A heads up before you listen. This podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. We are not financial advisors. You should always do your own research and consult your own financial advisor before spending or investing your money. Please note that all income, financial information, and expenses in what we spend are self-reported. You know how you always want to know about everyone else's money? You do, right? Like you'll see someone buying something you want or taking some amazing vacation and you think, "How can they afford that?" Or you meet your friend's new girlfriend and she has some very impressive job and you think, "How much money does she make?" I think when it comes to money, even if you don't want to admit it, we're all a little nosy. But I don't know. I actually think that's good. I think we should be talking about money more. And all the ways big and small that it impacts our lives. On this show, we are actually going to do that. We are going to go somewhere that we almost never get to go. Deep into the heart of someone else's finances. Here's how this is going to work. Each week, I'm going to introduce you to a new person from somewhere across the country and they are going to tell us everything about their finances. How much they make. How much they want to make. What they worry about or if they don't worry at all. And then for one week, we'll follow them through their daily routine. Every day, they'll record an audio diary with all the nitty-gritty details of how they're spending their money. I mean, the coffees, the groceries, the rent that's due, the car accident that suddenly upends everything. And after that, we'll talk about what the week brought up for them, what it's made them feel. Is whatever you're buying or nod buying or saving or spending, at the end of the day, money is always about more than your balance. I'm Courtney Herell and this is what we spend. How much school did you have? I have 150,000. I had more. I had 300,000 after my masters. I had a great uncle, pass away, who was an artist and my parents chose with their share of that that they would help pay off all my private loans. And so that was a crazy night. I remember pressing submit on $150,000 payment and just being like, holy shit. And they were like, yeah, it doesn't that feel so much better. And I was kind of like, it feels like 50% better and it still feels like I have still $150,000 of debt. This is Kelly. I turn 32 in one week and I live in Salt Lake City. Kelly is one of the 42.8 million Americans who a student loan debt. And also like a lot of her generation, she wants to buy a home and have a baby and she's trying to figure out if it's possible to make all that work. Kelly married her husband about a year ago and eight months ago, the two of them moved from Tennessee to Salt Lake City, Utah. Then as an engineer for a software company, Kelly is a director of client experience at a medical spa and she's also an online mental wellness coach. I used to be a therapist and for lots of reasons I'm not right now but I will always have therapy or coaching in my life and I will probably go back to that full time at some point. Kelly is paid hourly but she makes about 50K a year and Ben makes about 78K. That's before taxes and health insurance. Together that puts them just under the average income for married couple families in Salt Lake City. How would you describe your relationship with money? Consuming. Oh. I would describe it as all consuming. The thing that keeps like coming to mind is when someone has an addiction or a struggle and they call it the monkey on their back because you just can't get away from it. It's just clinging and it's present with you all of the time. It feels like that. I try really hard to be in control, maintain my control. But it's kind of this tug of war. What do you do on a weekly basis to manage your expenses? On a Sunday I will sit down and look at the budget and I made a spreadsheet. Okay, yeah. So walk me through your spreadsheet. I would love to hear what all of your regular expenses are and what you kind of tip quickly pay in each category. So rent and utilities, 2800. That's pretty expensive for rent. Anytime I tell someone that, they're like, that's more than my mortgage. I'm like, yeah, I know. Please don't tell me what your mortgage is. I don't want to know. Two gym memberships, 108. Car insurance, 254. Gas, 125. Do you have a car payment? No. We just buy used cars. Ben's car basically the roof flies off, but you know, just don't take it on the highway, you know? We don't have a car payment. Who needs a room? Yeah, who needs that? It's a convertible. Phone payment, 75, Pedensurance, 76, and physical therapy for 250. It helps with Kelly's chronic back pain and osteoarthritis. And then groceries. This one sucks the most right now and I really feel like everyone will understand. I put 600 a month for groceries and that, I mean, that includes like toiletries and stuff too. They have a Costco membership, but they pay that yearly fee with the cash back they get from their credit card. Medications and supplements like Ben works out, so he has like this huge bag of protein batter that he gets from Costco. So Ben's is mostly workout supplements and just one medication. And mine is I think like four medications and like a probiotic and some multi vitamins. Total for that is 650. Streaming platforms? No. We move trough of our families. Some of the subscriptions are on them though. Dropbox for 12, SoundCloud for 6, Spotify for 10. Hey, my hair. I put $40 next to my hair. And that's so I can spend that $40 and get my hair washed by somebody else one time every month. And it is like the gift to me to have somebody else wash my hair every once in a while. It's not shitty that like even now just reading my own budget that it really is just my business I still feel the need to justify like I just need to treat myself sometimes and have my hair washed. What does that make your expenses altogether? Your regular expenses. $4800 a month. But then you get to debt. How much debt do you have? A lot. If you are including my student loans, we have $202,728 in debt. Where did you go to school? I went to Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Why did you go to school? I thought I was supposed to because I was told that this is the next step. And I think this is part of like the dream or the lie that was sold to my generation was like if you don't go to college, you're going to end up working at McDonald's. You know, and like you're going to be a debt bee and you're going to have to live with your parents and you're probably going to use marijuana even. And like you're going to be a bad person essentially if you don't go to college. Kelly's degree cost about 40 grand a year. And after undergrad, Kelly went on to grad school at the same university. She has a master's in mental health counseling. But as Kelly sees it now, the math doesn't make much sense. I want to ask you something about that. And I mean, no judgment with this. How did you think you were going to pay off that amount of tuition or were you at the time? Like, I know I can't pay this off. Like how did you think about it then? Oh no, it's a good question. I didn't. I did not think about it. I had no clue what I was doing. It wasn't like, hmm, I wonder how I'm going to pay this off when the average annual salary for a therapist is 40 to 60 thousand dollars a year. I was not thinking about that. I had no idea what I was doing and I didn't really have anyone around me who was explaining what I was doing. Like your prefrontal cortex is not to be developed when you are making those decisions. Ultimately, I don't regret anything because I am who I am and I'm happy. But I'm financially trapped. So that's Kelly. And this week, instead of just tracking it in her spreadsheet, she's going to tell us about every dollar she spends and every feeling that comes with it. How are you feeling about tracking your finances for a week? I'm feeling nervous because maybe I will judge.
I just realized through tracking every expense that I'm actually just a dum-dum and I'm very irresponsible and this is all my fault. But I'm feeling curious. I'm just curious to see what comes with it. - Yeah, me too. - I will check in with you on the other side of your week. - Okay. (gentle music) - It is not hard to destroy a college. - It's okay, I think, as soon as I got over there, a lot of police cars started arriving. - And it is very hard to build something new. - I believe her exact quote was that I could have gone to jail for the shit this school was doing. - Last season, we brought you 35 stories from American colleges, stories of drug rings, fraternity hazing, stolen body parts, campus cults and more. - And now campus files is back for another season. - At a time when universities are all over the news. - There's a guy screaming into his phone, he's like a, "I just saw Charlie Kirk is a fanator right in front of me." - This season, you'll hear stories from decades ago. - They were recruited from Cambridge University by the Soviet Union to do great damage to the West. - Stories you've never heard of. - Every freshman had to have posture pictures and of course they were all new photos. - And stories you're itching to know more about. - Story recruitment is a game and if you want to play, you've got to play by the rules. - Listen to and follow campus files, available now for free on the Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Day one. - Today's a Monday and yesterday we bought groceries. So we got 17 items at Costco. We got bean and cheese burritos. I like those breakfast. - 35 count of diet coke, some smoked salmon, 24 count of eggs, Cheerios, sourdough, four pounds of apples, 12 count of bagels, a big vegetable mix, blueberries, peanut butter, egg whites, tortillas, chicken salad, ritz crackers, and some razor, three fills. It was $250 and 38 cents. I got paid on Friday. I put a chunk toward our rent. I put a chunk toward credit card. Now the thing that I forgot about was that my student loan payment was gonna come out this morning. So it over drew my account which is embarrassing as an almost 30-year-old to over draw your account. It's embarrassing. It's something that you do when you're 22 because you're not paying attention and you're not being responsible. And while that's not the case, it's still what it feels like. So I had to actually ask my dad. And my dad very graciously gave me a couple hundred dollars. And so now my account is back in the positive. And yeah, I struggle not to wonder when it's ever gonna not feel like that. When we'll have enough that I can forget, oh yeah, this bill is gonna come due today. And I can forget and it won't be a problem. It won't over draw. It won't be the last of the money, you know, until the next paycheck. So, those are my thoughts. Good night. Total spending for day one, $250.38. Day two. Okay, so I did not spend any money today. I brought my lunch. So that was good. I had a unique experience today where I actually got some money back, which is a fun and exciting thing to happen. So the story is that I had started a laser hair removal membership about a year and a half ago because I have PCOS. So I had hair on my neck and chin and chest that I wanted removed. PCOS or polycystic ovary syndrome is an imbalance of hormones. It causes all kinds of problems, including excess hair growth. So I started a laser hair membership. And when we moved out here, it was just a lot more expensive living out here and it was something that I could afford when we were in Tennessee, but I could no longer afford, but I thought I was locked into this contract. Anyway, I was convinced to call them and just see what they could do. And so any of the like services that I had paid for already, but hadn't redeemed all of that. I'm actually going to get that back. And so today when I was looking at my bank account, I saw these charges and I was like, "Wait, what the hell are these until I realized that they were actually green?" And so they're positive. And that's money coming back toward my account, which is super exciting. So it's going to be actually like $1,000, which is huge. I'm just going to put that straight toward my Apple credit card. So I'm really excited. That's like actually a huge deal. It's a huge dent. It gets us ahead on our debt snowball by like three months if I just put all of that money immediately toward that card, which is so freaking cool. A debt snowball is a strategy to tackle debt. It basically has you pay off your smallest debts first. And then once that's paid off, you roll the payment you are making towards that debt into your next smallest debt. And then you roll that snowball on and on and on until all your debt is paid off. Kelly loves tracking her debt snowball. Because I can solve the problem in my head. I can solve the problem in theory and I can even work it out on paper with formulas and make it color coordinated and it makes it feel so simple and accomplishable even though when I look at my spreadsheet, like we're not debt free from just cards, not again, not including my studio modes. We're not debt free until almost 2027 doing our debt snowball. And that's if we do it perfectly and nothing happens. So even though that's like a very future distant success of being debt free, I think there's something satisfying about the fact that I can see it on the paper when it finally hits zero. It just makes it very black and white formulaic, easy. It's simple. When in real life it's not. - Where did you learn to do that? - Dave Ramsey, I think. I had to learn so much shit for myself. Because it just wasn't stuff that we talked about. And when I have brought that up, like why didn't we ever talk about that? We just didn't know that we needed to. And then I think my parents were my age with two kids and they were just figuring it out also. - Kelly grew up in Colorado Springs where her mom was a substitute teacher and her dad was an IT manager. What was money like growing up? - Confusing. My parents were doing very, very, very well before 2008. And then the recession happened. And so I remember, all I remember is going from we don't talk about it and really aren't worried about it to like we can't buy milk anymore and we only go into town once a week. I remember that being like frustrating, confusing, but I could tell that my parents were really upset and anxious and so it wasn't something where I felt like I could be curious about it. It was just kind of like, this is how life is now. No questions asked. I don't remember having any conversations about money. I don't remember ever learning about money. I kind of wish I had had allowance because maybe I would have learned sooner like what budgeting was and learned at a younger age. Maybe some of those natural consequences of like, okay, this is the money that you have. So if you spend this money on this stuffed animal, then you don't have any more money until you're next to allowance, right? Or whatever. I just, I wasn't taught anything about it. I mean, nothing. I went into my adult life having absolutely no clue about money. Kelly's total spending for day two was $0 with a surprise income of a thousand. And that brings us to day three. Day three turned out to have another fun surprise. Kelly helped throw a lip filler party for their clients at the Med Spa where she works. So as a reward, her boss said she could get a treatment for free. So I got lip injections, which is not something I ever thought I would do, But if they're free, why the hell not?
really cool. We did over $10,000 today at this spa and we've had some really good days like that where it's 10, 15, 20, 25, sometimes more in a day which is incredible. Days like today where there's a lot of money passing through my hands. It's such an interesting type of day. It does sometimes I do see the dichotomy of like having my feelings about money where I feel like trapped and like it's something I'm never going to escape where I can't work hard enough to get out of this and then sometimes I see people come in and because I work at the front desk I build those invoices and I see the tickets and I know how much they're about to spend and some of these people it's like seven or eight grand and they won't even stop at the desk to like hear how much it was. They're just like okay thank you guys so much for everything. Give me a call. You have my card on file and I'll see you in four weeks and they just walk out the door and they don't know or care that I'm about to charge eight thousand dollars to their card like that is incredible. It's insane to me and then my boss taught me at one point like in shock about that and she was like that make you look mad and I was like no it's not even mad like I guess jealous maybe I'm jealous that someone has that experience of life that I you know I don't think I'll ever experience that maybe I will but I just think they have a different experience of being alive. I did end up spending more money today than I anticipated I got gas and I thought that Kelly got gas for her car some pretzel bites and a coke bringing her total for the day to seventy five dollars not a bad day and we'll see what we do tomorrow. Good night. You talked in your audio diary about the women at your work who don't even stop to see how many the thousands of dollars you're charging to their card. Yeah. Have you ever been that carefree about money? No. No. I have never felt that kind of freedom around money. I think about money every day multiple times a day and sometimes it wins like on Friday and then I had a tip a moment where it was like I'm really stressed out about money and I don't feel like you're on the same page with me and I was like I don't feel like you're on the same page with me because I'm not so stressed about money right now because actually I think we're doing well and the reality is we what that means is we just need to sit down and have a budget meeting and keep there are two possible relationships with money either it's in control of you or you're in control of it and the moment that you're afraid to look at your bank account you've lost control. So like that's the moment when you need to just dig into that feeling of fear and just redo your budget because it puts you back into that control. Do you feel uncontrolled? I think I feel as incontrolled as I possibly can be but God it's frustrating that there are these things that are bigger than us and out of our control yeah you know like God forbid our rent gets raised in November I don't I don't know but that shit is not in my control. [Music] Day 4. Morning! I got summoned to jury duty in the mail yesterday so I had to fill out a form basically and to see if I like qualify like capable and I am really hoping that I don't get called because I'm hourly and so depending on it gave like a range it was like for basically the whole month of September it was like 92 to 921 I think is what it said and so if it actually went on that long I would have to be unpaid that whole time because I don't have PTO and I wish that on the jury duty thing they gave a place where you could explain that but also I guess that that would mean that the only people on juries were people who were financially stable and were like salary employees or on some other kind of like some loads of like come but like it would be bad if there were no hourly employees on juries I guess but I hope it's not me. You know what is the worst those apps like Afterpay and Affirm and all of those I mean I love them and also I hate it one of my friends had a birthday last month and I bought her this frame-to-picture of she and I and I used the Afterpay app and so it's been like you know every week I have a payment of 19 dollars and so even though I didn't intend to spend any money today I actually spent 19 dollars because that payment came out and it's 19 dollars and 80 cents I'm pretty sure oh another thing that I forgot last weekend my prescription sunglasses broke which is devastating because it means I have to drive in my regular prescription glasses and when it is super bright outside that hurts my face and so I did have to get some prescription sunglasses and it was 125 anyway hopefully those get here soon I think that's about it over and out. Total spending for day four 144 dollars and 80 cents. Day five. Hi John. How are you? I'm doing good. I need some coffee. Okay I just left the harmin with my coffee. It's about a John. Eat my banana and then walk him back to work. Sometimes I it's really hard because I will do things like that like didn't make my coffee at home so I want to get a coffee out and sometimes I guess it's hard because I make these little choices all day about my life right now right here today in this moment and I have these thoughts like now I'm 20 dollars further away from my goal of having a child and it's really maybe that's maybe that's too much maybe that's so dramatic but that's how it feels sometimes like I really want these things I want to own a house I want to have a child but this morning I really wanted a coffee and it makes me feel selfish. After getting coffee Kelly went to work she ended up buying an audio book for 15 dollars and then after work she went straight to P.T. And after that we were driving home and we drove past this place that we drive past all the time it's called Boondocks but we like looked at it I guess this time as we were driving past and we saw that they have mini golf and so we decided we had some cash and so we decided to pop in and see how much it would cost and it was actually just $10 a piece to do mini golf so we used a $20 bill and we bought a round of mini golf and so we played a little bit and it actually was so cool we'll probably go back but it was really good I feel like we needed to play a little bit I think one of the hard things about feeling financially strained is that you the first thing to go away as play and I think that play is one of the ways that we connect with other people and so that can be hard when it doesn't feel like connection is in your budget so I'm glad that we decided to do that even though it wasn't something that we had planned for budgeted for. Total spending for day five $40.65. Day six. So we had a little dance party at our house for a little while this evening with a guest list of two it's just me and Ben and we put on we made Alexa do funky lights in the house and we uh
that dressed up a little like going to a club, outfits, costumes. And we were like, hey, do you come here often? Do you want to dance? And we just danced and kind of hung out and played together. And then after that, we watched an episode of The Bear. There was an episode that we watched tonight without giving too many spoilers, where one of the characters is in labor and she's delivering her child in. I solved, I mean, like the whole episode, I was crying. She's giving birth to her first kid. And I want that so much. I want my kids to come into an environment where it's not like this. I want them to feel freedom and ease. And I don't want them to ever have to worry. And it's funny to realize that. I know that my parents never wanted that for me either. And yet here we are. But I feel very privileged that no matter how bad it gets, I'm always going to have this net that some people won't have. And I know that that sets me apart. It makes me very, very lucky. And I'm super grateful for-- will never be starving. But I still want the thing. I want the family in the house and the ease. And not tens of thousands of dollars of debt. It is a little after midnight, so I really should probably go to bed and come out it again tomorrow. And maybe it won't feel quite like this. You talked a bunch in your diaries about wanting a kid. Yeah. What is the number or the situation that will tell you that you can do it? Farming just a random infusion of a million dollars. Yeah. I would really like to own a home before we have children. Because then we are building wealth and establishing an asset. I am afraid that if we had a kid before we owned a home, that we would be lifelong renters with essentially no accruing wealth, growing nothing for them. I want them to not have to feel this way. I don't want to pass on a legacy of being trapped. I wouldn't wish that on another person. In general, and I certainly wouldn't wish that on anyone that I brought into the world on purpose. Day seven. OK. This is Sunday. This is my last one. Today we went to Costco because we needed some almond milk and eggs. So the almond milk at Costco is $13. And then for $2,000, that's $9,000 I think. And then of course, we had to get the $1.50 hot dogs too. Because that is how you do life. When you have a Costco membership, you go and get your groceries. And then you get the hot dog. It's $1.50. It's never inflated. Altogether, Kelly's spending for the week was $581.83. What was the experience of tracking your finances for the week like? It helped me examine my mindset about it a little bit more. And it helped me actually not feel quite as bad. I feel a little bit better after having done it than I did before. Because this is exhausting. It's exhausting to be dual-income. No kids were both working full-time. We work really hard and barely creeping forward. I mean, by centimeters and getting out of debt and hoping to one day be able to buy a house and start a family. And that gets really heavy. Because it is just this big amorphous thing a lot of the time that is more of a feeling. And so maybe what was so helpful about it was that it did help me to be a little bit more present. Because it brought me back to like, OK, today. What money do I have and have I sent out into the world today, which is, of course, all that's in our control. Kelly lucked out and didn't get selected for Jerry Doody. And in the month after we recorded this episode, her debt dropped to $200,000. What we spend is an Odyssey original podcast. It's written and hosted by me, Courtney Harrell. Our producers are Margot Gray and Kristen Torres. Our editor is Jonathan Menjivar. Our executive producers are Maddie Sponkaiser and Leah Ries Dennis, theme song and original music by Matt McKinley, additional music from APM music, mixing by Pedro Alvira. Special thanks to Melissa Akiko Slotter, Joel Lovell, Genoise Berman, JD Crowley, Mora Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hillary Schuff, Sean Cherry, Laura Berman, and Hillary Van Ornam. If you want to be on What We Spend, we'd love to hear from you. Write us at what we spend
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