Money Diaries: How Much I Spent in a Week in San Francisco
Call me nosy, but I’m obsessed with learning about people’s daily habits, especially how they like to spend their money. Refinery29’s Money Diaries series is an addicting glimpse into how different women spend their money in a week, covering different cities, incomes and occupations. I love reading these money diaries and thought it would be fun to create my own version. Plus, it’ll help me reflect on my own spending habits and keep me accountable.
So, starting today, I’ll be introducing a new series on this blog where I choose one week in the month to get real vulnerable with all of you and record exactly how I spend my money.
Occupation: Senior PR Manager
Industry: FinTech
Age: 29
Location: San Francisco, CA
Monthly Expenses
Rent: $1,573 (I split the rent with my husband. We share a one-bedroom/one-bathroom apartment. This includes water/trash and the $150 we pay for our parking space every month)
Health Insurance: $85.66
401(k): 16% (my company matches 4%)
Savings: 22% of my take-home pay (I set up an auto transfer for every month, so I don’t even have to think about it)
HSA: $157.70 (my company contributes $57.70 per month)
Electricity: $35
Internet: $35
Netflix: $0 (We still mooch off our parents’ accounts. Thanks, Mom and Dad!)
Cell Phone: $40 (I’m still on my parents’ family plan, but I pay them back for my phone bill and FasTrak tolls every month)
Clipper Card: $50
iCloud: $2.99
ClassPass: $79
Day One
9:00 am - It’s Sunday morning and I get to sleep in! Woo! I wake up around 9am and spend the morning futzing around on my phone, scrolling Instagram, checking emails, watching YouTube videos and trying to Yelp a good, cheap place to get a haircut in my neighborhood. Apparently, cheap haircuts do not exist in San Francisco.
10:45 am - I throw on my Outdoor Voices leggings my best friend gave me for Christmas and a puffer jacket and head out the door to the local farmers’ market. (Yes, I feel like a very basic San Francisco girl as I type this). We did the majority of our grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s yesterday, so I only need to pick up a few things (fruit, avocados, etc.). I buy a couple bunches of super sweet grapes, but sadly there are no avocados to be found. $3
11:00 am - Adam meets up with me at the farmers’ market and we decide to take an impromptu stroll through the Panhandle. It’s a beautiful day and the sun is shining and I feel like I’m on the other side of this annoying cold/cough I caught, so I’m in a good mood. The only thing getting me down is that my Fitbit died and I didn’t have time to charge it beforehand, so do these steps even count for anything??
11:30 am - Adam kindly whips up a quick breakfast for the both of us: fried eggs on top of toast, smothered in Trader Joe’s Pepito salsa. That stuff is magical. I attempt to do some laundry, but all the washing machines are taken. I decide to do an at-home yoga/pilates workout instead. I pick a random Boho Beautiful workout on YouTube and try my best to imitate Juliana’s effortless, graceful moves, but mostly I’m groaning, complaining, sweating and red-faced. I am so out of shape.
12:00 pm - While cooling down and stretching, I decide to research how much it would cost to replace my FitBit Alta since the battery keeps dying on me every couple of hours. I’ve had my Alta for 4+ years and have probably worn it every single day, minus my wedding day. Seriously. I only take it off to shower. To my disappointment, FitBit has decided to discontinue the Alta and they’ve come out with a new model called the Inspire HR. After reading some reviews, I’m actually intrigued by this new model. It seems to be just as slim and sleek as the Alta (which is a big reason why I like it so much), but they’ve added some cool new features (waterproof, touchscreen, heart rate monitor, etc). I decide to take the plunge and purchase the white version since it’s on sale. $86.75
2:30 pm - I hop in the shower, slap on some makeup and head outside with Adam to take a few photos for Instagram while it’s still light out.
3:00 pm - Adam and I head to Matching Half, one of our favorite cafes, to get some work done. They’re pretty crowded, so we grab a table outside. He studies for his exams and I work on some blog posts. I buy a chai latte - they make such delicious, creamy chai lattes here. $5
5:30 pm - I had put in an offer on Poshmark for some Agolde black jeans yesterday and the seller accepted my offer. I’ve been needing another pair of black denim to switch out with my Everlane Cheeky Straight Leg jeans. The Agolde ones are the Sophie style and they feature a raw hem with no other distressing, so I should still be able to get away with wearing them in the office. I already tried this style on at a shop in Hayes Valley, so I know for sure that they will fit. They’re also brand new with tags, so it’s a great deal. $82.75
6:30 pm - I’m starving by this point since all I’ve eaten is a fried egg on toast and my coughing fits are starting back up again. We head back home and I snack on leftover Trader Joe’s Orange Chicken and rice and then prepare a quick and easy meal: chicken noodle soup for my sore throat and some sandwiches with avocado, mozzarella, mixed greens and pastrami. I stay up way too late finishing up a blog post for tomorrow while coughing up a lung and finally collapse into bed around 1 am. Tomorrow will be rough.
Daily total: $177.50
Day Two
6:45 am - I wake up feeling a lot of anxiety. The Instagram post I scheduled for this morning didn’t publish and the app I use somehow deleted my draft, so I curse under my breath and try my best to remember the caption I wrote last night. Rush to get ready for work and run out the door to my bus stop. I forget my lunch in the fridge. Great. Luckily, Adam’s office is just a flew blocks away so I text him to ask if he can grab it for me.
8:30 am - Start working my way through my inbox and try to stifle my coughs and the disgusting sound of me blowing my nose. All my coworkers look slightly appalled/concerned. I down some ginger tea, Emergen-C and water and grab a new box of tissues and continue to blow my nose in the privacy of the bathroom stall. Also snag an Oatly bar and a Babyel from the kitchen, which is my typical ‘breakfast’. Our office has some awesome free snacks and drinks.
12:30 pm - I meet up with Adam quickly to grab my lunch (bless this sweet man who agreed to marry me) and eat it at my desk while working on some briefing documents for media interviews. I normally take an actual lunch break, but I need to leave a little early to pick up my car from the mechanic, so sad desk lunch it is! Because of my cold or maybe too much caffeine (my body is extremely sensitive to it), I don’t have much of an appetite and struggle to finish my Trader Joe’s Lemon Basil pasta salad, which is very unlike me. I text my friends to see if they want to come over for a wine/cheese/board game night on Friday and they’re all in!
3:45 pm - Knowing I need to leave early makes me super productive and I get my most pressing tasks done in record time. Head out to catch the bus back and pick up my car.
4:15 pm - I’ve never been to this mechanic before, but he got great reviews on Yelp and gives off a total sweet grandpa vibe so I’ll believe anything he says (I know nothing about cars). He texted me earlier in the day and estimated $636.70 for everything, which includes repairing a tire that has a nail in it, replacing four spark plugs and one cylinder coil, an oil change, tire rotation, replacing wiper blades, replacing burnt out left and right brake lights as well as the right license plate bulb. Ouch! Hopefully I’m not overpaying, but it seems like a reasonable estimate to me - and you can never pay too much for safety and peace of mind. I’m also impressed that they were able to do everything so quickly. $631.69 ($5 cheaper than estimated!)
5:30 pm - Finish answering work emails and then we eat a lazy dinner consisting of taquitos and chips and salsa and sit on the couch for several hours. Adam and I were going to go for a short walk, but it’s pouring rain outside. I schedule an appointment at a hair salon in the Fillmore. It’s $95 for just a haircut which is more than I’ve ever paid in my entire life, so hopefully they make me look as fierce as Beyoncé. We’ll see.
8:30 pm - I get my butt off the couch and start packing an overnight bag for our marketing team offsite. We’ll be heading to Calistoga tomorrow through Wednesday to do some 2020 planning and goal-setting. I just started at this company a few months, and there have been so many fun events so far!
9:30 pm - I’m driving a few coworkers up to Calistoga tomorrow so I quickly tidy up around the apartment in case any of them need to come in to use the bathroom or something.
9:45 pm - Whip up a quick snack because those taquitos were not enough. We have some fried eggs and toast because breakfast for dinner is a thing in this household.
11:00 pm - Get ready for bed and read a chapter of Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” before dozing off around 11:45 pm to the sound of raindrops.
Daily total: $631.69
Day Three
6:45 am - Wake up and jump in the shower. Finish up packing my toiletries and makeup bag. I rush out a report and finish tidying up the apartment before my coworkers get here.
9:10 am - One of my coworkers texts me to let me know she’s here. I go downstairs to let her in and see that my other coworker is there too. We hang out in my apartment until our other coworker arrives. Thank god I cleaned.
9:30 am - We head out to Calistoga. I get a little bit of anxiety driving other people sometimes, but the ride goes without a hitch and we even get to our destination with an hour to spare.
11:00 am - We’re staying at the Calistoga Motor Lodge Inn. It’s quaint, but feels a little like a college dorm, which is actually the perfect setting for our team offsite. We eat a quick lunch and gather in a tiny conference room and sit elbow-to-elbow for the next six hours, planning for the year ahead and listening to our leaders present key initiatives and strategies for 2020. It’s a great discussion and reinforces my feeling that I made the right decision coming to this company. Only problem is that I’m still sick and I have a coughing fit during one of the presentations, until someone kindly offered me a cough drop. So embarrassing.
6:00 pm - Wine time! The entire marketing team walks over to Evangeline for a wine blending activity (i.e. competition). The idea is to see which team can come up with the most delicious blend and each team elects a judge to do a blind tasting and rank them from best to worst. We have a lot of fancy equipment in front of us that takes me back to my high school chemistry class: beakers, pipettes, etc.).
6:30 pm - We randomly get assigned to a table/team. Nobody at our table knows anything about wine, but we have a ton of fun tasting the different varietals and trying to make sophisticated comments. We end up blending our two favorite varietals (the Pinot Verdot and the Malbec) 50/50 and call it “Simplicity.” Somehow, I get elected to be the judge, even though I have a cold and can’t smell or taste anything. It’s probably more due to the fact that my brother-in-law is a winemaker in Calistoga so we’re hoping I’ve learned a thing or two through osmosis. We eat dinner. I order the French Onion Soup for my first course and the mushroom truffle pasta for my main. Unfortunately, the former was much too salty and the latter was tragically bland. Dinner is covered by the company.
8:00 pm - The judging begins! We sit down at the head table and ham it up, making a big show of swirling our glasses and holding the glass up to the light to see if the wine “has legs.” I sip each wine with utter seriousness (I am very competitive) and write down some notes. I get to the third glass and after just one sniff, I can immediately tell that it’s ours. Don’t ask me how. I rank it as my favorite and turn in my ballot. We wait for the results. Now I’m kind of doubting myself. Our facilitator asks each of us how confident we are that we’ve picked the wine we made. I tell him that I’m 95% sure. Then he reveals that the two ladies (me and our content strategy director) managed to pick own own wines! And the best news of all, my table’s wine was voted best blend! Simplicity is the secret to success, after all.
10:00 pm - A large group of us head to a bar afterwards and spend the rest of the evening talking, drinking and getting to know each other better. What a fun night! Head back to the hotel, call Adam to say goodnight and crash into bed around midnight.
Daily total: $0
Day Four
7:00 am - Wake up and catch up on emails. Pack up my bags and load up my car and then head to the conference room for our final day of meetings. Breakfast burritos and an assortment of scones are provided, the perfect cure for everyone’s hangovers. We have some great discussions and break out into our teams for goal-planning.
3:00 pm - We check out of the hotel, load up the car and hit the road. Traffic is much worse going this way and we get home by 5:30 pm.
6:00 pm - I’m exhausted after the trip and enjoy some much-needed introvert time (aka binge-watching the Japanese reality TV show “Terrace House” on Netflix) and eat some leftover pasta I find in the fridge. I pass out early (for me) at 10:30 pm.
Daily total: $0
Day Five
6:45 am - It’s raining cats and dogs and it’s especially difficult to wake up. I can hear a torrential downpour outside our window and take a peek outside to see sheets of rain coming down. Adam and I hurriedly get ready and I throw on my rain jacket and rain boots. We need to head to City Hall this morning to sort out some marriage certificate paperwork. Side note: much to my dismay (and deep frustration), I found out that Adam and I aren’t actually technically married, or at least, our marriage certificate didn’t get approved because the church coordinator misspelled our priest’s name and attempted to WHITE IT OUT. Needless to say, it didn’t get approved and so we had to drive to Brentwood to get Adam’s priest’s wet signature last weekend.
7:30 am - Adam drives us to City Hall since he needs to drive to SFO for work anyways (he’s an architect and his firm has done a lot of work for the airport). I try to head in with Adam, but he kindly insists that I should just take the bus so I can make it to work on time and he’ll handle the paperwork. What a guy!
8:15 am - I get into work and get settled in, absolutely drenched from the short walk over (I stupidly forgot my umbrella). I look around and notice I’m not the only one. Our HR director is only wearing her socks around the office since her boots got soaked. Can you tell that the Bay Area only gets heavy rainfall a few times a year?
12:00 pm - It’s a busy, meeting-heavy day and I manage to sneak in a lunch of leftover pasta in between meetings. Adam texts to let me know that he submitted the form, but we have to fill out yet another form and get Father Ron’s signature. Are you kidding me??
6:00 pm - I head out and catch the bus home. I decide to make dinner for Adam since he was so sweet about taking care of the paperwork that morning. I look in the fridge to see what we have leftover: ground beef, milk, mushrooms, zucchini. When all else fails, go for stir-fry. I brown some butter and garlic in the pan and cook the ground beef. I toss in the mushrooms and zucchini and, on a whim, I decide to throw in some curry powder and milk (ran out of coconut milk, but cow’s milk seemed to work just as well, though the consistency was a tad thinner).
7:00 pm - Adam gets home and we eat dinner. Adam suggests we watch Mr. Robot since he heard it has good reviews. We’re hooked after the first episode and watch a couple more.
11:30 pm - Get ready for bed and fall asleep around midnight.
Daily total: $0
Day Six
7:00 am - Yay it’s Friday! I’m in a great mood this morning. There’s barely anyone on my bus and I actually manage to snag a seat (a rarity in the mornings).
9:00 am - We have two media interviews today, so we prep our spokesperson and make sure he’s ready to go.
12:00 pm - I eat the leftover curry beef and rice I made for dinner last night. A few people even told me that it smells delicious. Curry makes everything better.
1:00 pm - I spend the rest of the day working on a press release.
5:00 pm - I rush to Trader Joe’s to pick up a couple bottles of wine, cheese, bread, crackers and chips and salsa for the girls’ night I’m hosting tonight. $37.62
6:00 pm - My Poshmark order has arrived! The Agolde black denim jeans fit great. It’s always a relief when the item you order on Poshmark works out since you can’t return it. I rush to clean up the apartment and make sure it’s extra cozy for my friends. I lay out a large assortment of games (Settlers of Catan, Code Names, Sushi Go!, Saboteur, Goat Lords...my husband and I are huge board game nerds). I put some music on the Jam Box, turn on our lamp with the giant edison bulb for some mood lighting and light a candle. I feel especially adult as I arrange a variety of different cheeses, crackers and grapes on the marble cheese board Adam and I received as a wedding gift.
7:00 pm - My friends arrive and we spend the rest of the night talking till 1 am instead of playing games. Typical. We did attempt to play Goat Lords, but only get through a few rounds. Next time, we need to allocate four hours for talking and four hours for games.
Daily total: $37.62
Day Seven
10:00 am - Sleep in for a bit. Walk to the Fillmore for my hair appointment. I get settled in and talk to my hairdresser about chopping off six inches and adding some blended layers. She does an excellent job and didn’t even charge me extra for styling my hair after my cut. $95 + $19 tip = $114
11:15 am - I walk home and see a package in the entryway for me. My FitBit has arrived! I walk up to our apartment and rip open the box and set up my FitBit right away. Adam has made breakfast. We eat an omelette and toast together and decide to take a long walk.
12:30 pm - We walk around Lower Haight and peruse some cute shops.
5:00 pm - Adam has dinner plans with some friends so I walk all the way to the Inner Richmond to pick up some cheap dim sum from Good Luck Dim Sum (recommended by Ali Wong). Order some har gow and siu mai and walk back home. $9
7:00 pm - Adam’s younger sister is crashing the night since she’s in town for a food conference. I let her in and we watch “Brittany Runs a Marathon” on Netflix together while I chow down on dim sum.
10:00 pm - Adam gets home and we all catch up and continue to watch TV until we start getting tired and head to bed around midnight.
Daily total: $123
The Breakdown
Food + Drink - $54.62
Entertainment - $0
Home + Health - $86.75
Clothes + Beauty - $196.75
Transport - $631.69
Other - $0
