive therapy before that would ever happen. Of course I obliged to the therapy.
I learned a lot in therapy and did a lot of research about the fallout of cheating and whatnot. Turns out there are a lot of women who had been hurt by cheaters and homewreckers too(duh) and that my view of women was toxic to say the least. I cut it off with my MGTOW buddies because I thought that atmosphere would be a detriment to my progress. I don't want to attack that group, because I think there are some good people in that group that are just broken and looking for answers. I think having a baby girl was a real punch in the gut to stop treating women so poorly.
I was finally able to see my daughter when she was 7 months old and began supervised visits every other weekend. I had dutifully paid the child support and made every attempt to talk to her mother and try to make amends. One night after our daughter we got drunk and started kissing which turned into sex. When we woke up the next morning she was emberassed and just asked me to leave, but she made it seem like she kind of wanted to make things work. It took a long time but we moved in together after she lost her job to Covid19 and are currently living together. Her family hates me and this has held us back from marriage talk or anything. Hell, I skipped our daughter's 2nd birthday celebration because her lawyer-sister didn't want to see me. I hope this turns out well for me, and I know I already have better than I deserve. For now, the pandemic has me working from home and my girl takes care of our daughter and makes me food and such. She is still suspicious of me and comes into my office to see what I am doing regularly, but I don't mind. For now, I'm just going to try to be there for my daughter and try to make it up to her mom. I'm still trying to think of things I can do or say but for now I am still in zoom therapy and just doing my best. I don't think I can ever really tell anyone everything, which is why I decided to tell the strangers of reddit. I am sorry for those people that thought I was a hero in my initial post.
Please don't let your hatred boil inside you friends, I almost missed out on something great and I may still miss out if I am not careful. This is going to be the only update, unless I come back years from now to tell you all what happened. Best of luck to everyone.
Small edit: Someone corrected me that the spy I was thinking of was Jack Barsky not Yuri Besmenov!
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Edited to remove the tables because when I obsessively checked this post on my phone I couldn't read them?? Also I tried to, but was prevented from, editing the title. I know it looks sanctimonious but that's just one small part of my personality I swear. D:
❤️ Section 1: Assets and Debt
Total Net Worth: $30,875 - all equity.
Retirement Balance: $0 for me; $20,500 for my husband in the state pension program for teachers. (My partner, L, has been paying into the state teachers' pension system for 5 years. For most of my 20s, I either worked at very low-paying jobs, or supported myself and others on a teacher’s salary, so no retirement for me. My current job does not have a retirement program, but one of my goals for this year is to either start a Roth IRA or get a new job with a 401k match… or maybe both?)
Savings Account Balance: $23,733 We’re moving this summer to a city closer to our families, and are saving all we can for a down payment on a dreamy spot. After we move, some amount of what’s left over will go into a retirement fund, and the rest will stay in this HYSA as our emergency fund. For us, three months of expenses, including childcare, is about $18,000.
Checking Account Balance: $455
Credit Card Debt: n/a, pay off each month
Student Loan Debt: $80,000 for L’s undergrad and MAT. $18,000 for my undergrad and (unfinished) MAT. (My undergrad degrees were mostly covered by the Pell Grant, scholarships, and a $10,000 529 from my parents. L was a nontraditional student - didn’t start undergrad until he was 24 - so none of his was covered. Most of my debt is for a MAT program I dropped out of after one year. I was trying to find any way out of teaching at the time (it is demanding, all-consuming, and carceral at once) and thought a PhD would be my only route. When I got my current job I promptly left the program and any dreams of a PhD behind.)
Equity: $83,875 (This number is from an online equity calculator, and is for our house in a very popular neighborhood in a very popular city. Our outstanding debt on the house is $295,000. We put our whole savings down in 2019, which was $9,000 at the time.)
❤️ Section 2: Income
Monthly Take Home: My base pay is $65,000, and L’s is $45,000. I worked a side gig last year that totaled about $10k in additional compensation; all of it went to savings so we don't budget for it. My take home is $4096/month for my full time job, and my current side gig income (grant writing) is variable, between $300 and $600 a month. L’s take home is $2262/month. My health insurance is paid in full by work. L’s insurance and B’s come out of L’s paycheck, as does L’s retirement contribution.
Income Progression: I’ve been working since I was 15 years old, moved out for college at 18, and paid my own bills starting that year. I won’t include that money here though (it was like $12,000 a year as a college student, for reference). Income below starts when I graduated with two BAs that had nothing to do with teaching.
Year 1: $15,600 (part time ABA therapist, full time baby anarchist)
Year 2: $32,000 (year 1 teacher salary: I accepted a spot in Teach for America for this giant salary even though I thought it was an obnoxious neoliberal org. Yes, I was also obnoxious at the time.)
Year 3: $33,000 (teacher, step increase)
Year 4: $34,000 (teacher, step increase)
Year 5: $35,000 (teacher, step increase)
Year 6: $15,000 (community organizer; at the time this felt like a dream job)
Year 7: $20,000 (community organizer & cafe worker)
Year 8: $40,000 (back to teaching, felt rich; this includes a side hustle writing grants on the side for $50 an hour)
Year 9: $45,000 (left teaching for my current job, quit the grants side hustle)
Year 10: $55,000 (got a raise, got pregnant)
Year 11: $65,000 (got a raise and promotion, had a baby)
Year 12: $75,000 (was promoted again in January but waiting on the pay increase to hit, hopefully with backdating. This money diary doesn’t reflect this salary as it hasn’t been reflected in my check yet)
❤️ Section 3: Expenses
Mortgage/PMI/Insurance: $2,110
Retirement Contribution: n/a (L’s retirement is pulled out of his check before he receives it: it’s $169 a month. Right now, I don’t have a retirement contribution)
Savings Contribution: $1000 to main savings, $400 to sinking fund (This is a super aggressive goal for us and is only possible because our childcare costs are covered by work)
Debt Payments: n/a right now (We have student loans to the tune of $100k but haven’t been paying a dime since they were paused due to COVID. But then the other day I checked and saw they've gained interest? Should we be paying them then? WWJD? I legit don’t know.)
Electric: $130
Internet: $100
Cellphone: $65 (For L & I both. We are on a bigass family plan with 40 gajillion other people.)
Subscriptions: $45 ($10 Spotify; $10 Youtube music; $2.99 Apple data (Why?!); $22 NYT (for newspaper and cooking app); also have a split subscription to the New Yorker with bestie F but we paid for a yearly deal.)
Car Payment and Insurance: $150 for a car payment; $202 for insurance (Insurance covers both of our used cars and my dad’s used handicap van. Our car payment is for our used Honda. We only owe $6,850 on the car and I’m back and forth on whether to pay it off with savings)
Medical/Therapy: $0 (My therapist is $140 a session, and I just started seeing her again once a month, but this is reimbursed by work. I also get an inhaler at least twice a month - that’s reimbursed too, costs $60 total.)
Misfits Market: $120 (For a weekly box, which really helps us cut down on overall grocery cost)
Gym membership: $30 (For my intense local yoga studio’s app which is so great in the winter. We also run and bike a lot, as long as it’s warm enough)
Donations: $100 (We give monthly to our local Democratic Socialists of America; the Working Families Party; and a small, local org. I’m also on an organizing committee for that org. We’ll give them one big gift of at least $250 this year, probably in May. I support a couple organizations with grant writing and grant-finding support as much as I can, which usually amounts to a few hours a month.)
Childcare: $0 B goes to a very precious Montessori preschool, and we can walk him there. It’s pricey af ($1300/month). The other $200 is to account for some babysitting from my little sister when L or I have to work weird hours. For now, work reimburses this full amount as a COVID perk; if that changes, we will have to cut costs significantly.
House cleaner: $160 (They come twice a month and charge $80 each time.)
❤️ Section 4: Money Diary
NOTE: We are masked and afraid everywhere we go.
✨DAY 1: THURSDAY✨
4:20 am: Good morning world! I shuffle into the kitchen in my panties and my slippers to fill up the gooseneck kettle. I recently got into pour over coffee even though it’s quite a commitment. With a toddler, a full-time job, and a Libra sun, I don’t really have time for meditative morning routines. This lengthy, half-naked coffee regimen is my closest attempt. As soon as I get the coffee brewing, our 18 month old, B, starts making noise. I open the door and see he’s got his pacifier in his mouth and his pillow in his arms. He wants to lay with Dada. I help him get in the bed with my husband, L, as quietly as possible. Last week L was super sick and we thought for sure he had picked up COVID. Blessedly all of our tests came back negative, but on the heels of that, he started having major tooth pain and had to have an emergency tooth extraction, AND he got an ear infection as he was coming down from whatever virus he had. I hate it :(
I get dressed and do some chores while they snooze to ease L's morning. I start the diaper laundry (usually his job - we use cloth), put away the dishes, start the Eufy vacuum, and get B and L’s breakfasts together: sunbutter and a little bit of syrup on some banana pancakes I prepped earlier this week.
6:30 am: B and L are up! The hour before we take B to preschool is kind of a marathon. L eats with B (and supervises his syrup consumption) as I clean out some more dirty diapers, brush my teeth, make another cup of coffee, strip our sheets, spray my hair with water to refresh the curl, return a few group texts, and wash some breakfast dishes. Somewhere in here I also eat two boiled eggs with Everything But the Bagel seasoning, and a bunch of grapes.
I help L get B loaded up in the car, and just as they pull off, my parents Facetime me. They’re calling to see B but are polite enough to talk to me for a few minutes. They live a few hours away, and are divorced, but cohabitating. The full story is long and spiritual for me so I’ll spare you. Anyway, my mom and I talk for a while about this couch she thinks I should buy from one of her friends, but it’s two hours away and we’d have to rent a U-Haul, so I think we’ll pass. I do hate our current couch though. Please drop comfy toddler- and dog-friendly recommendations in the comments!
8:15 am: I set out to walk the dog and listen to the Daily’s recent update on the coronavirus. Donald G. McNeill, Jr., says we’re in this through the summer, which is a bummer on the personal and global front, but I suppose it could be worse??? Maybe?? As soon as they finish talking I switch over to You’re Wrong About. I’m deep in the Jessica Simpson series and highly recommend this pod for any other nerdy, lefty, kinda burnt out millennials, especially those of you that are queer or queer-adjacent. Once home, I take my whole operation onto the front porch to work, since the cleaner will be here soon and I don’t want to crowd her in this time of COVID. I LOVE a clean house and I love paying someone else to do the big stuff, which is a recent luxury for us.
11:00 am: I’ve been working steadily in my email and google docs for a couple hours now, and it’s COLD out here. The cleaner leaves and I am grateful to go back into the heat. I Venmo her $80 for the cleaning (included in monthly expenses). I take a break from work and check out the job boards. My current job is the best, and highest-paying, gig I’ve ever had, but I’m planning to leave some time this year for several reasons. The premier reason: I recently learned that I’m qualified for several positions that pay over $100k at similar organizations. With that kind of money we could pay off our student loans, help our families out more, make sizable donations, and L could explore a career outside of teaching without freaking about a slight cut in his pay for a few years as he finds his niche. Or - maybe he’ll get into Edtech somehow and we’ll join Resource Generation. Who knows.
12:30 pm: I have a quick break and pull together lunch: half a cheese quesadilla, a big bowl of Smitten Kitchen’s roasted tomato soup, and a LimonCello LaCroix. L is on his planning period and asks me to edit his most recent job application, and I oblige. Since we’re both job hunting, I ask him if I can buy a resume template and guide on Etsy. I have sworn off online shopping for the year to curb my impulse spending, but he says we’ll just count this one as his purchase. Great news because I hate the formatting of my resume from 2016 and don’t want to fix it myself! $9.95
3:30 pm: My Zooms are over, my inbox is at 0, and I put up my out of office message because I’m taking the day off tomorrow to work on my resume and do some things to prep our house for sale. My high-functioning anxiety created an ambitious backwards timeline for this process back in December, and that timeline currently runs my life. I work for a few more minutes to tie up loose ends, and then walk O to a nearby shop to buy my favorite candle, curbside-style. When I get there the owner gives me some percentage off because it’s slightly discolored from the sun. Huzzah! $27.25, marked down from $40
4:45 pm: My angel of a baby sister, J, who lives just a few blocks away and is in a pod with us, comes to hang out with B for an hour so L can rest. I head to my good friend D’s place for my investment overalls appointment. She's going to alter their awkward wide leg into more of a tapered, mom jean shape. I have a capsule wardrobe which means I’ll wear these babies at least once a week, and plus I get to pay my friend, so I’m fine with the extra expense. When I arrive, she and her partner have the fire pit going, and we drink a couple glasses of wine together, yet more than 6 feet apart. I learn they are planning to move to the same new city as us in the next couple of years and legit cry happy tears.
Afterwards, I head out to pick up dinner for tonight. We are getting burgers from L’s favorite place as a treat. On my way, the WOLF MOON appears over the water and my stomach does triple flips. Then I pick up our dinner: a veggie burger with eggplant jam and kale for me; a real-meat burger with mushrooms, bacon, swiss, carmelized onion, and horseradish mayo for L; and an appetizer plate with pretzels, pimento cheese, onion jam, pickles, and chips for B. Delicious and unhealthy. The total is $34.54.
6:30: Home and eating dinner. B loves his meal, especially the “chokes.” He calls pretzels “chokes” because when L first started feeding them to him, I worried aloud that he would choke every time. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how a pretzel almost took out George W. Bush. Turns out our toddler is better at chewing than George W. Bush.
After dinner, L gives B a bubble bath while I do my own, very minimal, bedtime routine. Then L and I lay down with B to put him to sleep. He has a floor bed, which is a Montessori thing I learned about on mom blogs. L is a very hot and talented woodworker, so he took my floor bed dream to the next level by building a lovely house-shaped frame. The top beam is wrapped in twinkle lights and fake ivy. It’s a nice place to sleep, and we pass out here all the time.
10:30 pm: L wakes me up and we wander to our own bed.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 71.74
✨ DAY 2: FRIDAY✨
4:15 am: Wake up and go look at the clock. Decide this is a silly time to get up on a day off, drink some water, and go lay back down. But once in bed all I can think about is how much I want to read the news, organize my resume, and update this money diary. This is the problem with falling asleep at toddler time. So I get up again at 4:45, make my coffee, read a New Yorker article about Biden’s pandemic response on my phone, and sit down to work on this diary.
6:00 am: L wakes up! He works on breakfast for himself and B and I start meal planning for the month. This is one of my best and most recent life hacks. I found that if I chart out our cooking, weekly takeout, and leftovers at the start of the month, we save lots of money and are so much less stressed about the labor that goes into feeding ourselves. I pull out Smitten Kitchen Every Day and use it to inspire the month’s meals. So quaint to cook from an actual BOOK.
6:45 am: B walks out of our room and announces that he drank my water off the side table. He’s so proud! And so ready to eat. While he eats breakfast, I snack on some grapes and, at B’s request, blast 7 Days A Week by They Might Be Giants. This is the consummate children’s song for any household that dreams of a self-determined world. Over the next hour I take B to school; make myself a real breakfast (a soy chorizo and egg taco); and browse TikTok. Eventually I find a series about this Gamestop situation by a smart Irish woman and L and I watch it together. When it’s over we feel like shrewd stock brokers ready to win money, and L gets to work teaching virtually.
I spend the morning painting our front door and our kitchen wall to prep our house to sell, and talking to my (other) little sister on the phone. She’s an HR person with a job that’s taken her far away from our family, and we don’t talk that often. It is so good to catch up on her life. After that I have a fun, day-off Zoom call with longtime bestie and coworker K. We drink coffee and talk about The Future.
12:30 pm: I make lunch (tomato soup with goat cheese on top, and a savory scone on the side) and get a text from another bestie, M, who offers me a little grant writing contract work this week. Yay! I love them and love working with them. Next, I order our groceries for the week. I get baking powder, eggs, cremini mushrooms, vegan sausage patties, oat milk, ginger root, shredded cheddar cheese, plantains, black beans, doggy bags, broccoli, vegan chicken strips, artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, capers, ciabatta bread, grits, bananas, avocados, greek yogurt, and on impulse, a pineapple on sale (?!). Maybe B will love it. The total comes to $94.08.
1:15 pm: I do a brief power vinyasa class in B’s room and take a shower. It takes me approximately two Drake songs to shower and dry off, as I don’t have to wash my hair today and I never shave. I work on my resume until L and I leave to pick up B. On the way home we stop at the park to play, and then we all get in the car to pick up groceries.
6:30 pm: We get home later than planned and eat together: leftover tofu ramen for us and veggie lasagna for B, who is so sleepy that he hardly touches his lasagna. L gets him in the bath around 7:15 and I run through my evening routine. There’s a lot going on in the house - preschool lunch and clothes to put up, a mountain of laundry in our room, all of the groceries for the week waiting to be put away, and dinner dishes are languishing in the sink. L starts on chores while I get B dressed.
As I’m dressing B, my mom Facetimes and B shows her several of his board books. While we’re talking my dad texts me a heart emoji - he overheard B and my mom talking from his room. He lives with a disability and a painful illness, so he goes to bed very early. We hang up with my mom and record a video of B making “P” sounds and saying “I love you” to my dad, and send it over. This is the first time B’s ever said “I love you!” Huge news. We read books and fall asleep next to B.
9 pm: I wake up and nudge L but he wants to keep sleeping. I go clean the dinner dishes, put away the food and reorganize the cabinets and fridge, and mop the kitchen floor while I listen to The Daily’s latest reporting on QAnon believers who are at once totally bananagrams and also remind me very much of my aunt. L wakes up at 9:30 because he and Y, my sister’s boyfriend, are gonna game. Cute! He finishes the laundry and I fold a few diapers to help out. Then we lay in bed together until game time, when I fall asleep.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 94.08
✨DAY 3: SATURDAY✨
5:40 am: Wake up at a ~*~weekend hour~*~!! Start my kettle, clean and moisturize my face, pull out the ingredients for waffles, and pick up around the house while I wait for it to boil. I try to read some, but get bored a few pages in. I’m currently reading How to Do Nothing and it’s good enough, but I think I need to chill on the nonfiction and read, like, saucy romance novels with hot bisexual leads. Send me your recs please!
Waffle time! This recipe is my go-to. I recommend whipping the egg whites first. B wakes up around 7:15 and helps me cook which is cute and very messy. He eats his waffle with honey, peanut butter, and grapes. L wakes up after him - he had a late night gaming!
8 am: I open yesterday’s mail and find an anti-abortion DVD from L’s grandma. It’s Abby Johnson’s “memoir.” Abby Johnson is an opportunistic right winger and documented liar who once moonlighted as a Planned Parenthood clinic manager. L is a preacher’s kid, so we’re not surprised to receive this from his grandma. For example: 10 years ago, when L and I were a couple years into our relationship, her Christmas gift to me was a book about how one can recover from being a slut by getting married and finding Jesus. This particular package really sends me over the edge, though. I decide to write them a short note later that states my own experience with abortion and sets a clear boundary on this kind of propaganda, and includes an article about Abby Johnson’s bullshit life. It’s unlikely this will change their minds - they are septuagenarian Southern Baptists, after all - but at least I’ll be in my integrity.
In the meantime, I group text L’s siblings, and they commiserate with us. His one sibling who is transitioning shares that grandma recently sent them a book about how to tell your gay friends they’re sinning. We agree that’s hilariously dense (and fucking rude) of her, and talk about how everyone under forty is a gay slut living their best life, so really it’s grandma’s loss. During this time I clean the kitchen, finish the waffles, and freeze them for B’s weekday breakfasts.
9:30 am: B asks to use the potty and does a great job peeing on his own! He’s geeked about it and is especially excited to have my parents on Facetime cheering him on. After that we head out on our morning walk. L takes B to the playground and I take O to the dog park nearby. She gets tired pretty quick and we all head to the thrift store. We need chairs for our hand-me-down kitchen table. The ones that came with it are awkwardly wide. L spots two sturdy ones that are just $5 each. Score! $10
11:30 am: B and L are both wiped out once we get home. They eat lunch and go to sleep. I clean up the kitchen, repot one of my plants, water our porch plants, and eat some leftover ramen for lunch. The Marie Antoinette episode of You’re Wrong About keeps me company all the while. 10/10 would recommend.
2 pm: B wakes up and eats some lunch. We watercolor together for a while (he on his big paper, I in my bullet journal), then walk down the street to the local high school while L preps potatoes for our fondue. The high school grounds are open on the weekends, and there’s an amphitheatre on site. B loves the echo in there.
4:30 pm: L joins us in the amphitheatre and together we drag B two blocks back home. I prep the fondue: brie, gouda, and more gouda with white wine. It ends up being a little clumpy but so delicious. My sister, J, and her boyfriend, Y arrive while I’m cooking. Y brings yummy baguettes from his bakery job for the dipping and we prep broccoli, green beans, and tempeh too. We sit down in our new chairs to eat and for the zillionth time I am so thankful we’ve been able to make a pod together this year. Fondue would be a terrifying proposition with anyone else, really.
While we eat, Y tells us he put in his two weeks at the bakery because their COVID protocols aren’t so tight and his coworkers are continuing to go to bars and out to eat. His plan for now is to get back on unemployment and find a virtual job sometime soon. Both he and my sister have worked food service their whole adult lives so the pandemic has been tough on them. Besides the fact that they’re delightful and perfect, this is one key reason we’re planning to move with them to our new city this summer: L and I will be able to easily afford the majority of the rent, deposits, and utilities on a pretty big, and centrally located, house. Living together will allow us to grow our savings and take our time looking for a Forever Home, and will allow J and Y to pay really low rent as my sister goes back to school full time and Y looks for a full-time job. I’m really looking forward to living with them and know it’ll be good for B, too. They leave around 7 pm and we put B to bed, this time without falling asleep ourselves!
8:30 pm: Turn on How I Met Your Mother in bed and the episodes are baaaaad bad. One entire episode casts sex workers as a punch line. Ick. L and I agree to find a new show, and fall asleep around 10.
11 pm - 2 am: B is up and between our two beds. Wahhhh.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 10
✨DAY 4: SUNDAY✨
6 am: Up and at ‘em! Discover I’m out of my fancy coffee and don’t want to emphasize the flavor of our grocery store beans with a slow pour, so make a french press instead. B wakes up too early so we watch toddlers together on TikTok while I drink my coffee, then read books while L makes us all eggs for breakfast. We head out for our morning walk around 9 am and stop at a coffee shop a few blocks away. I pick up Counter Culture’s Iridescent beans, buy an espresso brownie on a whim, and tip the cashier because she’s so sweet and tipping is good. The total is 23.03. L takes B to the playground and I drop my purchases and O back at the house before I head out for a run.
9:45 am: It’s 65 degrees and my run is glorious. I run to the water and pause Lil Yachty for a minute to take it all in. Once home I shower and put on a black LA Apparel catsuit and a marled black and white cocoon sweater from AA of the past (I like what I like!). We feed B lunch and then L puts him down while I clean up.
Around 11:30, J comes over after to watch B while we remove the storm windows from our whole house and clean the windows underneath as part of our work to prep the house for sale. We’re a solid team: L removes the storm windows and caulks all the gaps in the wood while I follow behind him and wash the windows inside and out. Our sweet neighbor catches us cleaning and offers to let us use her power washer for free next weekend to clean up the front of the house. I resolve to bake them some cookies.
2:30 pm: We are done with the window operation and it’s time for me to water all 57 plants in the house. Along the way, discover that I overwatered B’s hoya last week and it’s rotting. Noooo! I unpot it on the porch to dry the roots, but it’s raining so this might not work. There’s only one surefire solution: buy a replacement plant! I try to convince L we should go to the nursery, but he’s not so into it. I walk around dejectedly with a towel to clean up all the water I spilled, and Zelle J $70 for babysitting even though she insists she would do it for free. Next B, L, and I share a snack: crackers with goat cheese and harissa. Mmm. B skips the harissa but loves the goat cheese. Meanwhile I begin to stress about making dinner. We’d planned goddess bowls but L and I just aren’t feeling it after our marathon of house work. L requests Chinese and is suddenly more amenable to visiting the nursery, which is near our favorite Chinese takeout spot. Score!
5:00 pm: We leave the plant shop with a heartleaf philodendron for B’s room and a giant, lovely, perfect monstera deliciosa just because. The total comes to $53.24. Then we pick up our food: $33.08 including the tip. L ordered a large veggie lo mein to share with B and General Tso’s chicken, and I got family style tofu and vegetables. We start B’s bedtime routine at 6:30 and he’s out by 7:00 - early for him!
After he’s down, L preps his breakfast sandwiches for the week and I do some dishes. Then we take mutual advantage of the extra hour we have together. Even after 12 years it’s always so good with L. I fall asleep around 10 pm feeling blessed.
🌿 Daily total: 179.32
✨DAY 5: MONDAY✨
5 am: I make my pour over and get started on work first thing. I have a couple of deadlines this week and the side gig to balance so I’m already feeling pressed for time! I wrap up an entire grant report before 6 am and feel very accomplished. Then I pause work to start our breakfast, which is all pre-prepped, hallelujah. While L and B eat breakfast, I get dressed in a black turtleneck minidress, busted old tights, black ankle socks, and my Doc Martens.
I help L load up the car with B and all his gear, and tell L to be careful. Today is L’s first day back teaching in person since December, and we’re both nervous since COVID is still running wild in our red state. On the way to work he fills up his car for $18.33.
2:30 pm: After another grant report, seventy gajillion emails, forty Slack messages, and several hours of Zoom calls, I’m ready for a break. I finish eating the quinoa salad I prepped during Zoom call #2 and then eat a pear too. I see our Misfits box has been delivered. It’s $30 a week, and is included in our monthly expenses. I unpack it, clean the counters, wipe down the bathroom sinks, take O for a walk, and sit down to work on my side gig grant report, which is due Wednesday. I set a 30 minute timer because I don’t want to be too late picking up B.
4:25 pm: Worked longer than I meant to! Pack some snacks and pick up B. On the way home we get a giant bag of potting soil so I can repot those plants. It’s $18.52. Come home and engage in B’s favorite winter activity: pressing all the buttons in the turned-off car. Meanwhile, in another car across town, L picks up a big bag of Purina One, butter, maple syrup, and applesauce. That total is $28.64.
5:30 pm: The whole family is home and we kick it inside until it starts to get dark. L and I gather all the things and take the creatures out for a walk even though there’s a light, but very cold, rain happening. B is cranky and so are we, so the walk is quick.
We eat leftover Chinese food around 7 and start B’s bedtime routine. B falls asleep at 8 and I update this diary for a while, then go watch Ted Lasso in bed with L til about 9:30. It’s much better than How I Met Your Mother, for the record.
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 65.51
✨Day 6: TUESDAY✨
3 am: B wakes up and needs a diaper change. I have the hardest time falling back asleep after: I can’t stop thinking about how I left B’s hoya out in the cold with its roots exposed most of the day yesterday and into tonight. But it’s too cold for me to get up again and pull it inside! So instead I toss and turn and hope it’s not dead yet.
6 am: L’s alarm wakes me up! No early morning reading and writing time for me. I get right up, make a giant pour over, and get breakfast together while L wakes up B. Then I actually sit down with them to eat: B and I both eat boiled eggs with everything but the bagel seasoning and some coconut milk yogurt, and L sips his coffee while his breakfast sandwich heats in the oven. I get dressed in my workout gear and walk the dog while L gets B ready for school. They leave, and I finally bring the hoya in, and start work, around 7:30. L buys coffee and snacks from the gas station on his way to work: $6.88.
9:30 am: I grab some crackers and peanut butter from the kitchen and notice a DMV bill on the fridge I’ve been meaning to pay, but don’t totally understand. I call them up and respond to emails while I sit on hold. Turns out I owe the DMV $10 for paying my Dad’s van insurance late. With the “processing fee” it comes to $11.17.
1:30 pm: Been on Zoom calls all morning, and decide to switch over to the side gig work for a bit. Meanwhile I eat that quinoa salad I prepped yesterday. At 2 pm, my longtime bestie and neighbor F comes over and we take O for a walk in the park together and have such a good conversation. While the context is (very) different, I’m reminded of the Toni Morrison quote when I think of F: “She’s a friend of my mind.” Such a gem, and such a smartie. At 3:30 I start a HIIT yoga class and it kicks my butt even though it’s only 20 minutes long. Afterwards, I shower and pick up B.
5:00 pm: L arrives home while B and I are playing, and we get in the car once more to check out a cute couch L scoped out on Facebook marketplace. It’s a sweet vintage brown velvet actually-for-real midcentury situation. Unfortunately we discover it’s also small and very uncomfortable. $200 not spent. Once home, my family goes for a walk and I make dinner - this grits and beans recipe from NYT cooking. It’s blessedly quick to pull together. Meanwhile D texts me and says my overalls are ready! YAY! She’s gonna drop them off in a couple of days. She says the total is $30. I include a tip and Venmo her $40.
7:00 pm: At bedtime, B cannot get enough of his books and we read All The World several times. He finally falls asleep around 8:20 and L and I eat dinner on the couch, with Ted Lasso. I drink a glass of red wine, which is a mistake: my anxiety spikes right after, my stomach hurts, and I can’t sleep. This is very upsetting as I want very much to be a wine mom. Does this happen to anyone else?
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 58.05
✨DAY 7: WEDNESDAY✨
5:45 am: Wake up with B cuddled into my back - L moved him to our bed in the middle of the night after his second wake up. Get my coffee and breakfast together and sit down at my computer to work on the side gig grant while everyone's asleep. Then L and I manage the morning rush together. I eat sourdough toast, two scrambled eggs, and some pineapple along the way.
7:30 am: Take O out for a walk and on a whim decide to listen to one of my favorite easy-listening pods: A Beautiful Mess. Normally the two sisters and co-hosts, Elsie and Emma, chat about things like home decor or craft making or how to balance kids and work. This episode is about the host’s evangelical upbringing, though, and is a real raw and honest tear jerker. Pair it with this, one of my top reads of 2020: “What Does the White Evangelical Want?” It gets me thinking about L’s upbringing in the church. He and all his siblings are all agnostic now.
Finally sit down at my desk and debate taking Adderall. I used it regularly in college and for a few years after in order to Do All The Things. I try to stay away from it now - I’m not trying to live an impossible life any more - but I also really want to pick B up earlier than normal today, and that means I need to meet all my deadlines and make it through two Zoom calls with my direct reports by 3 pm. I decide to take 4 mg. Right after I take it, three different friends text me at once and then, suddenly, I’ve spent an hour catching up via text. Get to work for real around 9 am.
3:00 pm: Wrapped all my calls, answered all my emails, washed all the dishes, ate some lunch, and finished the side gig work! OK Adderall, you beautiful bitch. Spend a few more minutes tying up loose ends and then gather my things to pick B up from school. The plan today is to go “play basketball” in the park near his school because he is OBSESSED with balls, and I’m trying to do more magical things every day with him. It’s cold but I’m ready to brave it on his precious, curly-headed behalf.
At 4 pm J calls and asks to go pick him up with me. Hooray, things just got even more magical! We head to a different-than-usual park together and run around until B sits in, and then drinks from, a puddle. We panic and J googles “What happens if my baby drinks from a puddle?” The search returns lots of stories of babies eating muddy rocks and surviving, so we decide it’s ok.
5:00 pm Head home and L is back from work! We take the smols on a walk and I tell L that I think nighttime screentime is making me anxious. I’m a sensitive creature and I really don’t want to blame the wine. He’s very perfect so he helps me think through an alternate plan for this evening: hot tea and book reading in bed, and maybe sex, too! Fun.
Next, I head home with O to pot the plants we bought the other day, and L takes B to the playground. They get back around 6:30 and I am very excited to reveal my new plant placements. Everyone feigns interest except O. Then we eat leftovers together and B gets in bed around 7:30. L and I promptly fall asleep next to him and don’t wake up again til 11 pm. Guess our new nighttime routine will have to wait til tomorrow!
🌿 DAILY TOTAL: 0
❤️ Section 5: TOTALS
Total Expenses: $478.71
Food & Drink: $220.25
Fun & Entertainment: $0
Home & Health: $109.01
Clothes & Beauty: $40
Transport: $29.50
Other: $79.95
❤️ Section 6: REFLECTION
This week reflects a new normal for us, I think! We just set the goal of saving up for another down payment in December, and that’s when I swore off online shopping both to save money and to stop lining the pockets of evil billionaires like Bezos (no shade to anyone who uses Amazon, this is purely a personal goal & I’m not sure I can meet it). This self-imposed rule is helping me reign in my discretionary spending overall. L and I have only been living a two-income, middle class life for a few years, and my lifestyle creep was a little out of control in 2020. That said, I can and do still regularly justify spending money on things that make life more luxurious and beautiful - like a $40 candle or a totally unnecessary but very lovely plant.
There are a couple of things not reflected in this diary that we regularly spend on: gifts (my achilles heel - for example, we spent three! thousand! dollars! on Christmas gifts in December), and medical bills. Both B and I had to visit the emergency room in 2020 and we are still getting random bills in the mail as our insurance company and the hospital duke it out. As I was editing this diary on Thursday, I received one for $787. Wahhhh. I think I’m gonna get on a payment plan, but even so that it will be over $200 a month.
Last thought: this process got me thinking in some detail about the contradiction of organizing for the fall of capitalism (and the rise of a more gentle and just economic system), yet believing everyone - including ourselves and our own families - deserve to live full and abundant lives. This means I compromise my own anti-capitalist values and beliefs every day, in big and small ways. Discuss?

Note: I was technically supposed to post this earlier this week, but noticed that no one was signed up for today (plus I was super busy earlier), so I'm posting a bit late, under a throwaway account! Fair warning: I'm VERY verbose, so this will be long!
Section One: Assets and Debt
As I mentioned above, I make $56k per year as an administrator in higher education. My husband (K) just got a raise to making $155k per year. He works as a lawyer, has been in the workforce for about 12 years. I won't get into too many details but he works for a small boutique firm, not Biglaw. He also sometimes gets a yearly bonus of around $10k-20k but it's not guaranteed or anything like that. K and I have totally combined finances, so the below numbers are for both of us. I have a humanities PhD but I decided to leave academia and find an alt-ac job. My current position has good work-life balance (I never work past 5 pm), but pays terribly and my university is very badly run. I'm hoping to leave higher education all together in the future and am currently enrolled in a certificate program to try to make a career transition to instructional design.
The big elephant in the room is that my husband, K, makes a lot more money than me. When we first met, he was paying off massive amounts of student loans and making much less, and I was debt free with a lot of savings, so we both spent about the same amount. Now he makes 3x what I make and we are both debt-free, so the difference is much more noticeable. We do argue about money sometimes (more in the past), but the reality is that I have a humanities PhD and will likely never out earn him, and he knew that when I married him, lol. Because of all the labor I do around the house and in our lives to support him as he works a much more intense job, I was very clear that I believed we should split our finances equally as soon as we got married. We don't have separate accounts and we generally check in with one another whenever we are planning to spend more than $100. This system works for us for now.
I also want to address the question about parental or family support. Although I technically paid all of my own bills since I got my Bachelor's degree, my parents supported me a lot by paying for my flights home to visit at Christmas or in the summer as Xmas presents/birthday presents. My parents also paid for my undergraduate degree (and K's parents paid for his undergraduate degree as well). They also gave us about $15k to pay for our wedding.
Finally, my parents recently gave me $20k as an "early inheritance." They told me they plan to do this every year (depending on the stock market). We put this money into a brokerage. I don't consider my parents rich, as they both worked hourly jobs in health care my entire life (as a nurse and respiratory therapist - both with only associate's degrees). We never owned a new car, when we went on vacation we stayed in hostels , and shopped almost exclusively at Goodwill. But they scrimped and saved and now they have over $1 million in a retirement account. So I want to acknowledge my financial privilege in that I came from this kind of background. K's parents are similar.
Retirement Balance: $186k (combination of 401k, 403b, 457, 2 Roth IRAs, and taxable brokerage account).
Equity: None, we rent.
Savings account balance: Approximately $45k.
Checking account balance: Right now, around 8k.
Credit card debt: Right now, around $3k. But we pay it off each month with our checking account balance.
Student loan debt: $0. We finally paid off my husband’s law school loans (around $130k), last year. I didn’t have any student loans from undergrad (parents paid) and my MA & PhD were fully funded.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I’ve been working in my current field for 3 years. I started off making about $53k and got tiny 2% “merit increases” twice. Then in July my payroll title was changed, which triggered a required raise of about $2k. (I am dramatically underpaid).
Before my current position, I was in academia. I worked as a visiting assistant professor for one year at my alma mater (made $50k for 9 months of work) and before that I was a graduate student for 7 years. I was paid $18k-21k in stipends each year and my tuition & benefits were covered. Luckily, I lived in a very low cost of living area and this was enough for me to live on without going into debt. I got my PhD in 2017. Before I was a graduate student, I taught English in Japan for three years and made around $36k per year. In high school and college, I had random jobs that provided grocery/spending money, but I was lucky enough to have parents that paid my tuition and my rent in college.
I’m currently trying to make a career change (as you will see in my diary) and enrolled in a certificate program which runs from Autumn 2020 to Spring 2021 in order to help with that.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $7,634. This probably seems low relative to our joint income, but we max out our 401k (K) and 403b (me). I work for the state government, which means I’m also eligible for something called a Deferred Compensation Plan (457b). This is basically the same as a 401k but you can withdraw contributions and gains from the account at any age without penalty (of course, you still have to pay taxes). I also max this out, and the limit is the same as a 401k/403b - $19.5k. Also this number is before K’s raise is accounted for. It won’t increase until his end of February paycheck.
Other deductions - I have health insurance taken out (about $80 a month for me, K’s firm covers his premiums) and taxes. WA has no state taxes, so it’s only federal taxes. I used to have to pay $50 / month for a bus pass (K's was free), but I don’t pay any longer because I’m working from home during COVID.
Final note - the sum I mentioned in the headline includes a variable bonus my husband gets. My base pay is $56k and his is $155k (as of February 1). This year he also got a bonus of $20k, which is set up a bit strangely. About $4k of this was structured as a 3% matching contribution to his 401k and the rest was taxable income. In small law firms, it’s unusual to get any 401k match so this was nice.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home: None.
Any Other Monthly Income Here: We get some interest from our savings account… like $25 a month.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent: Rent comes to approximately $2,050 total for a one-bedroom apartment. Rent itself is $1886, then we have pet rent ($25 per month), bicycle parking ($15 a month) and water / sewage / gas, which is usually $120-150 (variable cost).
Renters insurance: $157.76, paid annually. $13 a month.
Retirement contribution: In addition to the 401k, 403b, and 457, which all come out before taxes, we max out our Roth IRAs. That means $500 each per month per person (for a yearly total of $6k each). As I noted up top, we match out our 401k and 403b (19,500 each) and our 457. My employee also offers a 7.5% match. K's employee offers a 3% match but it is included in his yearly bonus so it's not guaranteed (confusing).
Savings contribution: We put $500 per month into our emergency fund. We also put about $860 a month into our “sinking fund,” which covers large and small annual or sporadic purchases such as vacations, gifts, Amazon Prime renewal, car insurance and renters insurance, etc.
Investment contribution: $875 per month into a taxable brokerage at Vanguard.
In total, we save about 47% of our gross income. We can do this because we keep our housing cost low relative to our high income, we don’t have any debt remaining, we don’t have any kids or parents who need financial support, and we’re very privileged in a lot of ways. We are hoping to FIRE within 10 years.
Debt payments: None.
Donations: We budget $100 per month for donations, which includes one-time donations as well as some reoccurring donations. My husband does pro bono work as well. I would like to increase this by quite a bit, but I still have a hard time budgeting for donations because I spent 7 years living on approximately $20k a year. To go from that to making more than 10x that amount within 3-4 years is obviously something that I am very privileged for, but it is still hard for me emotionally to comprehend at times.
Electric: ~$50-100 (billed every other month)
Wifi/Cable/Landline: An extortionate $87.12 for slow internet that only works for Zoom calls about half the time. Do I really live in one of the tech cities of the future?
Cellphone: $170 (This includes both service and paying off two new iPhones. We could have paid them off up front, but it was actually cheaper by like $50 to go on a payment plan.)
Subscriptions: BritBox ($7.70), Spotify ($16.50), HBOMax ($16.50), We Hate Movies Patreon (my favorite podcast - $8.81). My parents pay for Netflix and my sister pays for Hulu, and we all share.
Gym membership: None. K and I both run and do yoga with YouTube videos. Before the pandemic, we went to yoga classes pretty frequently in person. I’d like to do some online synchronous yoga classes but find it hard to make time.
Pet expenses: Varies, but I budget $50 per month and also include an emergency fund for my cat’s vet bills in our sinking fund. She’s 11 years old and probably asthmatic, so I know her vet bills are going to increase over time.
Car payment / insurance: We own our car outright. Insurance billed yearly is $2,097, about $174 per month.
Regular therapy: $0
Paid hobbies: Nothing regular, sporadic language classes and art supplies.
Other expenses: Right now I’m doing a certificate to hopefully help with a career change. The total cost for tuition is about $5k and we already saved it up (included in our 'sinking fund') basically through spending less during the pandemic. I’ve paid two quarters so far, and the last quarter (due in March) will be a bit more - about $2.3k.
__________
Day 1
Morning: I wake up at 5:30 am. Ever since the pandemic, my sleep schedule has been shot. At first, I was so happy not to have to leave the house at 7:15 for my 45 minute bus commute and I slept in a lot. But the stress (and maybe getting old?) has made me an early riser, no matter how much I try to sleep in. I do value my early mornings with just me, my cat, and my coffee, though.
I start work at 8 am and begin by triaging my emails. I have a bunch of deadlines this week, so it’s busier than usual. My job tends to be very seasonal, and sometimes I have a ton of work and sometimes I have none and can work on other longer-term projects. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and place a Whole Foods delivery order for the following day at 10:30 am. We made a meal plan and put everything in the cart the day before ($117.36, including tip).
Afternoon: I have my lunch break from noon to 1 pm. It doesn’t really matter when I take my lunch break, since I’m salaried, but the others in my office are hourly so in the before times we used to always close our office during the same time. I have a piece of leftover delivery pizza and some spinach risotto that I made a few days earlier. I also have half a brownie – the last one from a batch I made a few days ago (K gets the other half). He also has leftovers for lunch.
I should say at this point that both K and I are lucky enough to have been working almost entirely from home since early March. An area near Seattle was one of the first places to get hit by COVID-19, and my state and both of our employers have been taking it very seriously ever since. Working from home hasn’t always been easy since we live in a 600-square foot apartment. Also, there is a three-story townhouse being built directly next door to us and I can hear the pounding in my dreams at this point.
Around 2 pm, I go for a 2-mile run. I feel like some money diarists tend to toss off things like “oh, I went for an easy 7 mile run,” at the drop of a hat, so I want to be clear – running for 2 miles isn’t easy for me; it’s exhausting, annoying, sweaty, and generally gross. Also I am very slow. But it has kept me sane during quarantine.
Meanwhile, my husband goes to our local pet store to get an enzymatic cleaner (our cat peed in one of our suitcases… I think it’s probably a lost cause, but it was basically brand new, so worth a try) and special weight-loss cat food. Our cat is an 11-year-old rescue from the Humane Society and she is a chonky girl. We had to sign a waiver when we adopted her, saying that we understood that she was very overweight, lol. Our vet recommended a special diet food, rather than just restricting her intake as we have been doing, so we will give it a try ($78). My husband also stops buy our local wine store and picks up two bottles. We’ve been doing a dry January, so this will be our first drink for a while ($27.53).
I have a phone interview scheduled for 4 pm – just a preliminary interview with an internal recruiter. It’s the first ‘corporate’ job interview I’ve ever had, since I’ve been in academia my entire life. I’m trying to make a pivot into instructional design / training and development. I’m just excited to get an interview. It seems to go pretty well, but who knows. They tell me they will probably get back to me by the end of this week.
Evening: My husband whips up a random meal of fridge remnants – pesto pasta with sausage and a fridge salad with feta and bell peppers. It’s pretty tasty with a little Sauvignon Blanc. During dinner, we play a card game we call gin rummy, although it bears no resemblance to the actual game. After dinner, I make a chocolate cake with orange buttercream frosting and we watch Cobra Kai.
Daily total: $222.89
Day 2
Morning: Up early again, a piece of toast for breakfast (very exciting). We’re out of eggs until our Whole Foods order arrives. I’m working on creating some tedious but necessary spreadsheets this morning.
Noon: Our Whole Foods order arrives around noon. Excitement! They’ve given us a half-rotten bag of romaine lettuce and substituted pecans for hazelnuts. I should probably just double mask and go to Trader Joe’s myself (our regular spot, only a 5-minute walk from my apartment). I’m just getting anxious about these new variants.
I have leftover meatloaf and spinach risotto again for lunch. Lots of meetings and more organizing spreadsheets in the afternoon. Around 3 pm, I go for my daily ritual - a 20-minute walk around my neighborhood. It’s still raining slightly but I need to get out. Halfway through the walk, I get an email from my apartment manager telling me the apartment will no longer accept debit card payments, direct deposit, or credit card payments for paying rent. In other words, only checks or money orders (?!). Ugh. Our lease is up in 4 months and we will not be renewing our lease. Our last apartment manager was a gambling addict who may have been stealing people’s identities, but by God, he kept things working. Ever since they fired him, this place has been going downhill.
Evening: I check my bank statements to update my budget spreadsheet and realize that I have been billed the wrong amount of rent. They actually charged me less than they should have. I don’t trust my apartment manager not to start charging me a late fee or something for this, so I call them up. They are baffled by how to fix this, which you would think would be the one thing you would want to get right, if you’re renting out apartments.
K cooks dinner – steak with a Roquefort sauce and glazed brussels sprouts. It’s from a French cookbook we recently bought and it is delicious. I work on classwork for my certificate program while he cooks. After dinner, I do the dishes and buy the 13th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I watch the first episode – lots of shocking twists and turns! I’m planning to watch the rest of the episodes together with my younger sister, M ($22.01).
Daily total: $22.01
Day 3
Morning: K has an 8 am dentist appointment, so he takes off early. He already paid for the work last month, so there’s no charge. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and get to work checking my emails. It’s 8:20 am and the construction crew building a townhouse next door is blasting mariachi music. I’m glad someone is having fun. At least the sun is coming out.
Someone at work has made a critical error, but it wasn’t me, thank God. I was the one who found out about it, but it’s still going to cause a big old headache for me. I’m ready to be done with this job. K and I go for a run so that I can exhaust myself enough to no longer be furious about said careless error.
Noon: I have leftover spinach risotto and meatloaf again – exciting. I’m busy at work but frankly, not a lot going on other than that. Still no word about fixing my rent payments. I’m not really willing to pursue this any further at this point.
Evening: I start making chili (Turkey Chili from the NY Times) and cornbread (from my new cookbook, Jubilee). K is doing some work on our investments when he announces that, somehow, a transfer was scheduled from our checking account to our savings account of $55k (?!) We obviously don’t have $55k in our checking account, so we start frantically trying to figure out what’s going on. Numerous phone calls later, we still don’t know if that was a hack, if my husband somehow mistakenly scheduled the transfer himself, or if the bank messed it up. Either way, it doesn’t seem like any harm was done since the bank with our checking account just declined the transaction. But it seems really strange and worrisome. We get to work changing the passwords on all of our accounts, just in case it was some kind of hack.
After dinner (and chocolate cake), I have a Zoom happy hour with a local friend. We occasionally see each other outside but it’s nice to have a longer chat from the comfort of our living rooms. We both love murder mysteries, so we signed up for a service where a company sends us letters with clues and we try to solve the mystery together. It’s a fun way to stay connected and look forward to something during the pandemic. The service costs about $15 per month, but I paid for it in lump sum for 3 months, so it’s not included in my budget above. I drink some wine and we vent about work (we work at the same place) before getting started on the puzzle.
Daily total: $0
Day 4
Morning: I sleep in a bit, which is nice. Get up around 7 am. My parents are both getting their 2nd vaccine today – they’re both in their 70s and I am so relieved. I send my mom a “congratulations on being vaccinated!” text and we chat for a bit. I have leftover cornbread with honey and butter for breakfast – soooo good.
Work is not particularly exciting today, but someone sends me a last-minute request for something that does not need to be so urgent. I feel annoyed. Still no word from the interviewers on Monday, and I’m beginning to suspect I wasn’t selected to move forward. Too bad. K pays for a Wordpress website for the year (it’s a work-related website, but sadly his work doesn’t reimburse him). It costs $92.48.
Noon: The mariachi music is particularly loud today. I stand out on my balcony in the sun for a while and watch the workers. It’s been interesting seeing a house go up next door in real time, especially since I’m at home all the time. The workers are balancing on the top of the third story wall without, as far as I can see, anything like a safety line. It seems unsafe, but I presume they know what they’re doing.
We booked a cabin for the upcoming weekend in the Hood Canal region of Washington to do some hiking and birdwatching. I want to be as safe as possible and not go to any grocery stores or risk spreading COVID in any way while I’m there, so I place another grocery order with Whole Foods just for some special treats for the weekend. The cabin has a small kitchen and a grill, so we’re planning to make a fancy steak salad on Saturday. I order chips and hummus, some fancy cheese and meats, Tate’s cookies (I’ve heard a lot of good things about these), a baguette, and the ingredients for the steak salad. I also order a few staples I forgot in our last order, like sweet potatoes, more coffee, and half and half. It comes to $87.41, including tip, but that does include like $30 worth of steak. For some reason, I can’t order a small amount of steak online, so I’m planning to freeze half of it for later. (I include this purchase in our vacation fund budget, rather than under our regular grocery budget).
Around 2 pm, K makes a quick trip to our local wine store to buy an Oregon pinot noir and some port to enjoy at the cabin ($59.45). This store has an outdoor walk-up counter where you can tell the owner what you’re looking for, and he brings you some options (the store is way too small to allow customers to enter during Covid). It’s fun to chat with another human being, even briefly.
Evening: After work, we spend a little time rebalancing our investing and retirement accounts. We decide to put more money into bonds and a little bit into REIT’s as a hedge against a potential crash or recession in the future. Then I start making dinner – Broken Eggs (Huevas Rotas) from the NY Times cooking site. You basically cook the potatoes in a skillet in water, spices, and olive oil, and then sauté them to crisp them up once the water evaporates. Then you add onion, lots of garlic, and finally some eggs. It is delicious. I eat it with leftover cornbread while watching RuPaul’s Drag Race season 13 with my sister – we watch the first two episodes. It’s full of twists and turns. A note about this – we have an elaborate procedure for watching shows together developed during quarantine whereby we start the show at the same with an earbud in one ear, while FaceTiming. I also have chocolate cake, of course.
Later, I get an email that I’ve signed up for HBO on Amazon Prime. I definitely have not. I text my mom, who shares my account, and she tells me she signed up by mistake. I cancel right away and luckily they won’t charge us for it.
Meanwhile, K is doing an online Japanese language class over Zoom. He’s been interested in learning ever since we went to Japan last January. I lived in Japan for 3 years so I was able to take us around to a lot of more obscure places and he really enjoyed the trip – it was a blast.
K starts a YouTube yoga class (from Do Yoga With Me – my favorite channel) and I join him for part of it before bed around 10 pm.
Daily total: $239.34
Day 5
Morning: I get up around 7 am and we go for a run first thing. I prefer running early in the morning because there are fewer people to avoid during COVID. We do a different route today – it’s longer (3 miles) but has fewer hills. It’s a slog, as always, but I feel good when I get back right around 8 am. I jump straight onto my computer to start checking work emails and my husband makes us avocado and egg toast for breakfast - it is absolutely delicious.
We talk about how our bathroom smells distinctly mildewy (yay for being a grown-up because I guess this is what we talk about now) and we buy two big buckets of DampRid on Amazon ($26.60). I’ve found this to be a necessity in Seattle. Mid-morning, I take a break from work and start packing for our trip to the cabin.
Noon: I have leftover potatoes and cornbread for lunch, and my husband has the leftover chili. We finish getting ready to leave and head out right after lunch, taking a half day. The only problem is that I have attend a meeting at 3:30 pm, so we head out hoping to get there in time. Our cabin is near Quilcene in the Hood Canal region of Washington, about a 2 hour drive or a 2 hour ferry ride + drive. We are initially planning to take the ferry both ways, but realize that we mistimed the ferry departure, so we drive the whole way instead. Luckily, there’s little traffic mid-day, and we arrive at our Airbnb around 3:00 pm.
The Airbnb is beautiful! It’s a small cabin handmade by the owner, whose house is next door. It’s very rural, with a beautiful view. It’s tiny, but has a little kitchen and a waterfall-style shower with river rocks on the floor. It’s a great place to get away for a short time. Luckily, it also has good reception and I’m able to sit in on my meeting with no problems. My husband also does a little work, and then at 5 pm we’re free!
In our planning, we decided to get takeout on Friday night, since the little kitchen isn’t designed for any serious cooking. We call ahead to a local restaurant to order burgers (one of only 2 restaurants in the whole town). It’s around 5:30 pm and the place is deserted. It’s a microbrewery, but they tell us they haven’t been making beer since COVID-19 hit. None of the workers are wearing masks when I walk in, but they put them on when they see I’m wearing one. I pick up our order - a few bottled beers and burgers and fries ($49.52 including tip).
Back at our Airbnb, we watch Big Trouble in Little China and enjoy our very messy, but delicious, burgers (it costs $4.39 to rent). The movie is very campy but fun. I love silly action movies, as you will see with my other viewing choices. We wrap up the night in a very exciting fashion, eating chocolate cake and watching old episodes of the original Star Trek.
Daily total: $80.51
Day 6
Morning & noon: When we wake up around 8 am, the weather is looking thankfully clear and even sunny! We were expecting rain, so we’re really glad. We decide to go hiking today, and we head out before even having breakfast, with snacks and lunches packed. Our first destination is a hike called Mt. Zion, but unfortunately, we run into enough snow 2 miles before the trailhead that we decide to turn back. We don’t have any traction for our Subaru and don’t want to risk getting stuck on a very narrow mountain road. Instead, we drive another hour or so to the Lena Lake trailhead, a very popular and less strenuous trail. It’s about 7.5 miles roundtrip with 1200 feet of elevation gain.
By this time, it’s around 11:30, but luckily there is still parking. It’s a great hike up, and we run into relatively few people. We always mask up whenever we pass anyone, as does about 50% of the people we meet. The others… not so much. Around a mile from the lake, we start to run into snow. It’s turned into a beautiful sunny day, and I’m loving seeing all this snow! It’s a bit slippery, but not too bad. We make it to the lake mid-day, and it’s super jammed – there’s only a small viewpoint accessible, so everyone is crowded in there. I feel a bit uneasy with all the unmasked people, but we manage to find a spot away from the crowd and sit down to eat our lunch of apples, chips, and energy bars. There are a ton of robber jays there (Canada Jays) which try to eat our chips. It is fun watching them, but I’m annoyed to see some kids feeding them – it’ll just make them that much more aggressive. Bad trail manners.
On our way back down, we get stuck behind a group of 5 unmasked adults, who refuse to cede the narrow trail to faster hikers. I’m a slow hiker myself, so, to be clear, I’m not angry at slower walkers being on the trail but have some self-awareness and let people pass! especially if you’re going to go hiking in a big group during a pandemic! We finally get back down and head back to our Airbnb.
Evening: Back home, we explore some of the trails our Airbnb host has set up around his extensive property, and then relax on the deck. The sun is breaking through the clouds and it feels wonderful to sit out in nature and feel the sun on my back. We open up a bottle of wine and have a few pre-dinner snacks (more chips and hummus). For this night, we brought ingredients to make a steak salad. Our Airbnb host has kindly set up a charcoal grill for us, so we grilled the steak and toast some bread on the side.
We eat dinner while watching the truly terrible Jean Claude Van Damme movie Bloodsport and finish up the very last of my chocolate cake. It’s amazing that anyone ever let Van Damme act… or should I say ‘act.’ I also have a Tate’s chocolate chip cookie or two, accompanied by a little port. My husband and I are truly very old people at heart, so we finish up the night watching a few episodes of Columbo.
Daily total: $0
Day 7
Morning: Unfortunately, K had insomnia last night, so he sleeps in pretty late. I drink coffee in bed and enjoy looking at the view out our big windows. Once he’s up, we get packed up and write a thank you note for our host. It was a great stay.
One of my big hobbies is birding and K enjoys wildlife photography, so we go out to look for some lifers! (The first time you see a new species of bird). Did I mention we are very old people in (relatively) young bodies? We first go to Dosewallips State Park and see some bald eagles, great blue herons, lots of various ducks, and a flock of Canada Geese, which, strangely, includes a domesticated gray goose. He’s much larger than the Canada Geese and seems to be watching over them. It’s kind of cute. Unfortunately, a lot of the birds are too far from shore to be seen clearly.
Our next stop is Point No Point (I love all the sad & disappointed names that early Westerner explorers gave places in the Washington/Oregon coast), a popular birding spot. We see a ton of birds here, and I can understand why it’s so well-known - Red-Breasted Mergansers, Western Grebes, Common Goldeneyes, Pacific Loons, and a few others I can’t identify yet. Most excitingly though, we see a whole pile of otters! They’re lounging around together on a rock just offshore and a ton of people are watching. We watch as they all slip off the rock and go hunting in the shore. It’s my first otter sighting in the wild, and it’s so cool! We also see some seals and possibly a sea lion. It’s a great spot for wildlife. We eat some snacks (hummus, chips, some sliced meat & cheese) before we head out.
I really want to come back to this area another time and explore further, but K has decided that we need to get back home in time for the Big Game. We take the 3:00 pm ferry back to Seattle ($16.40) and get home around 3:45 pm. I veg out at home while my husband watches football. He’s a Patriots fan but he still loves Tom Brady (??) so he’s happy to see Florida win. I don’t understand sports team loyalties at all, but whatever, I’m glad he’s happy. We order from a new Indian place called Spice Box and get vindaloo, roganjosh, and vegetables pakora – so tasty ($53.96). Happily, there’s enough left over for lunch the next day, since I have no plans for what we will eat yet!
I’m really dreading work the next day, as I know that it will be obnoxious. I want to get out of my job so badly, but it doesn’t look like I’m going on to the next interview stage for the job I interviewed no back on Monday. I’m feeling kind of down about it. I try to stay positive and promise that I’ll apply for at least 2-3 new jobs next week. I bake up some frozen cookie dough I had in the freezer and feel sorry for myself. We end the night by watching another episode of Columbo.
Daily total: 70.36
Food + Drink: $395.23
Fun / Entertainment: $26.40
Home + Health: $26.60
Clothes + Beauty: $0
Transport: $16.40
Other: $170.48
Grand Total: $635.11
I think this week was pretty normal for us. Obviously we spent a bit more than usual due to the weekend cabin trip, but nothing outrageous. Our largest consumer spending category is definitely food and drink – we live in a very busy area of Seattle with tons of restaurants and bars so believe it or not, we actually used to spend even more on eating out. We still try to support our local places by getting takeout or delivery during the pandemic and even occasionally getting a few drinks outside. I spent more than usual on groceries due to stocking up for the weekend away.

I feel like I should preface my MD with a bit of background on my life as it currently stands so there’s a little more info about some of the things I write about (somewhat unconventional "career") –
tl;dr: I am currently in Germany but my residence is in NYC, where I will return in a few short weeks.
I started off working full-time as a software developer out of school, and eventually quit my job to go freelance as an artist a couple years ago, because it was becoming a very viable career for me (as opposed to a side hustle.) So for 3 years, I had a very steady monthly income, and then the past ~2 years have been way more varied in terms of income, but I was generally making much less than before.
When COVID hit, arts jobs effectively went away (as we knew them), and my partner (who is also an artist) and I made the decision ~mid-2020 to give up our lease in the city (NYC) until the arts returned properly. I spent some time with my parents, and he went back to his home country (Germany), where I eventually joined him late last year after they opened up the borders to long-term partners. We’re lucky that during this time, we’ve managed to keep up virtual gigs due to our skillsets.
A few months ago, I also started a full-time job as a software engineer (remotely), and have been working full-time for only about 4 months, which means my income has drastically changed recently. I figured: I'm not sure when arts jobs are going to come back properly, and I might as well make use of my degree (computer science) and past job experience and save up as much money as possible in the interim.
I’ll be returning to NYC in a few weeks and aim to do another MD again once I’m settled so I can do a comparison of what my spending habits are like between the two places.

Section Zero: Background

Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?
Absolutely. My parents are both immigrants and set those expectations really high for me in terms of excelling academically and going to college (it was never remotely in the “plan” growing up not to go to college.) I’ve only got a bachelor’s degree (haven’t pursued anything beyond it), but I was so lucky that my parents were able to pay for it.
Did you worry about money growing up?
My parents shielded a lot of those conversations from me and my siblings, so to be honest, I didn’t really worry about it. Now, I understand that there were a lot of moments where my parents were indeed worried about money, but I was relatively sheltered from it.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net?
Yes, I have a financial safety net in the sense that if it really came down to it, my parents could bail me out of a generally sticky situation. I haven't had to fall back on it (yet). When I graduated college, I became truly financially responsible for myself, though I did work all throughout college.
Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain.
No.

Section One: Assets and Debt

Retirement Balance (and how you got there): $103,455 – maxed out my 401k at my first job, the minute I could start contributing, and when I went freelance, I maxed out contributions to a Roth IRA every year. Most of that is in a robo-advisor account.
Equity: N/A
Investment account balance: $80,822 – all in a robo-advisor account.
Savings account balance: $119,463 – I’m very seriously thinking about potentially buying a place in NYC and might want to use most/some of this for a down payment.
Checking account balance: $5,103 – because my income is quite variable (or at least it was before I got a full-time job again), I manually transfer money every ~2 weeks or so depending on how much I’m getting, so that my balance generally sits around $5k.
Credit card debt: N/A, pay off every month
Student loan debt: N/A, super, super grateful that my parents covered my college education.
Anything else that's applicable to you: In general, my SO and I split bills/utilities/pet expenses down the middle.

Section Two: Income

Income Progression:
2015-2018: First job (software.) Salary started at $105,000/year, and by the time I left, I was making $120,000/year. From 2016-2018 I was also freelancing as an artist on the side.
2019: My first full year as a freelancer, made ~$70,000 that year according to Mint.
2020: Freelance for most of the year, and then started the full-time job ($145k/year salary) very late 2020. According to Mint, I took in $110,000. During the first 9 months of 2020, I was doing a myriad of different things: part-time software work, part-time teaching work, random virtual gigs.
Main Job Monthly Take Home:
$8,203.98 / month.
I contribute $100/month pre-tax into my HSA, and am allowed to contribute to my 401k starting next month (which I will max out.)
Side Gig Monthly Take Home:
This amount varies quite a lot depending on the month. I have a couple of side gigs (as mentioned before, I am still taking gigs as an artist – the time difference actually bodes well for me).
Teach online course: $2000 / month. I teach an online course for a university (don’t want to give any more specifics in case it’s easily identifiable…). The monthly income changes based on my class size each semester, but this is what I can expect this semester.
Gigs: ~$4,500 this month

Section Three: Expenses

Rent this month: $129.50 for 1/2 our storage unit in NYC + $390 for 1/2 rent of our apartment = $519.50. This will (significantly) change once I go back to NYC...!
Retirement contribution: As mentioned above, everything I get basically funnels into my individual brokerage acct so that my checking sits at ~$5k at all times. Not really counting it here so as not to double count, just noting.
Donations: I try to contribute ~10% of my monthly post-tax income to donate to causes I care about. Since my income is varied each month, this amount also varies – I expect ~$14,000 this month so I will donate $1400. Recurring contributions include $100/month to the ACLU, $100/month to Doctors Without Borders, $50/month to the Working Families Party, and $27.50/month to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In general I try to support friends' small businesses/side hustles, political causes that mean a lot to me, and arts funds.
Utilities: included in rent
Cellphone: $15/month, part of my family’s family plan
Subscriptions: $12.99/mo Dropbox, $1.99/mo Google Drive, $12.99/mo Hulu, $7/mo Patreon, $9.99/mo Spotify, $119/year Amazon Prime. I’m on my family’s Netflix account, and they’re on my Hulu account.
Pet expenses: ~$30/mo for food/litter
Credit card: $450/year fee, Chase Sapphire Reserve. I do get a $150 credit back on purchases throughout the year through this card.

Section Four: Money Diary

I live with my long-term partner (referred to as D), and our roommate (referred to as C). Though I am temporarily living in Germany, my residence is still in the USA and for my full-time job, I am working east coast hours (I am 6 hours ahead). All the times below are German time; all currency has been converted from Euros.
Tuesday (TOTAL SPENT: $0)
9:00 am - We are moving a new couch into our apartment, from my roommate’s dad’s house. D and C arrive in the van, couch in tow, and we start the day by reenacting that one scene in FRIENDS up and down the stairs.
11:00 am - I catch up on emails from last night and get some ducks in a row for a virtual concert I’m on the production team for. These days it’s all virtual gigs because of COVID, and I’m grateful to have the work. On the plus side, I have my mornings completely free because everyone in the US is sleeping, so I can take my time to answer emails.
11:30 am - Practice. I’ve got a gig that I need to put in the work for in a few weeks, and I really enjoy the ritual of just having this time to myself to actually "hone my craft" (...or whatever).
12:30 pm - I start to grade papers for my teaching job. This is easily the most time consuming part of that job, and probably the least exciting aspect too. The first omen of days to come: the internet is completely shitting the bed. It’s been somewhat of a recurring problem the past few weeks, and apparently we can’t upgrade for a myriad of reasons related to old European cities and living in the middle of them. Both D and I are worried about how we can get work done, because all our work is virtual to a high degree (for both of our gig work, we are constantly needing to upload large-ish files to Google Drive or Dropbox – and for my software work, everything of course is online, not to mention Zoom meetings.)
1:45 pm - Make myself a stir fry for lunch with leftover groceries ($0).
3:30 pm - It’s the first day of (software) work after a long weekend – I try to log on, but the internet still isn’t recovering. I’m beginning to lose my cool since this has been a recurring and somewhat unsolvable problem. Somehow I make it through the 10am standup meeting we have, but the rest of this time is spent freaking out about what we’re going to do about our living situation.
4:45 pm - We make a plan to move D’s setup to his parents’ place (~30 mins away), and pack up things. His dad picks us up and we head over together and set up shop in the basement of his parents’ place, still not really sure what we’re going to do about our living situation.
7:00 pm - I have a very short “Zoom rehearsal” for a virtual gig, reviewing some music for a remote recording session.
7:30 pm - We have dinner with D’s parents – Abendbrot (“evening bread”). Bread, various cold cuts, and cheese – it’s a German staple for “I don’t want to cook” evenings. ($0)
12:00 am - I have a short Zoom production meeting for a gig that I have coming up. It’s late over here, but luckily the meeting doesn’t last long, and I’m in bed by 1 am.
Wednesday (TOTAL SPENT: $44.14)
9:00 am - Couldn’t sleep well last night (I imagine due to the stress.) I wake up still feeling stressed, but get myself some granola from D’s parents’ kitchen, and do my morning ritual of answering emails and continuing to grade papers.
12:00 pm - We head back to our apartment in the city, and I continue to grade papers from there. The internet is working slightly better now, but it’s completely unreliable, so we know we have to make a plan for getting work done consistently. I continue to grade papers.
1:30 pm - D and I pick up lunch from a health food place that is very, very expensive, but makes food that makes us feel healthy and more energetic. I get a “Salmon Buddha Bowl”. We put on an episode of the Office to decompress. ($18)
3:00 pm - I do a short, 25-minute HIIT workout in another attempt to decompress. It sort of works!
4:00 - I start (software) work for the day. My roommate’s mom has kindly let me work in her office for a few hours in the afternoon, where the WiFi is abundant and fast, and the office is conveniently located very close to our apartment. I’m able to get a lot of work done and feel significantly less stressed.
7:30 - I pick up some groceries – enough for the next few days ($26.14) – and head back to our apartment before the 8 pm curfew hits.
8:00 pm - The internet at our place unfortunately still doesn’t work. At this rate it’s safe to assume that we can never depend on it working reliably, and need to find another solution. I have a slight freakout, and D manages to calm me down, and we both resolve that we will figure out a solution tomorrow.
8:30 pm - I make myself some Chinese comfort food for dinner (eggs/tomato dish) with some rice. ($0)
9:30 pm - My roommate C gives me the key to his office space in the city and I head out, slightly nervous that I will be stopped by the police (~7 mins walking distance). Luckily nobody stops me and I’m able to get there and continue working.
11:00 pm - I give a short online seminar about working in the arts for a university, which lifts my spirits because everyone is really enthusiastic, and it reminds me to be hopeful about when the arts eventually return full-swing.
Thursday (TOTAL SPENT: $2.92)
9:30 am - Wake up, dick around for a little bit (looking at random apartments for sale that I can’t afford on Streeteasy, looking at memes on Instagram, playing with our cat…), eventually shower and get dressed
10:20 am - I’ve fallen behind on grading papers because of the internet stress issues, so I finish up the remaining ones right now.
11:30 am - I do some work on the aforementioned virtual concert I’m on the production team for – recording some material, getting the spreadsheet in order – all things I can do without the internet.
1:00 pm - I make myself a salad for lunch, accompanied by some bread and cheese ($0).
1:45 pm - D has made his parents’ place his official office space, so he’s been there since the morning. I am going to work from there today as well, so I head over on the tram with a single-ride ticket. ($2.92)
3 pm - Thursday is my teaching day, so I teach my first of two sections for the day. It’s hard to engage people over Zoom, but the class is generally lively and successful and I’m happy with the enthusiasm some of my students seem to display so early in the semester.
4 pm - Software work begins for the day with our daily 10 am standup meeting.
8 pm - I take a short break to have dinner with D’s parents and D (Abendbrot again – $0)
11:30 pm - I teach my second section of the day, similar to the first.
12:30 am - I’m upset that I couldn’t figure out a bug that was bothering me for the better half of the evening, so I stay up for a while figuring it out. Eventually I do figure it out, and feel extremely happy about it. There are few things in life more satisfying than quashing a bug.
3:00 am - This is when I actually go to sleep. Somehow I’m not able to fall asleep the past few days – I watch a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother to try to decompress a little bit. I don’t even really know why that’s my go-to comfort show right now (a lot of the humor didn’t really age well) – but I feel that part of me feels very nostalgic for my life back in NYC, and this is a lighthearted reminder of that.
Friday (TOTAL SPENT: $0)
10:00 am - I went to sleep really late last night, so I accordingly get up late as well. Granola and almond milk (a sort of fake Müsli) for breakfast.
11:30 am - More email answering and some more work on the virtual concert.
1:30 pm - D’s mom has made an awesome curry for lunch, and she gives me some. ($0)
3:30 pm - I start my (software) work day, a bit more relaxed than I have been in the days before.
6:15 pm - A short, 20-minute meeting with another member of the production team for the virtual concert. It’s a really successful meeting and I feel really glad that this person on the production team is organized, calm, and communicative!
7:30 pm - We decide we won’t stay another evening at D’s parents’ house, so his father drives us back into the city before curfew. We’ve heard from our roommate that the Wifi seems to be working again so I decide to take a chance and see if I can work the rest of the evening from there.
9:00 pm - My roommate, D, and I have a homemade bolognese dinner made from some of the groceries I’d picked up a few nights ago ($0). We are all really exhausted, but D and I are also really glad that we seem to have found a solution to our wifi issue. We spend a lot of the dinner hypothesizing about the erratic nature of the internet. We know that in general, on weekends and on evenings, it seems to work fairly well, so we eventually conclude that there’s some sort of relationship between the German work day, and the internet availability in this apartment.
Saturday (TOTAL SPENT: $74.32)
9:30 am - We wake up slowly. D decided to head to his parents’ place to work for most of the day, so he’s out the door by around 10am. I, on the other hand, loaf around for a while (it’s the weekend!), make myself a smoothie (bananas, almond milk, chia seeds, nuts, and a bit of frozen fruit) for breakfast, and watch the latest episode of the Bachelor (sue me, I’m a die-hard Bachelor Nation member.)
12:30 pm - I do some more work for the virtual concert, but not in a particularly focused manner.
3:30 pm - Whoops, I haven’t gone outside yet. I make a short grocery run to buy some TP and paper towels while listening to a podcast about the Bachelor episode I just watched. I don’t know what it is, but somehow I like listening to people snark over an inane reality show. ($6.95)
4:00 pm - I make myself a REALLY late lunch – salad with bread + cheese ($0)
4:30 pm - My roommate, D, and I had planned to have a nice home-cooked dinner this evening, and we’ve gotten really into making craft cocktails. I myself am really partial to gin cocktails, so I run to the liquor store and pick up a bottle. ($42.37)
5:00 pm - Lots of loafing around – since the internet is working, I watch some more TV, putz around a bit… Hey, it’s the weekend, cut me some slack. :-) (Yes, I should be practicing.) During this time, we reschedule our roommate dinner to tomorrow evening because D made a plan to play cards (online) with some friends.
7:30 pm - I was going to cook myself some mapo tofu this evening since I had the time, but it’s begun to rain and I realize I need to just get some food before curfew hits. I go to the local Chinese restaurant and pick up some mapo tofu there, along with a pork dish for D. ($25)
8:30 pm - I FaceTime a friend of mine who is on the same time zone as me, and we decide to watch a movie together (remotely, of course.) We land on Wolf of Wall Street, which I haven’t seen, but he has. I make a gin sour for myself and we have a lovely time watching the movie and snarking over late-stage capitalism. Of course, it’s three hours long, so by the time it eventually finishes, I’m off for bed.
Sunday (TOTAL SPENT: $8.52)
9:00 am - D and I wake up. He’s off to his parents’ house again to do some work (the freelancer life!)
10:00 am - I’ve made a plan to go on a hike with a friend and his girlfriend. We meet by a coffee shop, and take a lovely walk through the forest together, stopping for a croissant and a tea on the way back ($5.60).
12:30 pm - I head to D’s parents’ house on the tram, where we are having our weekly Sunday lunch together. It’s a really lovely ritual that we’ve kept since he moved back to his hometown this year, and even though we’ve seen them quite a lot this past week, it still feels like its own separate thing. ($2.92)
2 pm - We have a virtual church gig later today, so D and I rehearse together to make sure we, uh, know what we're doing and all.
4:15 pm - We do the church gig. The sermon is about the recent inauguration, and it really touches me. Afterwards, I answer some emails and putz around while D plays some video games.
7:30 pm - D’s dad drops us off back in the city again, before curfew hits.
9:00 pm - We have our roommate dinner in the evening – an Ottolenghi cauliflower recipe, with some potatoes and a lovely beetroot hummus. My roommate has bought the groceries for the evening. Afterwards, I make some cocktails and we also drink some wine (it is quite a debaucherous evening!)
Monday (TOTAL SPENT: $29.21)
9:00 am - Wake up, answer emails (D is again off to his parents’ place), and I do some more work for the virtual concert. There’s some recording work that I also get done for another virtual production that I’m on as well.
10:15 am - I walk to the grocery store and pick up some groceries for the next few days ($29.21)
11:30 am - Back home, I make myself a smoothie and continue the music work I’ve been doing.
1:00 pm - I make myself a Greek salad for lunch with some bread and cheese (are we sensing a pattern here?) and attempt to watch some TV, but because it’s Monday during the day, the internet is just not working. Ah well. I manage to still get some music work done without the internet.
2:15 pm - I do a 25-minute HIIT workout. I really need to get a proper workout routine back in my body after being completely thrown off last week.
3:30 pm - My roommate’s mom has once again kindly offered up her office space for the afternoon, so I head there and start my software work for the day.
8:30 pm - Slightly past curfew, but I walk back home. My roommate and D were going to pick up some döner for dinner, but they were too late, so we improvise something with egg noodles and everything else in the house currently.
9:30 pm - I don’t have any more video meetings for the day and the internet is working well enough for me to work on my software work, so I’m able to finish up work for the day and head to bed around 12:45 am.
Total Spending

Food	$147.63
Public Transit	$5.84
TOTAL:	$153.47

Section 5: Reflection

This was such a great exercise for me. I would say that it was atypical in some ways because of the amount of time we spent at my partner’s parents’ place, which meant we were often eating their food. Otherwise, though, because of COVID, we’re not spending a ton on anything besides groceries and the occasional takeout, and our COL is significantly lower than in NYC.
The internet situation did put me in a really bad headspace for most of the week. The whole ordeal (changing the location of where I work every day) really made me ache for "home" mostly because I feel like I've been living in a limbo for the past year, and I want to go back to a life where I at least feel rooted somewhere. I'm really curious to see the difference when I'm back in the city as well.
Mainly I want to shout out the fact that I have loved reading money diaries for the past few months – a resounding YES to women talking about money. It's been so interesting reading other people's different backgrounds, and it also makes me recognize a great deal of privilege I have, and have grown up with financially (especially not having to deal with student loan debt). Thanks for having me!

Welcome back RWBY fans! It’s only been 7 weeks but it feels like months since we had new RWBY content to talk about. Guess we’re still all stuck on pandemic-time. Thankfully with spring comes the second half of RWBY Volume 8, and hopefully the exciting conclusion of the Battle of Atlas. There’ll be heroes! Villains! A struggle for the kingdom’s very soul! And hopefully, if we’re lucky, a chance for Weiss to finally get some sleep.
Let’s dive right into Episode 8 and see where our story picks up.
EDIT: Sorry for the repost, there were some technical difficulties. EDIT 2: Formatting

Episode 8: Dark

The second half of Volume 8 picks up on the thunder of guns and rumble of explosions. Qrow sits up from his prison bunk, unable to sleep through the audible battle going on in Atlas. Jacques nervously fidgets, and Robyn tries to make small talk, but only Watts seems truly relaxed. Suddenly, an explosion roars through the brig, knocking out the walls on Qrow and Watts’ cells. When the dust settles, a cawing crow gives Robyn only seconds warning before the prison’s roof collapses, burying everyone.
After a cut to black, a distorted but steady heartbeat brings us back to our senses. Nora’s waking up after some help from Klein, and regains her focus just in time to see the rest of RNBW carting in a heavily damaged Penny. Ruby asks Klein if he can help their robotic friend, and while Klein is no mechanic, he at least offers to repair Penny’s major “wound.” Very nearby explosions precede a power outage at the mansion. May calls Ruby to confirm everyone is okay, and we learn that May chose to take the aircar and leave while the rest of RNBW stayed behind with Penny. Ruby promises to link back up with the Mantle forces once they help Penny, but May waves her off. Outside, a gigantic Tempest grimm tears apart an Atlas battleship. At this point, May isn’t sure how much “saving'' there is to be done.
Teary-eyed, Ruby reflects that the whole situation feels like “too much.” She wonders how they can fix all the problems that keep piling up, and Klein answers “one step at a time.” He reassures the young leader that she must think about her immediate problems rather than the whole mess, and suggests RBW start with restoring the power. Willow chooses then to enter, leaning against the doorframe, vodka in hand, and points Ruby towards the mansion’s backup generator. There’s a pregnant pause before Whitley responds with sass, and Weiss interrupts more awkward silence by elaborating on the generator.
Weiss’ initiative kickstarts Whitley, who suggests there may be more SDC resources to use in this situation. He explains that Ironwood’s dust embargo has left many SDC cargo transports in their hangers. Weiss realizes that the SDC’s robotic drones, like those that operated the pneumatic shipping company back in V8E2, can be used to fly the ships to Mantle Crater and evacuate everyone there. Then, the city’s citizens can be extracted while Ironwood keeps Salem’s horde busy. All Whitley needs is access to Jacques’ computer. With the need for power greater than ever, Team RBWW launches into action.
Under an ominous moon, Blake and Ruby sprint across the open space between the manor and the utility shed. As the generator spools up, Ruby and Blake have an unexpected break from their tense evening. Blake assures Ruby that their plan will work, but Ruby’s open about her doubts. Blake pauses briefly, and then launches into one of the most thoughtful exchanges we’ve heard from our main characters in a while.

“I know you don’t always know what to do, but that;s never stopped you from doing something. I was like that as a girl, but time and … a lot of other things took their toll on me. Then I wasn’t sure if that girl could survive in the world. Until I met you. It was a little strange at first because you were younger, but I’ve always looked up to you, Ruby, and I still do.”

I know Ruby’s not the only one left teary-eyed.
The generator finishes starting, and all the “lights” come back on inside the manor. Inside, Klein is sitting with Willow while Weiss and Whitley start searching through Jacques’ computer. Things are looking up… for about five seconds. A lightning flash illuminates one of the utility shed’s windows, alerting Blake (and not Ruby) to a new arrival. Crashes echo through the manor, and while Klein looks around for the source of the noise, Willow shakingly reaches for her bottle. Weiss radios her teammates, but Blake only manages to get in a few words before she’s cut off. Weiss starts to leave, but not before trading barbs with Whitley on the way out. The older sibling in me feels very validated.
Outside, the Hound emerges from the ruins of the utility shed. Blake distracts the grimm while Ruby prepares her silver eyes, but Hound is not impressed and blows through both of them before Ruby can release the power. The Hound knocks Ruby around a little before it prepares to take flight, but Blake delays it long enough for Weiss to arrive. Weiss radio’s inside, instructing Klein to keep everyone calm and together. Willow’s a nervous wreck, however, and shatters a bottle and glass before running deeper into the house.
It’s at this moment that Penny wakes up, stiff and red-eyed and clearly not in her right mind. She casually tosses Klein across the room before she manages to reassert control over her body, calling up a Maiden-fuelled gale in her panic. The flash of green light is visible from outside, where the fight with the Hound isn’t going well. More grimm are arriving and preventing Blake and Weiss from focusing down the Hound. Luckily (sort of), the Hound drops Ruby when he sees Penny’s display, cluing the three huntresses into the grimm’s real objective. Unluckily, the fall knocks Ruby out and shatters her aura, forcing Blake to defend her while Weiss runs into the house to alert the others.
Penny glitches back and forth between scared and stoic, struggling to resist Watts’ programming. The battle seems lost, until Nora reaches out and takes her hand. The wounded brawler assures Penny that no one is going to force her to do anything. Penny reveals that a part of her is compromised, but Nora stands firm. It’s only a part of Penny; the rest can endure. Penny kneels at Nora’s bedside, in control for the moment.
Meanwhile, Willow has reached her room and frantically searches out more alcohol. She hesitates when she finds some, but her nerves are reignited as a crash signals to everyone that the Hound has entered the building. The Hound begins to search, quickly smelling the numerous puddles of “blood” Penny left behind earlier. A quick reaction shot takes us away from the atrium only long enough for the Hound to hide, and as Weiss enters the now-empty room, all music falls away and we’re left with the clatter of heels on marble and the tinkling of glass.
A jarring warning from Willow barely keeps Weiss from being pounced on by the Hound, though the ex-heiress can’t avoid being violently slammed into a nearby piano. Weiss gradually recovers from the impact and assaults the Hound with a hail of ice, but the grimm bounds deeper into the house, only concerned with its quarry. Weiss radios her mom, who reveals that she’s using the hidden cameras placed throughout the house to keep tabs on the Hound. She’s still barely keeping her composure, but she manages to keep the much more collected Weiss informed while she pursues the grimm. The Hound begins to move again, shocking Willow as it nears it’s next target.
In Jacques’ office, Whitley is busy hammering away at the computer. Ironically, he tunes out the usually-unhelpful Willow just as she radios in a warning, though he doesn’t miss the looming figure of the Hound nosing it’s way into the office. The beast lumbers through the small space while Whitley curls up behind the desk. An alert from the computer terminal startles both parties, loudly announcing that only one more click is necessary to complete Whitely’s plan. Of course, Whitley is a bit preoccupied by the slowly-approaching-and-now-talking grimm mere feet from him.
Just before the Hound rounds the corner and finds Whitley, a gigantic spectral boarbatusk pins the grimm to the wall. Willow tells Whitley to run, and he fumbles to activate the computer terminal before escaping. The Hound is barely slowed by the summon, and we’re treated to it’s point of view as it gallops through the hallways, hot on the Schnees’ heels. The pair are no match for a quadruped monster, and it looks like the end for WIllow and Whitely, but an ice wall saves them at the last second. Weiss has returned to protect her family.
Back at the shed, Blake is struggling to protect Ruby from a dangerous new type of grimm. The creature is a disgusting mishmash of bulbous acid glands and insect-quick claws, and quickly traps Blake in its grasp. Thankfully, Ruby comes to her senses just in time to save Blake from being melted or bisected. A quick scream from Penny draws everyone’s attention, including the Hound, and our poor gynoid finally loses the struggle against Watts’ malicious programming. Everyone begins to converge on the atrium, and Whitley asks Penny what she’s doing.
Penny, emotionless, lays her objectives out for us. Open the vault, then self-terminate.
The Hound lunges for Penny, and she manages to stop the grab cold. Unfortunately, only one of these fighters has the ability to shapeshift new limbs. The increasingly rabid and vocal Hound thrashes Penny, taking her hostage as reinforcements arrive. And in the most serious voice we’ve heard from Ruby yet, she tells it “enough.” A blast of silver-eyed energy throws the Hound out through a window and Penny down the stairs. The reprieve doesn’t last long, however, and a nearly undamaged Hound reemerges.
Only this time, it’s core is exposed. And there isn’t just a person driving the creature, there’s a Silver Eyed Warrior! All mangled and mutated, maniacally yelling about how it must “take the girl.” The stunned huntresses pull Penny away and square up to face the Hound, even as it rapidly resumes its feral form. The regenerated monster corners the three huntresses against a wall… and with a thunderous clash, the giant armored statue Whitley and Willow pushed over crushes the Hound mid-pounce. As the dust settles and everyone surveys the scene, the Hound’s lone exposed arm fades into ash, leaving behind a plain, human skeleton.
The immediate danger has passed, but darker questions remain.
In the final scene of the episode, another grimm arm clears rubble. A rather smug Cinder is clearing the debris off of Watts, “rescuing” him from harm in the most condescending way possible. A few of the prison’s guards try to put up a fight, but Cinder blitzes past them and soars into the night sky.

Thoughts

I don’t think I realized just how much happened in this episode until I sat down to write this review. On the morning of release, I could really feel the shorter runtime, once you stripped away the opening and ending credits. But when I take a closer look, episode 8 is full of action scenes, character moments, and those delicious nuggets of horror that pop up in RWBY from time to time.
Despite the escalating stakes and dwindling free time our characters have, several key players had valuable interactions or developed their character arcs. Blake and Ruby’s talk is fantastic, and perfect for both of their characters. Friends buoy you up during the hard times, and Blake is paying back the optimism that Ruby has given her these past few years. Forty seconds isn’t quite the same as multiple volumes of character interaction, but this addresses that deficiency in a big way, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s also quite interesting that Blake sees the heavy toll the battle is taking on Ruby, and chooses now to bolster her leader. If we’re being generous, we could even say that Blake saw how deeply Ruby was wounded by Yang’s comments in V8E1, and is deliberately taking the time to assuage Ruby’s self-doubt. RWBY’s resident loner has come a long way since her distrustful days at Beacon.
Of course, when it comes to character development this episode, the Schnees take center stage. We haven’t known these characters for as long as we’ve known the Beacon bunch, but there’s a lot of nonverbal storytelling that’s cluing us in to the family dynamic. Willow carries this uncomfortable feeling around with her, forcing her children and even Klein to keep their composure around her. Whenever she’s in a room with Klein, you can feel the butler’s restraint, like his training stops him from speaking out. His shoulders fall when she grabs her bottle, as if he’s resigned to the inevitability of her addiction. Willow’s failure to control her fear chafes at both Whitley and Weiss, and while she helps her children when it counts, there is an unguided and inelegant style to it all. She’s not a fighter.
And yet, when the chips are down, both Whitley and Willow step up to the challenge. They’re willing to face the danger of their situation in their own way, defending their home from a living nightmare. Whitley himself is arguably responsible for killing the Hound, which is a huge leap from his “huntsmen are barbaric and unnecessary” attitude back in Volume 4. And through him, we get a glimmer of hope for the civilians hiding in Mantle Crater. This was a big episode for the Schnees, and feels like another big step towards the family’s reform. We’re not done yet, but Willow and Whitley both got moments to shine here. And that’s good, because it hopefully means the show can shift away from them for now and return focus to our main characters.
If we had to identify episode 8’s weakest parts, most would point to its action scenes. On my first viewing, I felt that Ruby and Blake’s fight scenes with the Hound and it’s grimm entourage were weaker than our usual fare. I saw a lot of people online pointing to how long our heroes have been awake and how much fighting they’ve already done in order to justify the fight, but I want to take a different approach. I think episode 8’s fights fall short of everyone’s expectations for filmmaking reasons, rather than narrative ones.
A lot of fights happen off-screen in this episode. When the Hound first arrives, we cut away before the ambush. We hear fighting over the radio, and when we cut back, we can see the Hound throw Ruby out of an existing hole in the wall. Clearly some serious blows were thrown here, we just weren’t here to see them. This happens again when Weiss first arrives at the shed fight, and again when Weiss is defending her ice wall with an Arma Gigas summon. There are plenty of environmental clues to tell us that fighting has happened, but the focus isn’t on the fights, because that’s not what this episode was about. When we do get protracted fight sequences, some of the choreography undercuts our expectations.
Let’s take a deeper look at Blake’s fight with the mantis-like grimm, confirmed via Twitter to be called a Cenitaur. In this fight, there seems to be some speed ramping that breaks up the action’s momentum. Things like the Cenitaur’s claw swipes feel very fast, while Blake’s physical movements and dialogue pauses feel comparatively slow. I know this is meant to feel like a challenging opponent to Blake, and I am extremely grateful for a fight I don’t have to watch at half speed to follow, but there is a sluggishness that seems to clash with how Blake is running and jumping around.
That said, we do see a lot of creative choreography in both her fights. Blake dual-wields her swords, she uses her semblance to dodge around, and even leaves dust-infused shadow clones to vary up the damage she deals. I love the wall-running sequence against the Hound! The problem, I think, is that we don’t see her land a single effective hit with Gambol Shroud. It makes sense technically; Blake relies on hit-and-run tactics and her opponents have the reaction speed to intercept her. But I counted, and Blake got smacked out of the air four times this episode. That really clashes with Blake’s established image as a capable and experienced fighter, and that dissonance can come through to viewers, even subconsciously.
So episode 8’s action wasn’t gangbusters because that wasn’t the point. Then where was the focus?
On the horror.
This episode was extremely effective at using the whole spectrum of storytelling, from editing to sound design, to amp up the horror elements. When Weiss reenters the atrium, a space we saw the hound occupying two literal seconds of screentime ago, the tension starts to rise. We know there is danger, but we can’t see it, and every second brings us closer to the threat. When Whitley hides behind his father’s desk, the camera drops to his eye level. We can’t see how close the hound is because Whitley can’t. He can only see his immediate surroundings, which is why Willow’s boarbatusk takes everyone by surprise. Even the Hound’s movements across the floor, walls, and ceiling leave us unsettled, giving the canine-looking grimm a distinctly alien ambience whenever it’s in motion.
Horror lives and dies by its sound design, and the sound engineers at RT need to pat themselves on the back for making a creepy episode feel much more visceral. From the sounds of footsteps to tinkling glass shards to the offtune groan of a piano that’s just had a huntress thrown into it, everything feels right next to you. The conflict of this episode isn’t a fantastical duel, it’s a visceral hunt, and the atmosphere sells you on the intimacy of each moment by surrounding you with stimuli. If you haven’t watched this episode with binaural headphones yet, I highly recommend you do. It’s essential for the full horror experience.
On a smaller note, the Hound’s window reveal didn’t hit me hard the first time. I blame the screenshot that showed up on official twitter a day or two before the premiere. Way to undercut the surprise, RT. That said, I found it was much more impactful on my second viewing, as were many of the other horror elements. When given room to breathe, the horror-genre parts of RWBY can be downright chilling.
I also want to quickly address what this episode taught us about the Silver Eyes. This episode had a lot of self-contained details that really start to balance the benefits of being born with the Brother of Light’s gift. We’ve known they take time to master, and Maria said that her semblance and training were consistently more valuable to her, but this episode reinforces both those ideas. Plus, it seems that reputation isn’t the only price for their power. Salem isn’t just likely to seek a SEW out just to kill an exceptional grimm hunter. She may also want a very unique lab rat to twist into some ungodly abomination. I’ll talk a bit more about this in the Predictions section, but I’m glad every appearance of the Silver Eyes is being tempered with consequences. You wouldn’t want the power to undercut any grimm-related tension that might show up in the future.

Predictions

Let it be known that I called the SDC drones being used as reinforcements! Validation out of the way, let’s talk about Whitley’s plan a bit. It’s a marvelous bit of quick thinking; taking advantage of the dust embargo and leveraging the substantial power of the SDC to do as much good as possible. Frankly, given how deeply the SDC is woven into Atlas and how important Atlas’ fate is to Weiss’ character, it was very likely the company would play some role in Mantle’s ultimate fate. That said, we’re not out of the woods yet.
While Whitley may have been correct in assuming Salem’s forces would be too preoccupied with Ironwood to attack the refugees, flying the civilians out of the kingdom still leaves unanswered questions. Where would such a large convoy go? Argus and Vytal Island are the closest civilized points, with Vale and Mistral being the most defended population centers of suitable size within range. And that doesn’t even address what the evacuation of an entire kingdom means for the story. Is Atlas going to become the sacrificial shield of Remnant? The kingdom that fell, holding the line and proving to the other nations that they could only defeat Salem together? We might have a glimmer of hope for the people of Atlas, but I think the kingdom itself may be close to the end. Perhaps something better can be built in its wake.
We spent all our focus on the characters of Schnee Manor this episode. Now that their immediate conflicts are dealt with, the show will likely put them aside for now and shift to the AceOps, JYR, and Salem’s minions, especially since they are all geographically close to each other. Given the character interactions we got in this episode, I’m excited (and a touch hopeful) at the possible challenges JYR will face on their rescue mission. Our young heroes are walking into the literal and metaphorical belly of the beast, and such conditions would try even the noblest of hearts. The AceOps are reaching a similar breaking point with their mission, and the show has already established that their convictions are shakier than those of JYR. Perhaps where one team shines, another will fracture?
Okay. With all that covered, let’s address the big reveal. We’ve known for a long time that grimm-human hybrids were possible (looking at you, Cinder) but there was only speculation about the Hound’s true origin. Now we and Team RNBW know the truth, and both the rapid cut between the Hound and Ruby’s faces and the fact that Ruby fell to her knees after the fight seem to imply she grasps the gravity of the Hound’s true identity. Now, Tyrian’s words about abducting her take on a far more sinister implication.
The Hound’s reveal has, like all good reveals, led to even more speculation. Is a Silver Eyed Warrior essential to make an intelligent grimm? Does the Brother of Light’s gift, the ultimate opposite to the power of the grimm, help preserve enough of a person’s mind to give their grimm form greater intelligence? And what does this mean for Summer? Was Salem playing mind games when she mentioned Summer in her talk with Ruby, or did Salem really meet the late huntress face to face? If so, what became of her?
Obviously we can only guess at these questions, much like Ruby, Blake, and Weiss can. In fact, I hope we get at least a little screen time focused on their speculations. The implication towards the Silver Eyed Warriors will put Ruby’s already-shaky resolve on even more unstable ground, and the fact that this intelligent grimm wasn’t Summer doesn’t mean that she isn’t waiting in the wings somewhere. In fact, it only proves that such a nightmare is more possible.
The Hound’s death also has implications for other characters. The immediate transition from the Hound’s skeleton hand to Cinder’s grimm arm draws a fair amount of subconscious comparison. They’re both center screen at the beginning and end of the scene change, both characters are tools of Salem, and they’re both human-grimm hybrids. I’ve talked about Salem’s plans for Cinder in the previous few episode reviews, but this is our most direct comparison yet. Cinder is already chafing at Salem’s leadership and acting increasingly independent despite Salem’s punishments. Learning about the Hound’s true origins may be all the convincing Cinder needs to finally cut ties with Salem. To be clear, this is just a guess based on Cinder’s trajectory in the first half of Volume 8. There are a lot of pieces that would need to fall into place to put Cinder in that position.
However, Cinder is on her way to acquire Penny now. She’ll undoubtedly cross paths with Ruby, Blake, and Weiss while the huntresses wait for Nora to recover. There will be a chance for Cinder to see the Hound’s failure for herself, and Ruby now has the information to compare Cinder to the Hound.
Maybe Cinder will get her revelation, assuming she’s in the mood to talk, of course. Watts will be there, as will Penny. Cinder has been laser-focused on acquiring the Maiden powers since day one, and she doesn’t have a great track record of walking away from power. Whenever Cinder arrives at Schnee Manor, be it in one episode or five, it’s safe to expect a whole lot of fighting before any words can be exchanged.

Loose Threads

Here’s where I put all the thoughts that I couldn’t fit in anywhere else.

• Even after several rewatches, the Qrow-Crow transition is still a bit jarring. There aren’t enough context clues to guess why Qrow turned into his bird form, so I can only guess it was to avoid explosion debris.
• We don’t get a hug during Blake’s talk with Ruby, and I can’t help but remember the Volume 4 commentary. Miles said that potential fan reactions prevented him from writing in a Jaune-Ruby hug during their big talk. I love interacting with the FNDM, even the shippers, and I think they create some incredible things for the show we all love, but man if we don’t manage to shoot ourselves in the foot sometimes.
• Weiss’ instructions to Klein make a lot more sense when you figure that keeping people calm would help avoid drawing the grimm’s attention to the unarmed civilians. Look how smart she is!
• Penny’s stiff movements while under mind control, and the creepy soundtrack/sound effects that accompany her are on-point. Everything about her, from music to movements, communicates a very different Penny than we’re used to seeing. She even paths like an AI, marching in abrupt lines instead of walking like a person.
• The “reveal” that the Hound is after Penny, and thus following the scent of Penny’s blood, is supported by some good foreshadowing and payoff. We see Whitley help bring Penny in, then he comically mourns his ruined shirt just like he did after he was doused with wine in volume 7. Ha ha, so funny. But what’s this? After Willow starts tracking the hound and the scene transitions, we cut in on a shot of Whitley’s stained shirt, slowly zooming out until we see Whitley’s full location. The details are all here for keen-eyed viewers to catch (and dread) before the reveal, but snappy editing executes this foreshadowing flawlessly.
• I’m getting mad Jurassic Park vibes from Whitley’s scene with the Hound. All we were missing were some reflection shenanigans.
• It’s a little (and I mean, real little) thing, but I really appreciate the little slip Whitley makes when he turns back to activate the computer terminal. We’re so used to seeing hunters, the peak of martial prowess and acrobatic coordination, that we forget how utterly normal the rest of these characters are. Imagine how clumsy you’d look living next to your superhuman siblings.
• The prison break proves that Atlas does give it’s soldiers a kind of heavy ordnance above rifles with dust cartridges. Even though the model here looks like someone took an RPG-7 (a weapon invented in the 60s) and painted it white, it is cool to see Remnant’s only real military fleshed out a little more. I do shudder to think of potential explosive yields when dust becomes a viable payload.
• Also, I’m seeing a lot of hate online for the prison guards and their “stormtrooper aim.” You guys remember that Cinder’s not only a huntress-level fighter, but also a Maiden that gave Penny, a CPU-fast fighter, a run for her money, right? These dudes saw a crazy magical girl breaking her coworker out of jail, grabbed a boom tube and said “yeah, we’ll try to stop her.” Give them some credit.
• As it stands, we have yet to see these scenes from the midseason trailer: Ironwood slamming a desk, the charging megoliaths, the AceOps starting their bomb run, and Salem’s second talk with Oscar. Given that we’re likely headed to Monstra for Episode 9 and the CRWBY’s habit of filling trailers with very early footage, I suspect we’ll see most, if not all, of these scenes in the coming episode.

Wrap Up

Wow, extra large review today coming off the winter break. I hope you all enjoyed my take on this episode, despite how long it ran at points. Spring of 2021 has gotten busy for me, which is why this review is going up at the last possible minute. I’ll try to get the rest of the Volume 8 reviews out sooner in the coming weeks, but new projects at my job mean there might be a longer-than-usual delay between an episode’s release and it’s review. Hopefully that will smooth out at the tail end of March. Thanks for hanging in there in the meantime!
If you enjoyed my writing, consider checking out my Masterpost [HERE]. As always, your comments and constructive feedback are very much appreciated.
Until next episode, stay safe, stay creative, and be excellent to each other!