Welcome to Spending Notes, where we do a weekly deep dive into how our readers spend their cash.
Today, an engineer who makes $70,000 a year in Arlington, Texas, U.S., lets us into his week’s expenses.
Occupation: Engineer
Age: 29
Location: Arlington, Texas, U.S.
Salary: $70,000 (approx. $2,600 per pay period)
Day One
Coming from a large family in Texas, I’ve always enjoyed cooking with my parents and siblings. Since the gift-giving season is right around the corner, I think I’ll honor those moments with customized cooking aprons for everyone. Shutterfly has an amazing variety of personalized aprons for adults and kids, which is great. I’m uploading pictures on their design suite and adding text to them to come up with the perfect aprons for my family. I think they look really great, so I just put in my order. It should arrive sometime this week, so that will be nice to keep around until Christmas and properly prepare for the season.
Total: $300.32
Day Two
It’s Tuesday after work and I’m heading straight home to meet a repair company for HVAC in Arlington, Texas. My furnace is emitting smelly odors and I have no idea why. I trust their services because they always pull through to find the issue and fix it. The last time they were here, they gave my HVAC system regular maintenance and left it working like new for the rough summer. Their professional technicians just left my home, and my heater is back to smelling normal.
Total: $206.34
Day Three
As an Arlington resident, I enjoy visiting my town and everything about it. So I’m usually looking for new places to visit around the city. I found a new place to take my family to. It’s a planetarium at the University of Texas in Arlington. They do planetary shows with advanced software and realistic views of the solar system, stars, and galaxies. I know my kids will love this, so I’ll take them and the wife next weekend.
Total: $0.00
Day Four
Thursdays are usually pretty calm because most of my day involves meetings for the various projects I’m overseeing. Also, my teams and I usually go out for a team-building luncheon at any nearby restaurant on a monthly basis. Today is that day.
Total: $54.76
Day Five
It’s Friday and I usually take half the day off because of all the hours I work during the rest of the week. For today, I took my missus, K., out on a lunch date. K. loves Italian food, so I’m picking her up from her job and taking her to our favorite Italian restaurant, which happens to be very close to her job.
Total: $63.54
Day Six
Saturday’s here and it’s a day for the kids. I have two small children who are in constant need of play and fun. So we’re on our way to the water park so they can swim their energies away. They love the water and playing with the other kids, and K. and I love the sun and relaxing for a bit while the kids enjoy themselves splashing around.
Total: $30.53
Day Seven
It’s Sunday and my kids are a bit tired from yesterday, so K. and I are taking advantage of that to take care of finances and to prep our meals for the week. We finally finished budgeting and meal prepping, so we’re readying the kids to watch a movie before bedtime. I can positively say that we’re all ready to start a new week.
Total: $0.00
Total for the week: $655.49
