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I have been a long time blackberry follower and have followed the autonomous vehicle market closely here is my speculation on what is happening.
Blackberry announces monumentous venture with Motional and the stock tips 4%. Crazy! Recap: Amazon recognizes the cloud computing company that has best security will have dominant position in autonomous vehicle market. Partners up with BlackBerry/QNX to form IVY. Amazon/ BB Announce IVY will collect vehicle data and share it with automobile manufacturers (OEMs) at no cost to the OEM. They're only play (assuming they are still companies that are trying to make money) Is what they're not saying. They wanted to be the platform for all cars so they can provide V2V and V2X communication. This will not be a one-time licensing fee this will be a streaming fee.
Look at the history of personal computers. The first wave was the desktop that also evolved into the laptop. Apple and Microsoft dominated. The mobile computer was the next wave where BlackBerry got in early but did not keep up with innovation. Eventually Apple and Google dominated that market. It included cell phones and tablets. The third wave will be automobiles or more specifically autonomous vehicles. Remember, cell phone started with a mobile device used to make phone calls. It morphed into a mobile computer with one of its funtions (minor functions, if you're below 30) being telephone calls. The automobile in the future will be as morphed from cars today as smartphones are from flip phones. It will be a self-driving, infotainment, navigation, communication, security system. Every company: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Baidu, Tesla, recognize this and wants a piece of that pie. The ability to bill automobile owners monthly for streaming service similar to having Wi-Fi at home or in the office. Similar to paying for monthly mobile service.
Amazon struck first and not unlike a pickup basketball game chose the best player on the court - Blackberry. Amazon is a 1.6 trillion dollar company while BB was a $6 billion company. Amazon could have easily bought BB instead of joint venture on IVY. That is perplexing, It is tantamount to Warren Buffett asking me to do a deal with him. It is almost beneath Amazon to do joint ventures with companies that are valued at one half of one percent of their market share. So really what give? If BlackBerry has something it wants buy the whole company!
The explanation is simple. If Amazon made a play to buy BlackBerry they would have to submit a tender offer. They would be showing their cards. All the big boys would understand Amazon is trying to monopolize the best security to corner the autonomous vehicle market. There would be a bidding war by its Titan competitors. Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, or Google could have all countered with their own offers. No matter how committed Amazon was to buy BB there is no guarantee they would have come away victorious from a bidding war. Rather, they chose to enter a secret long-term contract with BlackBerry, airtight and with exclusivity.
Immediately Microsoft recognized what Amazon was up to and acted quickly to do a similar joint venture with Cruise/GM. Apple immediately tried to partner with Hyundai. Hyundai so flattered and obviously horny for Apple did not consider or ignored their previous commitment to QNX and BB. Yet, the deal fell apart because Hyundai was already committed to BB. Motional is a conglomerate owned by Hyundai and Kia that has developed autonomous driving for Lyft. Apple wanted to be the provider of V2V and V2X for Apple cars, Motional was already committed to BB/QNX and hence Amazon.
To be cont......
My apologies The day job just got in the way.
I've had some really good feedback and solid questions regarding my narrative.
Let me first explain why BlackBerry is so coveted. It's not it's AI. It's its cybersecurity. I mean through the BlackBerry phone craze, Pres Obama's phone, Even until today BB is supreme in secure connectivity. It may be the only company that has all US government certifications and has multiple national contracts. So picture a world where all cars are communicating with other cars through a cloud There are no human drivers. Now picture a North Korean or Russian hack of the system. Total shutdown of all commuter traffic paralyzing the whole country. That's the less scary thought. All cars are to accelerate to max and purposeful head on collisions, that's a nightmare terrorist scenario!
It's only a matter of time before a car commercial touts their luxury design and security.

 "Ford built tough, and BlackBerry safe" "Volvo crash tested and hack proof, safety is always our priority" 

One of the most important selling features is car autonomous communication safety. Let's face it once you can't drive your own car how many other options really matter? I know I would only choose an OEM with a BB secure OS.
I listened to the podcast where the ACS executive and the BlackBerry QNX exec answered questions about their joint venture. Amazon guy said the word "safety" in almost every sentence. Meanwhile it's not theoretical BlackBerry already is the platform for the autonomous driving software behind XPeng and recently also signed Canoo (spelling?).
There's no question as to what Amazon was after. Now go look at the timeline December 1st Blackberry announces joint venture with Amazon. Two or three weeks later GM announces joint venture with Cruz. Two more weeks and we're hearing rumors from the Hyundai side about their talks to build an Apple car. Apple does not confirm and Hyundai restates that they do not have an agreement but are talking towards one. Meanwhile, Apple is desperate to team up with a partner so they don't lose out on the autonomous market. I don't know how that's going to end. I'm curious if they're looking at Chinese automakers like BYD, Cherry, Geely.. then recently Ford and Google got together to announce that Google would be the infotainment center in Ford vehicles. Everybody's pairing up for the big dance. The prettiest girl in the room was BlackBerry and she had the most suitors.
Other data that leads me to my conclusions are Blackberry has recently filed a slew of patents related to V2V and V2X technology. In press conference releases BB refers to revenue "stream" from Amazon joint venture. Not just revenue or just fees. Stream indicates continuous collections like they had with their blackberry messenger service.
Okay why did Hyundai and Apple not consummate their joint venture? I think this is exactly related to the Motional-BB announcement we saw today. Motional and blackberry already an agreement to develop autonomous vehicles. Along comes Apple and flirts with Hyundai in co-developing autonomous vehicles. Hyundai, overly excited, leaks the news and happily sees their stock pop 20%. BlackBerry here's the news and is pretty surprised and pissed. BB violently objects waving their signed joint agreement. Apple investigates and discovers that the BB /QNX- Motional agreement leaves no room for Apple to develop anything with Hyundai (Motional corporate parent) that will not violate Hyundai's commitment to QNX and hence their nemesis Amazon. Apple terminates the courtship.
Imagine it's 1957 and the hot girl you're going steady with is being hit on by the handsome captain of the football team. You first use a few choice words and chase him off. Next you insist she start wearing your letter sweater So everybody knows she's spoken for.(No, I'm not that old, I just watch fair amount of TV). Blackberry insisted on formalizing their announcement with Motional lest any more unwanted suitors showed up. That is why I surmise the BB- Motional announcement was made today.
Why I think BB dropped today. The WSB frenzy is coming to an end. There are many retail investors and even hedge funds that bought put options on BB when the price was in the twenties. Exercising those options means the right to sell BB. Further there are plenty of retail investors caught holding the bag. They are Looking at the stock price before WSB and figuring the base price and how much above it their stock is at. For GameStop and AMC The price should be $2. That's where it was and would have stayed without WSB promotion.
For BB the price organically grew from $6 in late November to $14 in early January. This doubling in the stock price happened before WSB started touting it. This was secondary to Amazon announcement, Facebook settlement, a slew of positive press releases and articles on BB's future. The uneducated investor looks at the stock price and sees that blackberry climb from $6 naturally that's where it must be reverting to. Yes there are silly investors dumping BlackBerry at $13 thinking that It is headed back $6.
As far as the good news on Motional. There will be a stock increase and positive reaction tomorrow or the next day. bad news always has an immediate effect to drive the stock down but good news sometimes takes a while to set in.

I seem to remember someone doing this a few years back and really enjoying it, so I thought I'd give it a shot with the condensed schedule leaving so many games on the schedule each night. I'm ranking each game in three categories: competitiveness, importance, and style points/storylines (which includes star power, the style of basketball, and any intriguing stories to watch). I'll include a survey at the end where you can predict the winners of each game!
Let me know if this is something you'd like to see again!
10) Milwaukee Bucks (1-1) vs. New York Knicks (0-2) at 7:30 pm EST
Where to Watch: League Pass
Spread: Milwaukee -11
Last Meeting: January 14th, 2020. RJ Barrett drained five threes and Bobby Portis scored 20 off the bench, but the Bucks dominated the Knicks at Fiserv Forum 128-102. The two teams combined for a whopping 79 points in the third quarter.
The Bucks have won their last five meetings with the Knicks, with the last New York win coming in an overtime thriller at the Garden in December of 2018.
Competitiveness: A championship contender that dismantled the Warriors by 40 facing the Knicks on the tail end of a back-to-back. Not much else to say here. 1.5/10
Importance: This game is essentially a scheduled win for the Bucks, and a chance for the Knicks to test their young guys and let them grow up a little. Unfortunate that Obi Toppin will be on the sidelines for this one. 2/10
Style Points: The high-flying Bucks offense has been off to another hot start, topping the 120 point mark in both of their games. The Knicks' young guns have shown promise and made so flashy plays, but they also turn the ball over a lot. Neither team tends to foul a lot or shoot a ton of free throws, which will help game flow.
Some might keep an eye on Giannis' free throw shooting, but the real story to watch is RJ Barrett's three point accuracy. He lit it up from distance against Indiana, but struggled mightily against Philly. Can he take a step forward in that department this season?
Bonus points for the MSG crew calling this game. 6/10
Overall Rating: 3/10
9) Brooklyn Nets (2-0) vs. Charlotte Hornets (0-2) at 7:00 pm EST
Where to Watch: NBA TV
Spread: Brooklyn -7.5
Last Meeting: February 22nd, 2020. The Nets used a third quarter explosion to turn a comfortable win into a rout as they won 115-86. Luwawu-Cabarrot led the team in scoring with 21, while Garrett Temple of all people snagged eleven boards.
Competitiveness: The Nets have steamrolled over their competition so far, blowing out the Warriors and Celtics by 20+ points. The Hornets have struggled with two losses to non-contenders, and come into this game on the wrong end of a back-to-back. 1.5/10
Importance: A contending Nets team cannot afford to drop games like this one, especially in the early part of the season when there are so many eyeballs on KD and Kyrie. The Hornets could really use a positive performance to get their season headed in the right direction. 4/10
Style Points: The Nets have stars all over the court and have looked like a juggernaut early this season, making them one of the most intriguing teams to watch, and a fun one too, as they've played fast and made lots of threes. Charlotte ranked last in pace of play last season but seems to be trying to pick things up. You'll get the Charlotte crew for this game on NBA TV, and they call a fun game.
Terry Rozier and Gordon Hayward are two guys to pay attention to- Rozier dropped 42 on a Cavs team that sucks at defending point guards. Is he headed for a breakout season? Hayward was shut down by the Thunder last night and will look to get things going. Plus LaMelo Ball! 8/10
Overall: 4.4/10
8) Golden State Warriors (0-2) vs. Chicago Bulls (0-2) at 8:00 pm EST
Where to Watch: League Pass
Spread: Golden State -2.5
Last Meeting: December 6th, 2019. Glenn Robinson III made the go-ahead layup with a minute left and a very different looking Warriors team beat the Bulls 100-98 in Chicago. Denzel Valentine was ejected in the third quarter for yelling at the Warriors' bench.
Competitiveness: The Warriors have been blown out by two great teams so far. The Bulls have been blown out by two mediocre teams and just played a deflating contest against the Pacers last night. 4.5/10
Importance: Both teams could really use their first win of the season. The Warriors cannot afford to lose to teams like the Bulls if they're going to contend for the playoffs. This probably still figures as a matchup of two non-contenders, though. 5.5/10
Style Points: The Bulls have lots of exciting young players, but they seem turnover-prone and have struggled to score. Neither team has been able to stop literally anyone on defense so far (lol thanks Golden State for taking Wiggins), so there's a chance this turns into one of those ridiculous shootouts where both teams top 70 in the first half.
Patrick Williams looked good in his first game against the Hawks, but the Pacers were able to shut him down. Watching him adjust to the breakneck pace of games and the new level of competition will be interesting. The Warriors will need to find other sources of offense besides Curry and Wiseman, and this game is a perfect chance for them to do so. Definitely opt for the Chicago broadcast if you tune in. 4.5/10
Overall: 4.8/10
** 7)Philadelphia 76ers (2-0) vs. Cleveland Cavaliers (2-0) at 7:30 pm EST**
Where to Watch: League Pass
Spread: Philadelphia -6
Last Meeting: February 26th, 2020. The Sixers had to play most of the game without their two best players as Joel Embiid left in the first quarter with a sprained shoulder. The Cavs, then the worst team in the East, led the entire way and won 108-94.
Competitiveness: The Cavs look like a much better team this year as Sexton has another year under his belt and they have Drummond underneath. There's a long way to go to challenge the Sixers, though, and they played an exhausting two-overtime trench war with the Pistons last night while Philly coasted to an easy win over the Knicks. 5/10
Importance: Definitely a litmus test game for the Cavs- can they hang with Philly and prove that they can be that dangerous team no one wants to face in the east play-in tournament? The 76ers might be looking past this game as they have a big clash with Tampa Bay coming up on Tuesday. 4/10
Style Points: This game gives us two matchups between stars. Joel Embiid has been on a mission to start this season, following up his 29/14 against Washington with a 27/10 against the Knicks. His matchup with Andre Drummond will be one to watch. At point guard, Simmons-Sexton could be an even more exciting face-off. The Cavs have played a more fun style of basketball this season, using Sexton to ignite a high pressure defense that stole a win in Detroit. That double-overtime win might prove costly tonight, though, when they run out of gas against a deeper and more talented Sixers team. Bonus points for the Cavs having that really fun color guy, I guess. 6.75/10
Overall: 5.25/10
6) Minnesota Timberwolves (2-0) vs. Los Angeles Lakers (1-1) at 10:00 pm EST
Where to watch: NBA TV
Spread: Los Angeles -11
Last Meeting: December 8th, 2019. AD dropped half a hundred and LeBron put up 32 and thirteen assists as the Lakers won a 142-125 slugfest. The Wolves hung around and trailed by only seven after three quarters before LA pulled away.
Competitiveness: The Wolves are off to a surprising 2-0 start, including an impressive win in Utah last night. Most would write this off as a scheduled loss, though, with a back-to-back against the defending champs and KAT getting dinged up at the end of the Jazz game. Still, it will be interesting to see how this new-look Wolves team trades punches with AD and Bron in the first half. 6/10
Importance: The Lakers seem to finally be settling into the new season after a disappointing showing on opening night, and will be looking for another statement win. Some Wolves fans have speculated that they will rest KAT after his injury scare tonight. I'd expect him to play, but no one in Minnesota thinks they will win this game. 3/10
Style Points: Anthony Edwards going up against two of the best in the game? DLo back in LA? Upstarts against the defending champs? Top notch storylines for this game, where the first half will be a good litmus test for Minnesota, before fatigue probably sets in for guys like Edwards and Culver and the game gets pretty ugly.
Minnesota's defense looks much improved this season, and their explosive bench can keep this game fun. And you know what you're getting with the Lakers' stars. Unfortunately the NBA TV rights to this game mean most fans will get the LA crew and miss out on the top notch Fox Sports North announcers. 8/10
Overall: 5.6/10
5) San Antonio Spurs (2-0) vs. New Orleans Pelicans (1-1) at 7:00 pm EST
Where to Watch: League Pass
Spread: New Orleans -5
Last Meeting: August 9th, 2020. The Spurs and Pels faced off for a high-scoring showdown in the bubble that saw the two teams combined for 77 fourth quarter points. JJ Redick went off and hit eight threes and Zion chipped in 25, but the rest of their teammates shit the bed and the Spurs won 122-113.
Competitiveness: The Spurs are off to a fast start, most recently squeaking out an impressive win over the Raptors last night. The Pelicans have produced mixed results, but beat Tampa by a more impressive margin and have an extra day of rest. Expect a close one early, with New Orleans having a sizeable edge late. 6.5/10
Importance: Both teams figure to be in the hunt for the final playoff spots and will see each other plenty this season as they are both in the same division. I doubt the Spurs would sweat this B2B loss too much, though. 7/10
Style Points: Zion put up a highlight-worthy 32 and 14 on Christmas Day against the Heat, and the Pels look like a new team on defense, making them one of the most interesting squads to watch this year. Ingram, Redick, Hart, and Lonzo can combine for an offensive explosion at any time. The Spurs can play kind of a bland style sometimes, especially with 35 year old LaMarcus Aldridge playing on a back-to-back. Dejounte Murray, who just posted his first career triple double and looks much improved this season, will be an interesting to player to watch today. This one feels like it could be a snooze-fest or a barn-burner, with nothing in between. 6.75/10
Overall: 6.7/10
4) Boston Celtics (1-1) vs. Indiana Pacers (2-0) at 8:00 pm EST
Where to Watch: League Pass
Spread: Boston -2.5
Last Meeting: Tuesday March 10th, 2020. The Celtics were the last team the Pacers faced before Miss Rona stepped in and put a stop to the basketball for awhile. Marcus Smart made the go-ahead layup to rescue Boston in the final minute after they blew a 19 point lead, and they held on to win 114-111. Sabonis posted a 28-9-8 night for Indiana.
Competitiveness: The Celtics have the rest advantage, as they got the night off to lick their wounds after a Christmas Night Stomping at the hands of KD and Kyrie, while the Pacers had to take the floor last night and beat up on the Bulls. The Pacers figure to be in the middle of the playoff pack, while the Celtics would like to challenge the Bucks and Nets at the top, and this game will be a huge early measuring stick for both teams. The Pacers will have home floor, which makes this anyone's game. 8/10
Importance: It's never too early to have a big game for playoff seeding! The Celtics will be anxious to prove that their opening game win against Milwaukee was no fluke, while the Pacers need to show us that they can beat someone better than the Knicks and Bulls. 7.5/10
Style Points: This is where this game kind of falls short. Tatum, Kemba, Sabonis, Brown, and others all provide lots of star power, but aren't the big names featured elsewhere on this list, and both teams tend to play slower, more defensive-oriented basketball. The Celtics' thumping at the hands of the Nets is more of a story for Brooklyn than for Boston, and Indiana has maybe been the playoff team that jumped off the page less than anyone else so far. Add in a game that's only broadcast locally and that overlaps with every other game but two and this game takes a bump in a packed Sunday night slate.
Still, this should be a very good game between two playoff teams, and a fun one to tune in for down the stretch if the Pacers keep it close. 5.5/10
Overall: 7/10
T-2) Orlando Magic (2-0) vs. Washington Wizards (0-2) at 7:00 pm EST
Where to Watch: League Pass
Spread: Washington -1.5
Last Meeting: Last night! The Magic and Wizards squared off for their first of back-to-back games, which was an exciting back-and-forth contest. The Magic had the edge on the glass for much of the game, which only intensified late as they pulled away and the Wizards started pressing and taking bad shots. Beal went off for 39 points while Westbrook posted a triple-double, proving that they can in fact play together just fine.
Competitiveness: Last night's game was a see-sawing battle for most of the evening. Orlando looks like the better team and one of the more improved squads in the East, if their win against Miami is any indication. Still, beating a team on their home floor twice in a row is extraordinarily difficult, and the Wizards get to regroup and see if they can fix their rebounding woes against the same team. Expect another entertaining toss-up!9/10
Importance: Both teams are in roughly the same boat: improved squads who will likely find themselves sitting on the edge of the Eastern Conference playoff field. They won't see each other again in the first half of the season, and to pick up a quick two games on their competition would be an enormous boost for Orlando. 7.5/10
Style Points: The Wizards have been playing a fun new style with Russ and Bradley Beal sharing the load on offense, and early speculation about how the pair will get along on the court has been promising. The Magic get the job done with comparatively little star power, but Vucevic has always been one of the more underrated players in the league and deserves some recognition. Terrence Ross and Davis Bertans will be other players to keep an eye on- Ross has been extremely hot offensively in his first two games, while Bertans is a streaky shooter who can be the key to Washington winning or losing.
Perhaps the most interesting storyline, though, is the back-to-back baseball-style two game series. College leagues are trying this out across the country and we've seen in leagues like the MAAC, Mountain West, and others how hard it is for superior teams to beat the same team on consecutive nights. We've also gotten a glimpse of this in the NBA preseason. This time, the teams are very evenly matched. How will the Wizards adjust tonight? What effect will the wonky scheduling have? 8/10
Overall: 8.2/10
T-2) Dallas Mavericks (0-2) vs. Los Angeles Clippers (2-0) at 3:30 pm EST
Where to Watch: NBA TV
Spread: Los Angeles -5
Last Meeting: August 30th, 2020. The Clippers knocked the Mavs out of the first round of the playoffs, winning Game 6 after the game was moved back due to the player strike. Doncic dropped 38 and Dorian Finney-Smith chipped in 16, but only one other Dallas played cracked double digits. L.A. moved on to the next round where they cruised through the first four games against the Nuggets and...oh wait hahahahahahahahahaha.
Competitiveness: The Mavs need to get their shit together. They posted a close opening night loss against the Suns and then got their doors kicked in by the Lakers... neither of those are alarming results, but they're not the mark of a playoff team. The Clippers are angry at the way last season ended, ready to take it out on the league, and they've looked like a juggernaut with Nic Batum in their lineup, putting up convincing wins over the other top two teams in the West. Doncic can keep any game close, but he needs his teammates to carry some of the load, and the Clippers are still the clear favourites here. 6.5/10
Importance: Dallas needs to show that they can beat playoff teams, as their schedule for the next few weeks doesn't get any easier after tonight. They'll face the Heat, Rockets, Magic, Nuggets, and Pelicans. They'll have to figure out who their second and third best scoring options are in the process. Both teams will be looking for a statement win on a national stage- they're the only teams playing in the afternoon tomorrow and get a national broadcast on NBA TV. 8/10
Style Points: Kawhi... Luka... PG13.... could you really get any more star power? The Mavs looking for revenge on the team that knocked them out of the playoffs by beating them in a Sunday Showcase game (albeit on NBA TV) in their house provides a great story to go along with the stars. The Clippers have been red hot from three point range to start the season, and a Mavs defense that allowed 138 points to the Lakers will probably provide plenty of opportunities for more fireworks. If not for the potential of a lopsided final score, this would be the #1 game of the day. Tune into this instead of football on a relatively light NFL day. 10/10
Overall: 8.2/10
1) Phoenix Suns (1-1) vs. Sacramento Kings (2-0) at 9:00 pm EST
Where to Watch: League Pass
Spread: Phoenix -3.5
Last Meeting: Last night! Sacramento jumped out to a 15-2 lead, but the Suns almost immediately cut that in half, and tied the game early in the third quarter. The teams traded baskets for much of the second half, with DeAaron Fox and Buddy Hield carrying the offensive load for the Kings, who held on to win thanks to some timely offensive rebounding from Richaun Holmes.
Competitiveness: Aside from the early flurry from the Kings, these teams were as evenly matched as they come, trading punches for the entire second half. The Suns probably won't shoot 11-44 from three point range again tonight, and the Kings will probably take better care of the basketball. Regardless, we're in for a fascinating rematch of two Western Conference playoff hopefuls. 10/10
Importance: Both the Suns and the Kings are exciting young teams with opportunities to improve on last season, and both figure to end up in that 7-10 seed range in the Western Conference. These two teams won't see each other again in the first half of the season, and the Suns cannot afford to drop back-to-back contests against one of their competitors for the last couple of playoff spots. The Kings, meanwhile, were largely overlooked by fans and writers heading into the season and look poised to outperform expectations. Going 3-0 to start the season would do a lot to quiet the doubters. Regardless, this two game series will likely end up mattering down the road. 8/10
Style Points: The Suns were the talk of the NBA Bubble in August and have continued turning heads with their opening night win against the Mavs. Chris Paul's presence at point guard allows them to run a better offense than "just let Devin Booker chuck as many threes as he wants and hope Ayton rebounds enough to let us eke out a close win". They're still a fun, up-tempo team that shoots lots of threes, and finally play some good defense if that's your thing too. Sacramento announced themselves as a team not to be slept on with their opening night win against the Nuggets (thanks Will Barton), and the trend continued last night. They've attempted the fewest threes of any team through two games this year, and their game plan of Fox driving and everyone crashing the glass gives us an intriguing contrast of styles.
Like I mentioned for the Wizards game, the baseball-style series also presents us with interesting questions to answer in this game (how will the Suns adjust on the glass? can the Kings beat the same team twice in a row?), and a nerve-wracking two games between two teams who are very close in talent level and playoff hopes. Perhaps most importantly, Phoenix's broadcast is the only one on League Pass so far that has figured out their on-court audio and actually sounds normal. Keep that one in mind! 8/10
Overall: 8.7/10
I also made a Google Form where you can pick all the winners of today's games... I'll link that below. Thought it would be cool to see how Reddit does predicting the winners. I'll close the form at 3:30 when the Mavs and Clips tip off. I'll try to pare this down length-wise if and when I do this again. Thanks for reading!
Pick the winners here!

Sorry I was scheduled to post yesterday but it was a crazy day.
Background: I just got married and live in a apartment with my husband.
Growing up I didn’t know much about money, my parents emphasized that you never know if someone has money (wealth) or is living beyond their means. My mom was really strict when it came to me working because she thought it would interfere with my school work. I was never allowed to have a job in high school and even early in college. I got a summer job later in college when I had to work. I would babysit in high school though and saved around half the checks I received. I had about $2000 saved up before entering college.
Income progression:
First job (2015): $20/hr temp for a year although I earned more because I could work OT. Probably made around $43k that year, temp job ended and most of us got laid off.
Second job (2016): $39k I was really eager to get back to work and settled for the first job I got, this was a government job and I literally hated it. I quit after a year.
Time off and third job (2017-2019): I took some time off of my last job to figure out what I wanted to do with life and contemplated picking up and moving to a brand new city. I was living a really reckless life at this point as well and was trying to find balance. I finally landed a job doing tech consulting at $45k, I was good at my job and got a promotion and raise to $52k after a year, but I was still severely underpaid. In early 2019 I started interviewing with other companies.
Fourth job (2019-present): I switched companies and got hired on at $80k. I like company and the resources it provides. Over the last two years I’ve been promoted and received some annual raises taking me to $93k currently (my currently salary break down will be from last paycheck which was pre-raise and still has my husband on my health insurance)
section one: assets and debt
Inheritance: I have a pretty hefty windfall, over a couple mil is all I will say. I try not to use it and act like it’s not there but it did afford me to pay for finishing college and a car amongst some other things.
Retirement: total: $92k
20k in a Roth IRA, $12k in a traditional IRA, $52k combined in current and rolled over traditional 401k, $5k in HSA, and $4k in my brokerage. My first couple of jobs did not offer retirement options (temp) so I was late to start saving. Wish I did earlier!
HYSA: $25k, saving for a house
Equity: nada
Credit Card balance: $1,000
Section two: income
9-5 job in consulting: 93k
Side hustle: anywhere from $200-500 a month, I’d prefer not to indulge any details about this.
section three: Monthly expenses
My last direct deposit paycheck: $4,025.33
Rent/utilities/HOA/cell: my husband is my landlord and I’m on his cell plan, I pay him anywhere from $1,000 to $1,200 a month depending on other outstanding bills we have
IRA: I average $500 a month, I just got married so I’m switching from Roth to traditional due to our increase in income
Groceries: I average about $400 a month between weekly produced deliveries and buying from the store. I buy all groceries for my husband and I and he usually pays when we dine out.
Eating out: $50 for the occasional lunch
Car insurance: $116
Domestic partner health insurance: $550, I paid extra for my husband (we weren’t married yet but literally just got married last month) to be on my health insurance. He is on his companies in the new year and I haven’t gotten paid yet but I’m excited for the extra money!!!
HSA: $300
Traditional 401k: $890
Health insurance for myself:$160
Amazon prime: $12.99
Spotify: $9.99
Various workout subscriptions: $200, I’m still going to in class workouts around 5 times a week, it keeps me sane and on track
Day one:
8 am: It’s the Tuesday after Christmas and one of the best work weeks because everyone is still off for the holidays! I sign on to my computer and make some green tea to start the day followed by a bowl of cereal.
3pm: Since it’s a slow day for work i am able to dedicate my afternoon to making some Bolognese sauce, I forgot how labor intensive it was! I go to the Italian store to get some 00 flour to try to make homemade pasta and some wine while I’m there, $19.98. I fail miserably. I don’t think I let the dough sit long enough and didn’t roll it thin enough. Good thing I have some store bought pappardelle.
7 pm: My husband, J and I have the bolognese with a side salad, yum!! We clean up and start watching a new show a friend recommended (Your honor). 10pm: Naturally I fall asleep on the couch and then zombie sleep walk into the bedroom.
daily total:$19.98
Day two:
8 am: I ended up not sleeping well last night. J woke up ahead of me and made sausage and eggs. I don’t like eggs so I just have sausage and make a smoothie. I do a little work but it’s still slow.
1 pm: I post up with my laptop and my bed and see that there is a new season of 90 day fiancé...A guilty pleasure of mine. I manage to catch up on the existing episodes then I browse the subreddit to catch up on the shit talk and opinions. I do a training in the background during all of this as well.
5pm: I start to get dressed and head to a workout class. I have a side hustle after this but don’t really want to divulge. Just an FYI I stay masked up during both of these occasions and distanced.
10pm: I get and reheat some bolognese for a late dinner and off to bed.
daily total: $0
Day 3: 9:30 am: It’s New Year’s Eve, but it doesn’t feel like it. I took today off of work. I get up lazily and J and I make breakfast. He makes the bacon and eggs and I make the smoothie. We don’t really have plans due to covid but decided to meet up with some neighborhoods while the ball drops and have a glass of champagne outside (distanced) later that night.
3 pm: I remember I’m having my cousin over tomorrow for a late Christmas celebration so I run out to Safeway to get some food for it, as well as some items to make drinks that night, $79.59. I decide my drink for the night is going to be a blackberry fizz and I’m excited to use some new bar tools we have. I get home and put the groceries away and then J and I clean our place. I’m always amazed at how much of my fucking hair gets everywhere! We have steak, sweet potatoes and a salad for dinner.
8 pm: J and I start drinking and FaceTime some friends. I did pretty well with the blackberry fizz.
11:50 pm: we head outside and meet our neighbors and toast with some champagne. It’s too fucking cold and we head in after 20 mins or so. We continue watching the NYE show, FaceTime a couple more friends and then I pass out around 2 am.
daily total:$79.59
Day 4: 10 am: I wake up and am not hungover! We make breakfast with some biscuits this time. I clean up from breakfast and the remnants of the night before. J and I park our butts on the couch and stay there for a couple of hours watching TV.
2 pm: I get up and start to cook dinner just to realize I forgot something...ugh. I run out to HT to pick up some shallots and a couple other things, $19.97
3:00 pm: I get home and am ready to cook. I start with the braised short rib and while I’m browning them my apartment is getting really smoky and the smoke alarm keeps going off...J takes the batteries out. I put the short ribs in the oven to really cook and start on the sides. First, the mushroom risotto. I get the risotto prepared and even enjoy the wine I used to cook it. Lastly I season the vegetables I’m roasting (potatoes, parsnips and carrots).
6:00 pm: My cousin shows up and we all exchange late Christmas gifts. Managed to score a gift card to crate and barrel 😍.
7 pm: Dinner is finally ready and I serve my creation and it’s received well. We have tea after dinner and chat. Around 9 they head out and we clean up.
10 pm: I do my skincare routine, just switched to a new retinol (dr lancer) and it is scorching my skin so I only do it a couple times a week. J and I snuggle in bed and watch some it’s always sunny.
daily total: $19.97
Day 5:
*I want to preface this by saying I made some poor dietary choices this day and if stomach stuff weirds you out, just skip this day.
9:30 am: I got some great sleep and wake up to get ready for A workout class. I head to class and get a good workout in.
12 pm: I have some time to kill before I get my hair done so I stop by this place In old town to eat. I get Mac n cheese and a cherry coke $9.99, since it’s covid and there is no indoor dining I eat in my car and then walk around the shops on king st. I hop back in my car and head to the salon to get my hair done.
2pm: I get some highlights and a cut and it turns out really well (I already had a deposit down, the remaining including tip was $160.)
4:00 pm: I head back home and change since I’m still in workout clothes. I snack on some pumpkin seeds and wait for J to get home. It’s pretty nice out this day so we decide to go somewhere for outdoor dining and drinks. I get an optimal wit and loaded tots and chicken tenders, $32.20.
8:30 pm: It’s nice to be outside but we start getting cold and head home. It’s about a 8-10 minute drive home and about 4 minutes in my stomach starts hurting and about 2 minutes later I’m realizing this is an emergency. In recent years, my window between feeling the urge and having to go has shrunken, not sure if this is aging or possibly IBS. We get to be about a minute away and I tell J to pull up and let me out. I get out and literally run to the closest bathroom on the ground level. I didn’t make it. I text j to bring me clothes and clean myself up and throw away my clothes.
10:30 pm: I go upstairs and take a shower and then cry and head to bed.
daily total: $202.19 and my dignity
Day 5: 10 am:It’s Sunday, which is a nice lazy day for us. I eat some oats for breakfast and kiwi on the side for a guy friendly meal.
1pm: J posts up on the couch to watch football. I alternate between reading and going down a rabbit hole of sustainable beauty products, over the course of a couple hours I debate buying a composter for our place as well as new moisturizer. I decide I probably should just use what I still have.
6 pm: I reheat the leftover short rib and risotto and make a salad to go with it for dinner. I have a glass of red wine as well.
8 pm: we head to bed and watch Soul, I loved it!!!
daily total: $0
Day 6:
9 am: I wake up a little late and log on to my computer. Meanwhile I have skyr with raspberries for breakfast. I have a couple meetings and listen to a podcast in the background, (hidden brain.)
1:30 pm: I make some chicken pesto for lunch and do a training for work.
5:00 pm: I get ready and head to a HIIT class. I’m late and the class literally kills me. I haven’t done much cardio recently and I’m out of shape. My chest feels heavy for the rest of the night.
6:30 pm: I come home and J and I make steak with sweet potatoes and parsnips plus some rice.
8:30 pm: I’m practically falling asleep on the couch. I wake up around 9 and make myself some magnesium tea and head to bed. J and I watch some shameless and now I can’t fall asleep! I play on my phone and toss and turn, I’m not sure if I actually ever fell asleep.
Day 7:
7:00 am: since I didn’t sleep I cancel my workout class for the morning and get charged $10.00. I try to sleep for another 2 hours.
9:30 Am: I finally get moving and make some toast for breakfast. I send some emails and have a meeting. I still see bolognese in my fridge, I freeze it for some future lasagna.
4:00 pm: there is no food in our fridge so I go out to the grocery store. On the way I stop for gas, $15.27. I don’t know why but I never get a full tank. I make it to HT, I hate buying anything more than what can fit in a basket but I fill that baby to the brim and can barely carry it, $49.54.
5:15 pm: I’m home and start making dinner. I make some butter chicken from the honeysuckle cookbook and add in some mushrooms. I make some brown rice to serve with.
6:30 pm: we eat dinner. It’s good the first night but probably better the 2nd night because the sauce thickens a little more. I pack up the leftovers and do the dishes.
8:00 pm: I take a shower and try on some new bras I bought on Black Friday that just arrived. They’re super cute and comfy (bought from negative underwear). I do my skin routine and make some chamomile tea with honey.
9:30 pm: I got a new manduka yoga mat for Christmas and bust it out for some yoga/meditation before bed. I join j in bed and we start watching some stupid Adam Sandler movie, it was so terrible I fell asleep 15 mins in.
daily total: $74.79
Overview: Compared to other weeks in December, this one was on the lower side. I was finished paying for presents and am trying to save more money now. Yesterday I ended up buying new pants and booties as well as ordering Chinese for lunch. The DC area is crazy right now and we were under curfew...so we’ll probably be laying low. Stay safe y’all.
weekly total: $396.52

My first tournament was in November of 2017. Shorehammer in Maryland. I traveled down from NY with a buddy of mine and we made a weekend out of it, arriving early and spending time together in the desolate, summer town of Oceanside, Maryland. I was still fresh to 40k, only haven gotten into the hobby the previous year, introduced by the same friend I was bunking with. My army was Grey Knights, hand painted, and one of the few armies that had a codex at the beginning of 8th edition.
I had done alright, going 2-1 but not placing anywhere high in the rankings. I had had a good time, and it was during that trip that my life began down a path of massive change, a process of personal (and painful) growth that I wouldn’t fully emerge from until over three years later. I still haven’t fully emerged from that period of growth, if I’m being honest.
But nonetheless, we had a great time.
Right off the bat, I need you to know, that I am a terrible 40k player. I jokingly (if only to hide the pain /s) that I am the worst 40k player, and I have the stats to back that statement up. In their 8th edition codex, the Blood Angels had a stratagem that would allow a unit that had come onto the board from reserves (i.e. deep strike) to roll 3d6 for a charge, pretty much only needing a 9 to succeed. Well that was the stratagem that I used many times on my Smash-captain; who also had a relic that would allow the reroll of failed charges. So how many times did I fail to roll a 9 on three six-sided dice, rerolling? More times than I can remember.
I wish I was joking.
My least favorite part of the hobby is the actual playing of the game. That’s not to say that I dislike playing 40k, quite the opposite. I enjoy it immensely. But I enjoy the fluff even more (I will always refer to the lore as ‘fluff,’ so get over it.) I enjoy painting all my dudes, giving them names, squading them up and making them mine. I even have a Word document saved where I have organized all my Blood Angels’ models into their proper squads, names and all, within the Blood Angels chapter. I scoured through the 8th and 9th edition codices, the “How to Paint Blood Angels” book, for any scrap of fluff for previously named characters and units. That’s the part of the hobby I enjoy most.
So why do I want to play competitively?
I’m not so sure, to be honest. Maybe it’s because I have never been competitive with really anything in my life. Not with sports (I played football from seventh grade onwards until I was cut my senior year, and to put that in its proper context, know that I am currently 6’8”. Yea, I know,) not with school, not with work. That doesn’t mean I don’t strive for bigger and better things. Rather, it means I don’t like to see the other person lose. Maybe it’s the empath in me but seeing the other person lose isn’t always worth me winning.
I recently played a small, 1,000 point game against my brother. I think his first of ninth edition. He rolled terribly and I rolled pretty well (shocking.) And as I watched him get more and more frustrated I felt bad. And that’s where that thought came to me: I don’t like seeing people lose and I really don’t like to see people lose because I’ve won. And that’s not to say that he’s a sore loser. Quite the opposite. But he’s still young, compared to me anyways. Maybe I don’t get competitive is because I was a sore loser growing up. So the best way to never lose is to never even compete in the first place. There’s thought-for-the-day. And a sad one. It took me a long time to lose graciously. And it took me even longer to lose and then to learn from it.
Leading up to my most recent tournament I entered (and only my second ever) I played a practice game and I brought my notepad with me, intent on keeping track of my mistakes and my thoughts during the game, so I could learn from the experience, regardless of whether I won or not (I lost) and the first thing I wrote was:
I am here to learn, not to win.
That simple thought changed the whole experience for me. And then I played a few more practice games, and learned from them too.
And then I went to my second tournament. Lord Mortis at Mythicos Studios in New Jersey. I got stomped, three times in a row.
My first match was against Henry. The same lad I had practiced against and lost twice before. We jokingly referred to him as my nemesis. Him and his damn greenskins. But it was the best game against him thus far, and he said as much. And I did play better than I had. I was more confident in my moves, in my deployment, in my rolls. I’m convinced the energy we put behind our dice rolls affects their outcomes. If we’re confident in our rolls, they’re confident in their results.
The score came out to 65-90, Henry.
I was a little too aggressive with my Impulsor full of Bladeguard and a Judiciar. I had ran it up the field and charged it into some of the Ork gun line, intent on tagging a few big guns, stopping them from shooting, and then disembarking and charging with my lads on my next turn. And I succeeded in half of that plan. Henry used the opportunity to completely surround my Impulsor, forcing me to Emergency Disembark when he destroyed it, and losing four of my five bladeguard as a result.
I can still hear his screams of Waaagh!
On my subsequent turn I was able to advance my Chief Apothecary close enough to the BVG to bring back one dead dude… and then forgot to charge the group into his gun line to secure my Linebreaker secondary. I should have abandoned my backfield to his deepstriking units and pushed into his instead of breaking away with Dante and his surrounding Sanguinary Guard.
But it was still a good game. I had no illusions about placing in the tournament. I was there to learn, not to win.
My second game was okay. It was against a gent named Sam and his Harlequins.
Tough little bastards.
It ended 43-76, him, and I learned I needed to focus more on the primary objective. Considering we can score practically half the applicable points from the primary alone, it stands that it needs to be a prime objective in your battle plan. I got distracted by the quickness of his bikes and ran my bladgeguard-impulsor into them. And they did work, after the dust had cleared I think he had only one bike left. Which he promptly fell back and hid in the corner of the battlefield. I’m finding that Blood Angels are very, very powerful, but can easily fall apart when not managed correctly. This loss took the wind out of me and when it was time for my final match, I had been deflated.
I was absolutely stomped in my third matchup against Luke and his White Scars. I conceded halfway through and packed up. He was incredible in his deployment, screening out every single one of his units against turn one charges and shooting from my units. I’ve never seen it done before. Threat Range was the theme of that engagement.
So, a unit’s threat range can be calculated based on its Movement characteristic + it’s weapons shooting range. So my Sanguinary Guard, with their base 12”M + 2”M thanks to the Wrath of Baal relic, plus their 12” range Angelus Boltun, would have an effective threat range of 26”. Coincidentally, that would also be that unit’s threat range for charging as well (14” movement + 12” potential charge range.) That man screened out every, single, one of my units, preventing me from any first turn charges. He also out screened my unit of Inceptors and their plasma. He had completely shut me down for first turn. I had also known about the whole “threat range” thing before, but I had never seen it countered so effectively before.
The fact that I also conceded and left also brought to mind a tip that Henry had given to me during one of our practice games. Don’t stop playing, never concede. At a tournament, yea you want to win, but you also want to score points. Keep playing the match until either time is up or you’re completely tabled. Keep scoring points until it is impossible for you to score any more. Just to frame this properly, that match ended 19-90. I’m not sure how many more points I would have scored had I not conceded at the beginning of my third turn, but it would have been more than 19.
Henry had also made another comment during that same practice game. I needed to work on my morale. Not my units’ morale, he stressed, but on my own personal morale. Losing sucks. There’s no denying that. But at some point it’s important to realize that you’re no longer there to win, you’re there to learn. And that’s something I struggle with, how to keep playing even though you know you’re going to lose.
So yea. I left that tournament 0-3. 127 combined points. 9th place out of ten. I didn’t even win a damned spoon! But I still want to play competitively. I can’t tell you why, but I do.
My next tournament will be 2/13. Again at Mythicos. And I’m looking forward to it. I’ve rerolled my main army from Blood Angels to Custodes and I’m scrambling to get them fully painted in time (which reminds me, all my previously mentioned scores include the bonus 10 points for fully painted, do with that as you will.) I am by no means a “meta-chaser,” it’s just something about the Custodes that tickle me right. I can’t wait to hand paint them (I’m going to seriously try and paint them to the best of my ability, helloooooo edge-highlighting!) and I can’t wait to keep an honor roll of all their deeds and names they earn.
I play my first practice game with them tomorrow. And I’m looking forward to it. Maybe I’ll do better.
Maybe.
- The Worst 40k Player in the World

Section 0: Background
Hi everyone! I’m trying to tailor this a bit more to reflect the UK Money Diary style where I give context on the week before and reflect on it after. I also added in some of the questions from the recent thread about what Refinery29 should ask diarists (see here).
I wrote this the week of Thanksgiving; my partner and I stayed in NYC instead of going home to either of our parents’ homes. We wear masks and stay socially distant when we leave the house. I’m thankful that we live close to a park and live on a block where we know and enjoy talking to our neighbors.
This was a relatively normal week for us during a pandemic, save for me spending a bit more than normal and it being Thanksgiving. We’ve both lived in the city since college and have so-so relationships with our families, so we didn’t leave for “home” when the pandemic hit.
I also just named my boyfriend instead of giving him an initial. He’s the only person I actually saw this week, but the initials always throw me off when I read these.
What do money and success mean to you? What are your end goals?
It helps me to see money as a tool. I never resonate with people who say “money doesn’t buy happiness” because to a certain degree, it does. Money enables me to live the life I want.
I’m pursuing FIRE (financial independence, retire early) and hope to be financially independent (able to live off my investments) by my early 30s. To do so, I save 60%+ of my income per month. I want this because working for 40 years isn’t sustainable for me—I have a very cushy tech job and still get anxiety and rage about waking up every morning to work, the rat race, and being paid inequitably to male peers. I’d like to give myself the option to leave this world as soon as possible.
As an alternative, I could see myself successful if I open a product consultancy, where I advise early-stage startups on product management, what to build for their MVP, and product-market fit. I’m really interested in tech ethics and the questionable practices in venture capital, so I’d love to be in a place where I could be picky about what clients I take and help truly mission-driven businesses thrive. I could see this also working as a small business incubator—why not apply what works in startups to small businesses?
I don’t yet have a firm picture of what I’d like my life to look like when I retire. I’m interested in spending a lot of time reading, traveling to new places for extended periods of time, and potentially writing a book. I get extremely interested in niche topics. Right now if I had to guess, I’d be writing a book about the ways multi-level marketing companies (MLMs) manipulate women.
Are you a spender or a saver?
Definitely a saver. My partner is more of a spender, and we’ve influenced each other well. Seeing him spend money on himself for video games helps me realize I can spend more money on myself for things I just want (see my big purchase for myself this week).
In turn, seeing me save a lot of money has motivated him to up his 401k contribution and overall savings. He’s also interested in FIRE, although I’d say my timeline is more aggressive.
If you could go back in time, what's the one piece of financial advice you would give to your past self?
Learn about investing, look up the terms you don’t know, and start doing it as soon as possible. Ask questions to people you know or on the internet.
On to the diary!
​
Section One: Assets and Debt
Investment Balance
$131,175

• Retirement (includes 2 company 401ks and 1 rollover IRA): $55,730
• Brokerage: $27,233
• Roth IRA: $25,439
• Managed account: $17,923
• HSA: $4,850

Equity if you're a homeowner
N/A, I rent in a HCOL city. No plans to own anytime soon
Savings account balance
$10,270
Checking account balance
$3,433 in checking account for bills

• This fluctuates, but I try to invest anything over $2k. I’m pretty conservative with my checking account buffer, and don’t worry much about the interest I’m “losing,” especially because interest rates are so low right now

$2,518 in checking account for rent

• I keep a holdover account that’s connected to Venmo and Zelle to pay rent

Credit card debt
N/A. There’s $1,348 currently on my credit cards, but I pay them all off in full each month. My parents signed me up for a credit card as soon as I was old enough and taught me about how important it was to pay in full. In fact, I think this was so hammered into my brain that doing anything other than that each month was never an option. Because of this, I’ve always thought of credit cards as similar to debit cards—only spend money you have.
Student loan debt (for what degree)
I was fortunate to go to college on a full scholarship, including living expenses. I studied psychology and sociology, and I graduated without any student loan debt.
​
Section Two: Income
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $6,570/month
I maxed out my 401k early this year, so for 8 months I was contributing $2,500/month out of my paychecks. That ended in September, so it changed my monthly take-home from about $4,650 to $6,570/month.
Deductions:

• 401k: $0/month (was $2,500/month)
• Medical: $128/month
• Dental and vision: $11/month

Income Progression

• I started in customer support right out of college, making $40,000/year + overtime, which ended up being about $52,000/year (thanks OT!).
• About a year later, I moved into an entry-level product role at the same company and received a raise to $60,000/year.
• The next year, I moved to a new company for a half-step promotion where I was making $82,000/year + 15% yearly bonus. The bonus was dependable enough that it was assumed as part of our total compensation, so let’s call it $95,000/year.
• Early this year, I switched companies again (noticing a theme?) for a promotion and now make $122,000/year.

I don’t have any other sources of income outside my main job. My partner makes a similar amount to me—about $117,000/year with bonus.
​
Section Three: Expenses
I live with my partner and we don’t have combined finances, but split many expenses 50/50. We use Splitwise to log transactions. He’s more laid-back about being paid back, but I’m much more “I don’t want to owe anyone anything, and I don’t want anyone to owe me anything” (I know, rigid, but I’m working on it!).
Splitwise is nice because it’d be ridiculous to Venmo request each other for a $4 coffee, but we can see how expenses are adding up. If someone has racked up a few hundred dollars of spending for both of us, the other person will cover our expenses for awhile. It works for us!
Rent
$2,200 for a 2 bed, 1 bath apartment in Brooklyn. We split rent 50/50.
Renters insurance
About $7/month for my portion. This covers all our possessions plus my boyfriend’s watches. He pays 75% of it because half of the monthly cost comes from the extra watch overage.
Savings contribution
I try to have about $10,000 sitting in my savings account at any given time, because it makes me feel safe in case of an emergency. I also like the freedom it enables, in case I wanted to leave my job and take a significant amount of time off. This is already at the $10k I want, so I don’t contribute to it monthly.
Investment contribution
It varies but on average I contribute $2,500/month to my brokerage account and Roth IRA (combined).
Donations
I try to donate about $200/month, but it’s pretty sporadic. This month I donated to the Yellowhammer Fund and Northwest Abortion Access Fund. One of my major goals for 2021 is to step up my donations and create an actual strategy around them, potentially involving a donor-advised fund.
Gas/electric
Our gas is $20-25/month and electric is $50/month. I pay gas and Will pays electric, both go in Splitwise. About $37/month total for me.
Wifi
Our wifi is $60/month, which goes into Splitwise—I pay $30/month.
Cellphone
I’m still on my parents’ phone plan—sheesh! This is convincing me that I should Venmo them for it each month.
Subscriptions
I pay for Hulu with ads, $5.99/month. My boyfriend pays for Netflix and we share a Spotify family plan with a couple of his friends, which I chip in $4/month for.
I also pay for the budgeting software YNAB (You Need a Budget) which is $84/year. I only pay it once a year in September.
Medical
I recently had to go to the emergency room for an overnight stay and follow up with some specialists. (I’m okay!) Because of that whole shindig I’m expecting to max out my deductible (and potentially my out-of-pocket-max) right at the end of the year. This will be about $4,000, but none of the claims have come through yet so I’m not sure of the exact total. I have a category in my budget for my deductible, and the rest will come out of my emergency fund.
Physical therapy
This month I’m starting pelvic floor physical therapy for dyspareunia (pain with intercourse).
I’d tried everything the internet suggested (“just relaaaaaax”) before getting the courage to find a new ob-gyn and ask her about it. She had some recommendations, but ultimately physical therapy was the “last resort” option that I’m now exploring.
My new physical therapist comes highly recommended but is out of network with insurance. Each session is $250, and I’ll go once every 2-3 weeks for the next few months as part of treatment. If you’ve worked through this problem (or are experiencing it now!) I’d love to hear your experience.
​
Section Four: Additional Questions
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 dad was the first in his family to attend college and my parents made pretty calculated decisions about where they would live so I could go to the absolute best public school possible. Over 90% of students at my high school attend a 4-year college, and we start talking about it freshman year. To say college was encouraged in my environment is an understatement.
Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money? Did your parent/guardian(s) educate you about finances?
My dad has worked in finance since I was about 10. He’s always been really knowledgeable about both higher-level economic concepts and the minutiae of personal finance. My family is frugal, too: we clipped coupons and got clothes on super-sale at Kohl’s and Goodwill. I know there was a period of time when he became self-employed and money got very tight for a few years, but the bulk of those worries were largely kept from me.
Did you worry about money growing up?
Yes. While we were comfortable, we lived in such an affluent place that our family was in “the middle class” of the town and it made me worry more about money than I probably needed to. Think The Stepford Wives for context.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net?
In college, I became maybe 80% financially independent as I had a scholarship and worked part-time during school and over the summer, but I was still on their insurance.
I remember being frustrated in college because even though I knew I was extremely privileged, my friends in college had their parents pay their summer apartment rent and gave them an “allowance” of spending money, and I was “limited” by the options I could afford with the job I had. My dad told me at the time, “This is frustrating but it’s preparing you for actually having to live off the money you make in the near future.” (Great, great advice Dad.)
I’m technically still financially dependent on my parents for my cell phone bill, but otherwise I pay for everything: rent, insurance, utilities, food, therapy, and all wants in the form of clothing, workout classes, etc. I could ask my parents for money if I absolutely needed to, but would use it as a last resort.
Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain.
I have an account (mentioned above) that a family friend who’s a hedge fund manager, well, manages. I believe the initial deposit was $1000 over 10 years ago, but that money wasn’t mine either, it’s all a gift. It’s not very liquid—it’d take me several months (and some very good reasoning) to get any of that money withdrawn, since it’s supposed to be for “the future” (which I guess I could argue is now?).
I might receive a small amount of money when my grandmother passes, but it’d probably be around $1-2k, if at all.
​
Day 1 Wednesday, November 25, 2020
8:30am Wake up and shower, take my vitamin C gummies, then make coffee. I wasn’t much of a daily coffee drinker until my offices had it for free, and now I’m definitely addicted. I don’t really care if the coffee is shitty or not, I just put some milk in it and it’s great. Right now I’m trying to drink half or three-quarter cups so I can attempt to pull back my addiction a bit. I log onto work at 9am.
11:30am Eat leftovers from last night for lunch—quesadilla + Spanish rice. There’s an incredible Mexican restaurant by us, and now I am ruined for the tacos, quesadillas and nachos from any other place.
12:30pm Will picks me up in the U-Haul. We’re driving about 20 min away to pick up a butcher block desk he bought off Craigslist, which ends up being from a small office that’s downsizing. The desk is $150 which he pays for. We love the office’s style (and the owner is super nice!) and walk around while he shows us what else he’s trying to get rid of.
We end up buying an extra-large ZZ plant and two side tables from him for an extra $120, way less than we would have paid for the quality elsewhere. My half will be $60, and I’ll split the U-Haul too, $44.51. $82.26
2:45pm That ended up taking a lot longer than we expected! We get back and unload the van, then I bring stuff inside while Will returns the van to the U-Haul location. I jump back onto work—so much for a slow afternoon before Thanksgiving. AWS is down, which powers a lot of our engineering work (and a lot of the internet!) so a lot of our teams are basically twiddling their thumbs. We chat about how to message the outage to customers.
5:45pm Will starts making dinner (braised chicken and veggies) and I sit down to read with a strawberry Chobani, but I end up just reading Reddit and searching for new podcasts to listen to.
7:45pm Dinner was great! Now…ice cream.
9:43pm I remember that my mom sent me ideas for her and my dad’s Christmas presents, so I order on Etsy and Amazon. My dad gets a mug with an Ernest Hemingway quote (“write drunk, edit sober”) ($21.54) and a book on writing ($16.63), and my mom gets this food warming tote contraption she wanted ($43.52). We’ve been paring down Christmases over the years—this year I asked for the Europe version of Ticket to Ride. $81.69
11:15pm I finish up the first episode of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City with some white cheddar Cheez-Its to snack on. After, I start on the dishes from dinner. I listen to the Product Market Misfits podcast while I do dishes—the episode with Kristen Anderson from Catch is great, highly recommend if you’re tired of just hearing stories about stereotypical Silicon Valley tech companies.
Day 1 Total: $166.69
Day 2 Thursday, November 26, 2020
10am Wake up super late since I stayed up scrolling on my phone too late last night. We make coffee and set out for a long walk around 11:15am.
12:05pm At the end of our walk, we swing by our local liquor store and buy 4 bottles of wine (red, white, rose, champagne). Will pays, total is $63.15 for everything. We haven’t had wine in the apartment for ages and I’m excited to have some stocked up. $31.57
12:30pm Get back from the walk, shower, then turn on football. I actually don’t really care about any NFL teams (I like college football a lot more), but it’s such calming background noise for me that I find myself looking for games when I have downtime. We also recently found out that Will’s friends’ dog only has a few months to live, so we order some jerky treats and a squeaky toy for him. $14.07
2:30pm We head out to the restaurant we’re going to for Thanksgiving lunch, a local place a short walk from our apartment. They’re doing a prix fixe menu of the classics—turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, and a phenomenal tarte Tatin with ice cream for dessert.
We eat outside under heat lamps. It’s super cozy. With our bottle of wine and tip the total is $208 (I try to tip over and above the norm because it’s a pandemic and Thanksgiving). My half will be $104.
5:53pm Get back from the restaurant. We have a ton of leftovers which is awesome (I think it’s excessive frugality, but I almost expect to stretch takeout or restaurant meals into two meals). Exchange some texts with my friends about their socially-distant Thanksgiving celebrations.
I turn on the Washington vs. Cowboys game right at the halftime show, which is Kane Brown with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. They’re all wearing masks (except for Kane) and it’s so odd to see them dancing in masks. I mean, I’m glad they’re wearing them, but it just seems like we could have gone without the halftime show this year.
9:21pm I order contacts from Contacts Direct. I got a new prescription but didn’t have a great experience with the eye doctor, so I’m hesitant about this order—only ordered one box of 90 lenses for each eye instead of a year’s worth of lenses. I’ve been getting headaches pretty frequently, so I’m hoping getting a new pair of glasses and alternating those (instead of wearing my contacts for 16 hours a day, every day) will help. $29.98 after insurance benefits
Day 2 Total: $179.62
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Day 3 Friday, November 27
8:56am Wake up super last minute, run to sign onto Slack and then start grinding coffee beans. I’m online and drinking a big mug of coffee by 9:10. (So much for half cups.)
10:45am Come up for air from work and grab the stuff to make a bagel. Everything bagels and plain cream cheese are my go-to combo.
12:03pm I grab a bag of clothes to drop off at the donation bin and a couple library books to return. The library is about a 25 minute walk so it’ll be a nice lunch break diversion.
12:56pm After the library I stop by the grocery store for some paper towels and sponges, since we’re almost out. Total is $22.62, my half is $11.31
1:09pm When I get home I jump back into work and put the USA vs. Netherlands game on my second monitor. By the 75th minute, the US is up by 2 goals so they start putting in some younger players—it’s fun to see Midge Purce and Sophia Smith play! I also throw some bagel bites in the oven for a quick snack and promise myself dinner will be healthier.
4:23pm I zone out of work and start playing Among Us. I end up playing for over two hours. We open a bottle of wine at some point and I get super tipsy.
6:50pm Turn on the tail end of the Notre Dame vs. UNC game. It turns into Jeopardy, which turns into Wheel of Fortune, which I’m not mad about. P isn’t as into the game shows and leaves to microwave a plate of leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner and play video games.
8:40pm Finally getting hungry after my bagel bites and Cheez-Its this afternoon and make a plate of Thanksgiving leftovers—turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans and cauliflower. Yum.
Will and I end up getting in a tiff about the mess in our apartment so we take a break, cool down and talk it through. I watch a couple episodes of Sister Wives and go to bed around 1:30am.
Day 3 Total: $11.31
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Day 4 Saturday, November 28, 2020
10:05am I stayed up late (again) so it’s nice to sleep in. I play Among Us for awhile and have a couple rounds where I’m the impostor and get some great kills and wins. I run out into the living room and celebrate with Will. We laugh because it’s silly how much we love the games we play. Around 10:45 I start making coffee.
11am We desperately need new sheets because our fitted sheet has a huge hole at Will’s feet (and it’s growing). I search a women’s personal finance group I’m in on Facebook for recommendations and we end up buying a queen sheet set from Belk. Total was $100.71 with their sale. $50.35
1pm I was planning on returning a package to the post office today, but forget it closes at 1pm on Saturdays so I decide to run to Target instead. I have a lampshade to return and want to look for a shower caddy as well. I also have an old iPad to return, which Will tells me I can do at Best Buy. He finds an old iPod and flip phone I can take too.
Take the MTA there ($2.75 for a single fare). When I get there, it’s a madhouse and I remember that I have sillily (is this a word?) decided to come on the weekend of Black Friday. I stand in the returns line for about 15 minutes and get $10.89 back, but ditch the idea of trying to look for a shower caddy. The checkout line looks like 100 people long. -$8.14 because of return
Next I go to Best Buy, but who am I kidding—the line to get in the store is even longer than the Target checkout line. I walk back to the subway and get on to go home. $2.75
2:30pm Since Best Buy was a no go, I search for electronic recycling around me on the way home just to see where I could drop off the devices I have. Apparently there’s an EcoATM not too far from my subway stop. It’s more for selling devices, but if they can’t give you money for something, they’ll recycle it, which is exactly what I wanted. I put each of the pieces in the scanner, and end up getting a whopping $2 total (for Will’s old iPod). Still cool because I was just expecting to recycle it all. I’ll give Will the $2.
2:44pm There’s a Dunkin nearby so I pop in to grab a couple donuts ($2.90). There’s a woman outside asking for money, so I give her $5 cash. $7.90
3:00pm Last stop—our favorite deli is nearby and Will mentioned he wanted to get bacon there recently. I get a 1/2 lb and salivate on the way home. This is one of those things I won’t put in Splitwise because it’s small and because it’s fun to get for P as a tiny little present. $3.50
3:45pm Once I’m home I’m super hungry from only eating carbs all morning so I have a snack of carrots, hummus and some pepperoni. I head back out to drop off a bag of clothes and shoes at a drop box a few blocks away. The neighbors are outside at the park near our house so I stop and chat with them for a few minutes. Their kids are the cutest.
6:47pm For dinner I make a ham and cheese sandwich (panini style with rosemary butter) and more carrots and hummus. I put on another episode of Sister Wives. These people are so fascinating to me—first off, I think the husband is completely full of himself. But I’m also so curious about the wives. There are a lot of talking head testimonials where the parents explain that they’re “oppressed” because they’re different and want to go public so the world can see polygamy as a valid family style (I’m only on season 2).
I know they’re probably playing up the “we love our other sister wives and have so much fun together even without Kody” aspect because people expect sister wives to be catty and hate each other, but I can’t help but wonder why they need to be in plural marriage to get the same friendship they seem to value so much. I also doubt they’d extend the same grace and tolerance they want to people who are “different” because they’re LGBTQ, or “different” because they’re in an open relationship or marriage.
9:15pm I mix together oatmeal chocolate chip cookie batter and put some cookies in the oven. While I’m waiting, I browse Zocdoc for well-reviewed providers—I want to make a podiatrist appointment for a lingering toe issue and an audiologist appointment for a routine hearing screening. I got the idea to make these appointments since I’ll hit my out-of-pocket max with the hospital visit, making them free or very discounted. I make two appointments for next week.
I also lust over a Farm Rio puffer jacket that feels overpriced but I just love. Maybe I’ll buy it tomorrow since they’re having a 30% off sale.
Day 4 Total: $64.50
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Day 5 Sunday, November 29
8:58am Wake up and switch between scrolling on Reddit and playing a few Among Us games. After a bit Will gets out of bed and makes coffee for us.
9:45am Will finishes the movie he started last night and we start on breakfast. We’re making the bacon I bought yesterday, breakfast potatoes with onions, and a fried egg for Will (I can’t stand the taste or smell).
11:00am Yum! Breakfast was great. I watch a couple episodes of Sister Wives and mull over buying that ridiculous but amazing puffer jacket from Farm Rio. I’ve still been thinking about it since last night and I might take the plunge.
1:25pm I get a jolt of motivation to work out and do a 20 minute Sydney Cummings video on Youtube. I heard about it from a recent Money Diary posted here! After it’s done I’m so, so tired. I stretch and unpause my episode of Sister Wives.
2:22pm I help Will move the butcher block slab for his desk out to our backyard. We live on the first floor of a single-family home that was converted into apartments, so we get the backyard too—it’s awesome to have outdoor space in the city. P works on sanding it and applying poly for the next couple hours.
5:07pm Will suggests pizza for dinner and I am always, always down for pizza. I order pickup from the spot down the street—one grandma, one cheese and 2 orders of garlic knots come to $38.60. We’ll have leftovers for tomorrow too. $19.30
5:50pm We pick up the pizza and dig in. While we’re eating we turn on the Chiefs vs. Buccaneers game; Will has a few players on his fantasy team in this game.
6:57pm I sign up to write letters to Georgia residents encouraging them to vote in the Senate runoff elections in January. This is through Vote Forward—I did 20 letters for the general election in November and want to participate again. I’ll print the letters at a local coffee shop since we don’t have a printer at home.
Will sends me this Reddit comment about campaign finance since we’ve been talking about it recently. I decide I’m convinced by the argument and set up a $5 monthly donation to Brand New Congress. $5
8:19pm After texting back and forth with my friend all day, I buy the puffer jacket—so excited. She encouraged me to get it and is pumped for me too. $228.64
I also notice my paycheck has started processing in my checking account (I get paid tomorrow), so I enter the amount in YNAB and budget it all. I earmark about $1500 to go into my brokerage account tomorrow. I won’t include it here as “spending” since it’s included in the overview section above.
Day 5 Total: $252.94
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Day 6 Monday, November 30
8:43am Wake up and turn on my Slack. Will started the coffee process and I finish it up by pouring the water into our Chemex and letting it steep (I know there’s a coffee-centric word for this...).
8:56am I check my Citi card and my YouTube TV trial rolled over—I was going to cancel it this morning, which I thought was the last day. I email support to see if they’ll refund me, because (I promise I’m not just saying this!) I did have a pretty bad experience. The Roku app was glitchy for us every time we watched something. Maybe they’ll feel nice today! $64.99
9:35am After responding to a few work messages, I run out the door to the post office to avoid a long package line. I did the Warby Parker 5-day home try on and have to return my box of glasses today. I found a pair I really like and am excited to get in the habit of wearing glasses again, instead of just my contacts.
Thankfully the line is only a few people long. The employees are also super nice every time I go, so I try to be really pleasant too. The lines are usually long and I’ve seen more than one adult have a fit at this post office. It’s rainy today and I couldn’t find our umbrella, so my flimsy rain jacket gets pretty soaked through on the walk back.
11:35am My podiatrist appointment is supposed to be tomorrow morning, and they call me to tell me since I haven’t hit my deductible, I’ll have to pay out of pocket for the visit. I explain that I’m 100% going to hit my deductible, the claims from the hospital just haven’t processed yet. I ask her to bill my insurance first for the visit, then I can pay whatever ends up not being covered (if anything). She agrees!
Maybe this is standard, but I’ve never had it happen before—even if I haven’t hit my deductible, I’ve always been to offices that bill insurance first, then I pay the remaining balance.
1:05pm Lots of meetings today. I break for lunch and heat up the braised chicken with veggies. It’s definitely on its last good day, so I’m glad I used it up. Still yummy!
2:20pm Woohoo! Get an email that my YouTube TV charge was refunded. -$64.99
Will ran to Home Depot today to buy some tools for his desk and also got a shower curtain liner since ours is ripping. I go to put it up in the bathroom but my arms are so sore—like I got my flu shot type of sore.
5:05pm Sign off work after trying to wrangle a supremely frustrating SQL query. I don’t get it but figure I can ask our analyst team for help tomorrow. Will will have a late night working, so pizza and Sister Wives is in my near future.
While watching, I update YNAB to reflect the end-of-month balances for my investment accounts. I get a huge dopamine hit by seeing my net worth number go up. I’m also anticipating it going down a bit next month because of my medical bills, so I relish the moment.
8:09pm It suddenly dawns on me that my arms are sore because I worked out yesterday. It’s so rare now that I literally forget when I do it. Ha!
9:15pm We watch the Eagles vs. Seahawks game and I absentmindedly play Among Us. I end up getting ...bullied by a person playing it? They get mad that I figured out they were the imposter and start saying all these schoolyard-type digs throughout the next couple rounds, but level 100 of cruel.
I’m embarrassed by how sad it makes me but think maybe it’s a good thing I don’t immediately know what to say to bully people back. Such a weird experience. I end up going to bed around 11:30.
Day 6 Total: $0
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Day 7 December 1, 2020
7:07am Wake up late for my alarm at 7. I’m up a lot earlier today because my podiatrist appointment is first thing. I get dressed in the dark, kiss P goodbye, grab my water bottle and run out the door to the subway by 7:30. $2.75
8:10am Get to my stop and swing by Starbucks before the appointment. I get a vanilla latte and the bacon cheddar and egg sandwich. Total is around $10 but I have a gift card loaded onto my Starbucks app.
My spending here went way down when I switched jobs to an office not close to a Starbucks, and then stopped going into an office at all.
8:30am My appointment goes great, if a little painful when she numbs my toe. I had to get an ingrown toenail removed. I danced ballet and pointe for years so I’m (unfortunately) used to them, but this one was terrible. The doctor and I bond over both being dancers with bad feet and they schedule me for a follow up two weeks out.
She actually says there’s been a rise in these procedures because people aren’t getting pedicures since the pandemic and aren’t cutting their toenails well! Wild.
I look silly on the subway in December wearing Birkenstocks and socks with a huge toe bandage. It looks like one of those cartoon characters who stubs their toe and it becomes 10x bigger than their other toes. $2.75
9:40am I get off at the stop before mine to stop at Rite Aid. I grab Neosporin, band-aids and epsom salt and check my notes for anything else she mentioned about caring for my toe. $12.97
10:00am When I get home, I hop into work and working with our engineers on a promotion for the New Year. I also catch up with Will since he stayed up late last night and I got up early for my appointment. He says he ended up staying up until 3:30am (!!) cleaning up his tools, working on his desk and putting up the shower curtain. I’m floored that he is functional right now after waking up at 8.
12:15pm Heat up the last of the pizza for lunch, along with hummus and carrots.
5:20pm Work is average-paced for the rest of the day. Not doing nothing, not totally over my head. Will puts in potatoes for baked potatoes to have later, which we’ll pair with a salad. We’re getting close to needing a grocery run again, so the meals are becoming more of a mishmash.
We listed a couple things on our local Buy Nothing group last week, so a woman comes by to pick up a wifi router we can’t use anymore. Would totally recommend looking up if there’s a group in your area—they’re usually on Facebook.
6:30pm After dinner I watch more Sister Wives and look up RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit one of my friends shared for Giving Tuesday. They buy unpaid medical debt from collections, so $1 ends up paying off $100 of someone’s medical debt. I give $50 to the Arkansas campaign, which will clear $5,000 of medical debt.
As Will said earlier today, “medical billing in America is a racket” so I really hope this helps clear a burden from an individual or family. Doing this reminds me to check my insurance portal, which is steadily going up as each separate claim comes in. Ahhhh, modern healthcare! $51.49
At the end of each day please tally up your daily expenses. Then at the end of your diary please tally up all expenses in the following categories:
Total: $719.33

• Grocery + Dining Out: $157.77
• Fun + Entertainment: $0
• Home + Health: $164.67
• Clothes + Beauty: $228.64
• Transportation: $11.00
• Gifts + Giving: $157.25

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Reflection This week felt like a big spending week for me. I checked YNAB and since January, I’ve spent about $1600 per month, not including rent—so about $400/week. That’s why this week’s $719 feels so high!
Writing this diary helped me understand how many things I have going for me. I’ve recently been in a huge funk—about my health, my performance at work and my relationships with family, friends and P. Going to the hospital, needing physical therapy to have sex and being in a pandemic will do that to you.
I was able to zoom out a bit and understand how stable and gratifying my life is. That being said, I’m so glad this community exists. I really love it and learning about all your spending and saving habits. Thanks for being here and sharing :)

Having read through this sub for a while, I have to admit I'm surprised no one's done an article on the story of The End Times and Age of Sigmar, so I figured I'd write a post on the history and background of the single biggest event in the history of Citadel Wargaming, and how a British model company essentially threw 30+ years of game development in the garbage while the fans screeched. This post is going to be super long, and I'm sorry I can't condense it any more than I already have. There's just a whole lot going on.
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WHAT IS WAS WARHAMMER FANTASY?
Warhammer (AKA Warhammer Fantasy Battles, or simply Warhammer Fantasy, will be referred to as WHFB from now on) was a regiment-based miniature wargame that involved blocks or regiments of troops represented by 25-250mm scale models fighting in a fantasy setting. Two or more players would set up their armies based on an agreed-upon limit on a table with terrain to have a turn-based war between them using measuring tapes and 6-sided dice. You'd buy, assemble, and paint your miniatures, as well as customizing them with unique sculpting or hand-painted banners. Created in 1982, the game had hundreds of models to collect across 15 different armies, each with unique themes and ideals.
WHFB had an extensive backstory and setting, with hundreds of well-documented histories and descriptions of nearly every location in the Warhammer World., as well as backstories for each of the races often spanning thousands upon thousands of years of history. Although the setting was heavily based on works from other fantasy authors, like J.R.R. Tolkein and Michael Moorcock, the overall story of Warhammer Fantasy was uniquely it's own. Each faction was quite different from the others, from the Empire, the current largest civilization of humans vaguely themed after a renaissance-era Holy Roman Empire, to the Orcs and Goblins, a collection of roaring, warring greenskinned savages that sounded and acted like murderous football hooligans. While some factions were relatively unpopular, like the chivalrous Brettonians and the Egyptian themed Tomb Kings in comparison to the wildly-popular Skaven rat people, each faction had hundreds and hundreds of fans and collectors who would lovingly and carefully build whole closets of models from their favorite model ranges.
As a brief note, the actual setting of WHFB isn't really as important as the stuff surrounding it, but I'll briefly mention the state of affairs across the in-game world. Basically, the world is super doomed. Every day, murderous, chaos-empowered savages march from the north pole of the world to conquer and ruin, and their numbers are endless. The southern civilizations of the Empire, the Dwarfs, the High Elves of Ultuan, and others stand resolute against the hordes, but also cannot let go of the mistakes and trespasses of history and thus fight each other just as often as they fight the raiders and despoilers. You, as a player, represent a general or leader amongst one of these forces for Order or Destruction. The end of the world is tomorrow, but today you'll show those greenskinned bastards a real fight. This oppressive, grimdark atmosphere was praised by fans for being gritty and pessimistic, but in a good way. However, the setting never made any real advances in the storyline, having the doomsday clock always being a half-second from midnight. All the interesting wars and conquests (other than the current, big final last one) and conflicts happened a couple hundred years before the game takes place, and some players wished that there'd be a big storyline event to move things along and freshen up the story. And off in the distance, a warehouse full of monkey's paws curled up...
GAMES WORKSHOP
As another brief note, I'll mention the company itself. Unfortunately, it's kinda impossible to talk about Games Workshop (AKA GW) without using a little personal and fan-public opinion, but I'll keep mostly to the facts and most common opinions. GW started out selling miniatures for Dungeons and Dragons, and eventually created a game for the models they made called Warhammer, which then exploded in popularity and quickly overshadowed the Dungeons and Dragons models they produced, and so they refocused to just selling models for their wargame instead. They continued selling WHFB for years until they released a science-fiction spinoff called Rogue Trader, eventually renamed to simply Warhammer 40,000. The popularity of Warhammer 40,000 (Aka 40K) got even bigger than WHFB for a number of reasons, including quicker gameplay as 40K used a skirmish battle design instead of a more restrictive regiment based system. By 2000, both versions of Warhammer were extremely popular, and arguably the most popular wargames on the marketplace, even with 40k taking the lead between the two. It seems that this success started to go to GW's head however, as they rarely if ever listened to player feedback and often made significant mistakes while designing rules for armies with some factions being blatant developer favorites while others languished with weak rules and extremely rare updates. It wasn't uncommon for an army to go years without updates to rules or models, with outliers of nine to twelve years being possible for really unpopular factions.
This feast-or-famine update style was extremely common and often two players could fight where one army had not been updated multiple editions, while others had recently received a new rule book and models, and thus were significantly more likely to win. Some factions, like the rarely-updated Tomb Kings, Beastmen, Brettonians, or Wood Elves, were considered challenge factions because of their weaknesses and out of date rules. Conversely, if you played an army that was either more future-proofed or more recently updated, like Warriors of Chaos, Daemons, or High Elves, you were likely flush with excellent modern rules and often had brand-new models to go with it.
GW became fairly infamous among the fan base for caring more about making a quick dollar than developing a fun game, and as mentioned above, new books would usually be noticeably more powerful than any previously existing book in order to help sell copies and push model sales. A WHFB army could cost several hundred dollars, sometimes reaching the low thousands thanks to the sheer number of models needed for some armies, and if your army had been languishing in no-update hell for 7+ years, you could be tempted to shelf that army and start a new one to at least have a fighting chance against some opponents.
ENOUGH BACKSTORY, GET TO THE DRAMA!
By 2010, Warhammer Fantasy had started to lose the wind in its sails. With nearly 30 years of history behind it, many players already had full armies that didn't need any new models or paints, and getting into the hobby was daunting, considering you often had to buy, assemble, and paint more than one hundred models just to get started, and thanks to infrequent updates GW rarely had new and shiny things to offer new or returning players. While this was happening, Warhammer 40,000 was enjoying endless popularity, as it was much easier to just jump in and start playing with a handful of models. GW was showering 40K with content, while WHFB stagnated. So in early 2014, a new event unlike any before it was announced: The End Times.
THE END TIMES
The End Times was a series of books containing new rules for new models, new ways of building armies, and most importantly, new lore. All hell has broken loose, with the most powerful necromancer in history, Nagash, reemerging from the shadows to try and take over the world, which tips the delicate balance as new alliances are made, old ones broken, and basically everything bad that was supposed to happen was now actually happening. Some players were confused as they'd never seen GW come out with books like this before, but many were excited about the new higher stakes, and the plot actually advancing for the first time in 30 years. Five books were released, one every few months, with new plots and developments happening quickly. The warring nations of elves unite under a new Phoenix King, the Dwarfs finally emerge from their holds to battle their ancestral foes the Skaven and Greenskins, and the Empire is plunged into overwhelming conflict with the invading forces of Chaos, and Nagash's undead legions.
And then, the final book, The End Times: Archaon was released in March 2015, and with it was... The end. The forces of Chaos and destruction win. The world is consumed by darkness, with the human god Sigmar battling the dark Everchosen Archaon on the burnt husk of the planet's core with every star in the sky flickering and going out. Every character in the last 30 years of history and backstory is not only dead, but everyone in the whole world is dead and gone. In no uncertain terms, Warhammer Fantasy Battles was over as a setting. And as it quickly proved, it was also over as a playable game.
Fans panicked. What were they going to do, now that the actual story of the world was done? Was there going to be any future content or updates?
WARHAMMER: AGE OF SIGMAR
There wasn't going to be any future content or updates.
There's much speculation on why Games Workshop decided to ax the game that put them on the map back in the '80s; Some hearsay from around that time implies that Warhammer Fantasy was not very profitable, for the previously mentioned reasons of being very expensive to start playing and discouraging older players from expanding their armies, and had extensive and arcane rules that took a long time to learn. Some believe that the primary reason was a string of lawsuits that Games Workshop threw around at smaller companies for making products similar to their own, while not having particularly trademark-friendly names or products (Games Workshop is infamously litigious). It's hard to trademark the word "orc" and Games Workshop actually failed to trademark the words "Space Marine" back in the late 2000s. Honestly we'll probably never know the actual reasons, as GW is legendarily reclusive and unwilling to communicate to the fanbase on nearly every topic.
In July 2015, just four months after The End Times of Warhammer Fantasy, a new game was announced: Warhammer: Age of Sigmar (AKA AoS). Set in a brand-new setting without any of the old locations or civilizations, the armies of the Stormcast Eternals battle the forces of Chaos! Brand-new armies cropped up, while many of the old ones were quickly dumped and forgotten, including the Tomb Kings, the Brettonians, and the vast majority of the Orcs and Goblins. Races and factions were renamed to be suspiciously more trademark-friendly, such as the Elves becoming the Aelves, the Dwarfs becoming the Duardin, Orcs became Orruks and so on. The new armies often resembled the old ones, with the Fyreslayers being a whole faction of Duardin (Dwarfs) who run into battle with two axes with little more than a mohawk and a loincloth, based on the Slayers of old Fantasy. Or the Sylvaneth, which was just the Treants and Dryads of the Wood Elves moved into their own faction while the actual Wood Elves were discontinued.
Gone were the old rules of regimented combat, gone were the old and arcane methods of army creation. In fact, gone were nearly all the rules, period. Whereas the previous edition of WHFB (8th edition) had close to 300 pages of meticulous and careful army building and playing rules, but the new game of Age of Sigmar had just 4 pages in a fold-out pamphlet. Models no longer came on square bases designed to group up in regiment squares, now they were on round bases so they could move in loose skirmish groups like in Warhammer 40,000. But the biggest change was that there were no points. Previously, points were used to measure how powerful a model was. A single human spearman would be 7 points, while a powerful Bloodthirster Daemon would be closer to 300. When two players fought a game they'd set a limit on how many points they could bring in order to make the game mostly balanced, for example a 1,000 or 2,000 point game. But now there were no points for anything, and AoS explicitly called in the rules for players to just agree on how many models to bring without any defining rules. There was nothing stopping a veteran from bringing his six hundred model strong army of Skaven with a full suite of Lightning-Powered War Machines to fight the poor new player and his fifteen or so Fyreslayers. But don't worry, it's just a "Beer-and-pretzels" wargame! Rules and points costs just bog you down!
To make things worse, almost nothing of the lore of the old world of Warhammer survived into Age of Sigmar, and the very few things that did were were radically changed and altered. Where old WHFB had a very gritty and depressing atmosphere that made for tense and realitic low-fantasy battles, Age of Sigmar threw all that out and instead had Warcraft-level high fantasy. Wizards were now common, floating continents and mystical world-hopping portals abound, the Stormcast Eternals was a whole faction of shining, 10-foot-tall knights wielding magic weapons and armor that arrived on the battlefield by riding lightning bolts and routinely talked to magic star-dragons. Oh, and the Tomb Kings and Brettonians, two armies with small but very dedicated fanbases, were entirely removed from the game without any fanfare shortly after launch.
To rub salt in the wound, many of the rules were... Silly, as an understatement. One Empire Captain, Kurt Helborg (memetically famous for having an enormous mustache), had an explicit rule that if you as a player had a bigger and more impressive mustache than your opponent, your sword got stronger. Fyreslayers were encouraged to come up with colorful insults for the other player across the table so your heroes would get stronger. A Brettonian knight player could reroll charges if they drank a glass of wine and shouted "FOR THE LADY!" before rolling the dice. Some of the names for the various models were just as silly, with the Stormy Stormhosts of the Stormcast Eternals of Stormheim who ran into battle wielding Stormhammers and Stormshields and flew atop Stormwings and rode Stormdrakes, who were fighting the Bloodsoaked Bloodwarriors of the Blood God Khorne and his Blades of Khorne, who all wielded Goreaxes and Gore-Smashers and Bloodfists. One model was honest-to-god named the Bloodsecrator. Games workshop rubbed their trademarked hands together and thought, players will be super stoked about these new, amazing rules!
THE END TIMES FOR GAMES WORKSHOP...
Players were not stoked about these new, "amazing" rules.
To say "And everyone was mad" was an understatement. Most players stopped playing entirely, and stopped purchasing models and instead selling off their combined collections. Forums were swarmed by endless complaining and grumbling, and a couple players even set their armies on fire in protest. For frame of reference, the link shows a disgruntled player burning about $800 dollars worth of models and supplies (warning, contains loud heavy metal music). The rules of AoS were routinely mocked by reviewers. Positive discussion of Age of Sigmar was extremely rare, and people posting about AoS, whether rules discussions or model painting, often had their threads and topics flooded by irate fans insulting and belittling the players who just wanted to enjoy their game.
Combined with Rick Priestly (The man who helped invent Warhammer back in 1982) leaving the company in disgust in 2010, new model-casting methods replacing the standard and reliable (if a big chunky and heavy) pewter with new, sleeker, and significantly lower-quality resin, and finally a series of godawful 40K book launches, Games Workshop share prices dropped badly. Games Workshop was not having a good 2010s. Many players wondered if GW would actually crash and burn, despite seeming nearly unbeatable just 10 years earlier.
To add a little of my own experience here, I was a long-time Tomb Kings player, having started in 2001. I'd been building my collection for closing on 13 years when Tomb Kings were dropped like a bad habit by GW, and the new rules for Age of Sigmar were not enticing. I quit the hobby in 2014 for about 3 years, selling off my supplies and putting everything else in my attic to gather dust, and every player I knew did pretty much the same. Everyone moved to playing Warhammer 40K, or to an entirely different company's games, like WARMACHINE or Malifaux.
Ironically, around this time was when a whole crop of great Warhammer video games were announced, including Total War: Warhammer, Man O' War: Corsair, Warhammer End Times: Vermintide, and Mordheim, City of the Damned. Lots of fans were pulling their hair out that GW had a bunch of excellent games set in the Warhammer Fantasy world come out only after they'd killed off the property they were based on for not being popular enough. If you ever get a chance, check out the list of Legendary Lords in Total War: Warhammer 2. The list is 60+ heroes, each with a detailed backstory, goals and ideals, almost all of them playable in WHFB at one point or another. Of that list, 50 of them are straight up dead forever. The remaining 10 or so have been altered so much in personality that they hardly even resemble their WHFB selves.
... AND SOMETHING RESEMBLING A NEW BEGINNING
Despite the overwhelming dislike of the game and the model releases, Games workshop stumbled forward into the future. In 2015-2016, Tom Kirby, the then-CEO of GW, stepped down and was replaced by Kevin Rountree, a former COO and CFO. After this, Games Workshop made some serious efforts to stop being the shittiest wargame company alive. It's unknown if this was the last gasp of Tom Kirby before his departure, or if Kevin Rountree booted Tom Kirby to the curb and started making sweeping reforms, but either way, Games workshop enacted new tactics. They added a new "Warhammer Community" section to their website, full of articles on how to paint, upcoming releases, short stories, and more. They even started to interact with the community, on rare occasion. They added "Start Collecting" boxes that included a small army sold at a decent discount, designed to help introduce new players to the game on the cheap. Most interestingly, and most relevantly to this article, they added a "General's Handbook" when contained points costs for nearly everything, and started updating future books and releases with points costs added in. The idiotic old joke rules quietly vanished like a fart on the wind, and future naming conventions weren't quite so recursive in theme. In 2018, they came out with a "Second Edition" that managed to further improve the game, as well as adding the much-liked Endless Spells feature.
New factions were added that quickly became new fan favorites, as the scars of the dropped armies began to fade. Age of Sigmar stopped being a game without concrete rules for babies, and started stepping into its own as a real wargame with its own feel. There's still a lot of resentment in the communities, and you'll still see "Age of Sigmar bad/for children" memes crop up on Warhammer subreddits and such, but they're considered fairly old hat by now. Age of Sigmar is now a decently popular skirmish wargame with generally balanced rules (with exceptions of course, it's still a GW game) that receives many, many updates every year. Even the hardcore Oldhammer players have to grudgingly admit that Age of Sigmar was updated more times in a year than Warhammer Fantasy would get in three. The age of waiting 6+ years for an update to your outdated rules was gone, and instead you'd wait AT MOST a year for a new General's Handbook to arrive with new points cost changes for you, and most armies have received two or more rules books in three years.
Players unwilling to move to Age of Sigmar instead moved to games like Kings of War or the fan-made The Ninth Age. Some even play all three. Regrettably, there hasn't been too much love between the old WHFB players and AoS players, at best being polite and civil, and at worst being downright derogatory. But even with the bad blood between the two crowds, AoS continues to grow on its own merit.
Games Workshop even announced they were bringing Warhammer Fantasy Back. Eventually.

Like so many others, I wrote a NOVEL and I’m sorry!! I love reading this community’s MDs and am so thankful for this supportive sub and for the opportunity to share.
Section 1: Assets and Debt
My husband and I share all finances except for our retirement and savings accounts (we each have savings accts in our own names but realistically we share the funds within them). We have separate credit cards as well.

• Retirement Balance: My 403b - $47k, I put in 3% and my employer matched 10% (ah-mazing), but COVID put that on pause. Spouse’s 401k - $285k, he also has a generous company match.
• Equity: about $110k. We bought a house last September; it was listed for 440k, we bought for 435k, and it was appraised at 455k. We put 20% down with money from my husband’s savings + 30k in cash as a gift from his parents. We currently owe 342k on the mortgage.
• Savings account: Currently 18k. This took a hit due to some home maintenance costs and a new car purchase.
• Checking account balance: About $2500, typically between 1k-3k. We also currently have about 3k in a piggybank fund that’s technically a savings account but is linked to our checking account and has an abysmal interest rate. We use that for house/auto maintenance, dog expenses, holiday/birthday gifts, vacation, etc.
• Credit card debt: 0 down from 10k, no excuse for the credit card debt except lifestyle creep and stress spending. We floated a balance for a while and then buckled down early last year to pay it off in 5 months.
• Student loan debt: 57k down from 110k (principal was originally 90k ugh) for my BA. I refinance every 6 months or so for better interest rates. I had a lot of shame and buried my head in the sand with these for a long time and only really began aggressively attacking them in the last 4 years. I also have an M.Ed that was paid through tuition remission from my job (60%) and academic scholarships (40%). My husband has a BA but no student loans thanks to his parents.
• Car loan: 29k (we put 5k down in cash + 8k for our trade in) We made it 7 months with 3 kids and a dog in our compact SUV before we finally buckled and bought a minivan in September – it’s a plug in electric/hybrid minivan so we save a lot on gas plus will get a $7500 tax credit, which we’ll put on my loans. Plus, you know, the world is on fire and everything so we weren’t looking for a gas guzzler.

Section 2: Income

• · Income Progression:

- My first jobs were babysitting and working as a camp counselor in my teens. Throughout my late teens and early 20s I mostly worked as a bartender and/or barista, as well as tutoring (I lived in France for a little bit in high school so tutoring rich kids in French was always a moneymaker), dance teacher for budding ballerinas, and a bit of writing/editing. I graduated college over the course of 4 years but took a circuitous route (didn’t love college tbh), including taking two semesters off to travel and taking a full year leave of absence to live and work in Santa Fe when I was 20. When I wasn’t enrolled in college I was responsible for my all of my expenses. When I was enrolled in college my parents paid for housing and tuition as much as they could, and I covered my personal expenses.
- After graduating I continued to bartend for about a year and then I got a job as an advisor in higher ed, because it was one of the few industries hiring during the recession. I made 40k but with no benefits besides PTO. After 2 years, I moved to university where I currently work with the same salary but far better benefits including healthcare, retirement, paid family leave and tuition remission.
- My job hasn’t changed much in the last 8 years -- salary increases were mostly inflation adjustments masked as bonuses -- but it’s ideal for me right now. I enjoy the people I work with and have a lot of flexibility (outside of meetings I mostly work when and how I want) with great benefits that allow me to contribute to retirement and stay in the workforce as a young mom. When my daughter was born 8 years ago, I went part time and then PT with 90% telework when my son was born 5 years ago. I went back to full time while teleworking 2 years ago. So I was doing the work-from-home-parent thing for a while before COVID, but uh at least with some childcare.
- I met my husband in my early 20s and we knew within a few months (excuse the mush) we were it for each other. He’s 8 years older and we were both in a place where we wanted to start a family, so I had kids about 7-10 younger than most of my social group. This could be pretty isolating at times, but overall I don’t regret it and recognize that I'm fortunate to be able to make the choices I have. We’re putting the baby (8 months old) in full time daycare next fall and I plan to begin to start my career in earnest then (I’m very interested in the intersection of education policy and law especially w/t the equity gap). My friends lovingly refer to my approach as the Nancy Pelosi method – I’ll take it.

• Monthly Take Home:

Mine- $2,760 (paid biweekly after taxes, healthcare, 403b, savings transfer)
Spouse - $5900 (paid 2x/month after taxes, 401k and savings transfer)
Total HH - $8660 ($9260 incl. savings contributions)
Section 3: Expenses

• Savings - $600… more focused on student loans right now
• Mortgage - $2035, includes escrow payment that covers taxes and insurance
• Car - $550 (min payment is $450 but we pay extra to shave a year off the loan term)
• Student loans - $2000-2500 (min payment is $1045 but we’re trying to rid us of these in 3 years or less)
• Cable/internet - $120
• Phone - $210 for a 4 line family plan with my parents (we pay)
• Utilities - $320 average for water, electricity, gas, and sewage
• Hulu/Spotify/Disney+ - $22 we share with fam
• Netflix/Prime/HBO – $0 we take from fam
• Yearly Subscriptions - $19.50/month (YNAB $84, Washington Post $90, Costco $60)
• Life insurance - $75 (750k policy for my husband & 500k for me)
• Farm CSA - $70/month for weekly veggies
• Meat CSA - $65/month for 15lb meat delivery every other month
• Car insurance - $70 (monthly cost, we pay premium in full every 6 months for savings) This covers the minivan and our 2003 Corolla which is still chugging along like a champ.
• Kids Activities fund: $150/month --for sports, camps, classes, etc., padded right now due to COVID
• Piggybank funds: $600
• Donations: about $200. We donate $100 to a small charity we run that raises money for treatment scholarships for people seeking recovery from substance abuse and addiction after my brother in law died from an overdose a few years ago. We usually spend between $50-100 in other donations per month, but nothing regular.
• College funds: We aim for $2500/year funded through gift money, selling things, and minor side gig money I get from writing/editing. My in-laws started 529s for our kids when each was born with a seed of $30k. We are immensely lucky, and I’d like to shout very loudly that both my husband and me have benefitted greatly from generational wealth, as will our children. Our privilege is well noted, and we center many conversations about this with our kids.

Section 4 – The rundown

• Food + Drink: $264.86
• Fun / Entertainment: $4.95
• Home + Health: $103
• Clothes + Beauty: $50
• Transport: 0
• Gifts: $477

Total: $899.81
Day 1, Wednesday:
8am -- The baby cooing wakes me up after a rough night of sleep. I nurse him a little and then hand him off to his almost-8-years-old sister (J.) who happily takes him to her room to cuddle and play before virtual school starts up at 9.
My husband wakes up around 7:00 to clean up the kitchen and basically take care of everything house or kid related before heading to work around 8:30, but I get breakfast for everyone and make sure the kids are (mostly) dressed. My five year old son (C.) settles on “bee cereal” i.e. Honey Nut Cheerios, and that’s good enough for the group, except for the baby who gets sweet potato puffs and a blueberry-banana breakfast bar. The big kids play video games for about 10 minutes before school starts at 9am.
C. should be in Kindergarten, but he was having meltdown after meltdown trying to stay logged into virtual school for 5-6 hours a day, so he watches the recorded zoom meetings on his own time and spends most of the day playing outside or watching tv. We try to do one academic-ish thing a day outside of listening to the zoom lessons (playing alphabet games, practicing writing, making an art project, or finding patterns). Schools in our area have been closed for in-person learning continuously since March. This morning C. turns on the Netflix du Jour, a riveting show called “Trash Truck” about - you guessed it - a trash truck, and I sit down to catch up on work e-mails while the baby crawls around investigating the bucket of toys I overturned for him. Or maybe those are the dog’s toys? Whatever, he’s entertained.
10:30am -- I finish up my work emails in between letting the dog out (and back in) and tending to the baby a bit, and then make a payment on two of our credit cards to cover spending in the last week. We use reward credit cards for everyday spending, so I make payments a couple of times a week to make sure we don’t carry a balance. I also reconcile YNAB.
$0, but a lot of money management (I didn’t include the credit card payments because I count that spending when we actually… spend it…)
11am -- Baby is down for his morning nap, C. is climbing trees outside, and J. is finishing up her homework at the end of the school day (Wednesdays are half days). I turn on Price is Right and throw a load of laundry in, straighten up a little, and then make lunch. Usually my husband makes the kids’ lunches in the morning, but C. complained of too much redundancy yesterday, so today I offered to make them a hot lunch: dino nuggets, Annie’s mac and cheese, and ants on a log. My plan is to make myself an everything bagel breakfast sandwich with prosciutto, cheese, fried egg and a side salad and sit down to work before the baby wakes up. Sounds great, right? Well just as I’m finishing the big kids lunch, our meat CSA is delivered so our dog goes bonkers and wakes the baby up. I try to nurse the baby back to sleep while responding to a work email on my phone but the big kids each interrupt twice, so he’s up for good. I haphazardly slap some cream cheese on my sad bagel and throw some olive oil and Parmesan on some greens and try to scarf down something while managing chaos.
1pm - I give the baby lunch (puréed carrots and shredded provolone cheese). After clean up he wants to nurse for about 10 minutes. A full belly did the trick and he’s down for his nap again.
3pm - We make some slime with a kit our neighbor gave us. My daughter complains it’s too slimy
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ We then sit down to plan her birthday party for next weekend, which will be a virtual tea party. I buy a $5 digital invitation template on Etsy to send out to family and friends and try to make it a little more fun since we can’t do a normal birthday party for her this year. When I check out, I still have in my Etsy cart a wooden train set I was planning on buying for my new baby niece for Christmas. I buy that too. Total - $54.95
4pm - I heat up some tomato soup as a snack for the big kids and nurse the baby. We head out to run some errands — I have to drop off a birthday card in the mail and it’s the veggie csa pick up day at the farm (curbside so no contact). I swing though McDonald’s and get two ice cream cones for the big kids and a coffee for me as a treat since the farm is about an hour round trip. The baby takes a nap during the drive. Total - $4.64
5:30pm - Home again and I switch the laundry, straighten up, nurse the baby and check in on work.
6:30pm - I throw some personal pizzas into the toaster oven and serve them with carrot sticks and dressing for dinner for the big kids. They watch a show about a flamingo that delivers baby animals to animal parents.
7:30pm - I nurse the baby (he loves his milk and his mama) and then head downstairs to straighten up and ask the big kids to clear their plates. My daughter does; my son plays video games. We spar; I’m tired. My husband is trying to work on leaving for work earlier in the day so he can get home earlier because honestly after 6pm I’m spent, and my patience reserve feels especially low today. My husband finally arrives a little before 8 and immediately takes over baby duty and feeds him dinner (green beans and sweet corn) while entertaining the big kids. I heat up some leftovers and scarf them down while chatting with my friends on WhatsApp.
8:30pm - bedtime routine for all kids start. I spar with C. again over brushing his teeth. It escalates and I get pretty angry. C. is smart and spirited and strong willed and this pandemic has been so hard on him. It’s been hard on me. We sometimes take it out on each other. I put J. and the baby to sleep and then sneak into C.‘s room while my husband is reading to him to give C. a hug and apologize to him for my temper.
9:30pm - I have a beer and some hummus and pita chips while finishing up some work. My husband eats some leftovers and we watch an old season of The Amazing Race, and then go to bed around midnight after I dream feed the baby.
Daily Total: $59.59
****
Day 2, Thursday:
8:30am - I wake up to our 45lb shepherd mix lying on top of me for a snuggle and quickly get out of bed and for some reason get dressed in real clothes. Jeans even. Amazing. My husband has just left for work, so I take the baby and get him dressed. In the living room, C. has already poured cereal and milk for him and his sister, but is also totally naked. I bring him some clothes. I give the baby some plain Cheerios, help J. log into school, and cuddle a little bit with C. while he watches a Disney Nature show before getting up to make some toast and eggs for myself. I’m planning on trying to get some work done but end up making hand turkeys with the kids instead.
11am - I nurse the baby and put him down for a nap. I get the big kids a snack (chips and hummus), do the breakfast dishes, and give J. some encouragement in virtual learning. Then I refill my coffee and finally sit down to work.
11:30am - Baby’s awake. So I guess half hour naps is a thing now.
12:00pm- I’m on lunch duty again so I make some cheese quesadillas with apple slices and grapes while trying to finish a report I need to send out before my 1pm meeting. I reheat my coffee for lunch and send the kids outside to play while I nurse the baby and text with my sister after the report is out.
1pm - I give the baby a bit of butternut squash for lunch and log in for my meeting with him in tow because he doesn’t seem sleepy yet. I have two meetings and a parent/teacher conference today so I asked (/demanded) my husband work from home this afternoon and he’s on his way now. My employer is much more flexible and accommodating than his — babies on zoom don’t phase them— but it’s almost worse this way because it means less boundaries and more stress/shuffling for me. He is pretty isolated at work (masked with his own office, no in person group meetings), so it’s kind of ridiculous he has to go to the office at all, but he doesn’t have much of a choice.
2pm - my husband got home a half hour ago and my first meeting is done, so I nurse the baby to sleep for his nap. I grab a cliff bar and my husband and I log in to a zoom parent teacher conference with C.’s Kindergarten teacher. He hasn’t attended virtual school live in 6 weeks, but she’s not worried about it and neither are we. I straighten up a little bit and then am back in the office for my 3pm meeting.
4pm - The big kids are having a tea party and request tea snacks so I make them s’mores and peppermint tea and then stress eat a s’more (or maybe two) myself because skipping lunch is a terrible idea when you’re constantly breastfeeding a giant baby. I send out J.’s virtual tea party invites and finish up work e-mail and then straighten up a little bit.
6:30pm - My husband stops working and says he’ll make dinner and watch the kids so I can take a much needed shower and relax a little. He starts on the ingredients for an epic taco bar dinner with roasted corn, and I throw together a spinach salad before getting in the shower. I take a long shower and savor the silence. When I emerge I can hear the baby screaming, but (mercifully) my husband is never phased by crying children so I take my time getting into PJs and submit my answers for a daily trivia league I play in.
9:00pm - Kids are all in bed. I clean up the house, which is a disaster zone, because I hate clutter. My husband and I then eat our tacos and salad, and I make myself a hot chocolate. I tell myself I’m going to get some work done but instead I spend two hours updating my fantasy football teams and texting with my sister.
11:30pm - we watch the end of an episode of David Letterman's Netflix show and then the daily show. I fall asleep on the couch and then migrate to bed.
Daily Total: $0
*****
Day 3, Friday:
8amish - I’m slow to get out of bed. The baby and C. are both cranky and my husband (who works at home on Fridays) and I play chicken to see who’s going to get up first to do stuff. Eventually he’s up to change the baby and then clean up the kitchen and make ice and coffee. I pull on some sweatpants and a tshirt and get breakfast for the big kids. They want a bagel and cream cheese (daughter) and a bagel with peanut butter (son), so I oblige because friyay. My daughter logs into school, and is sad I made the wrong kind of bagel for her (everything instead of cinnamon raisin, the horror). I pop the right bagel in the toaster and eat her everything bagel instead. The baby eats a few blueberry bars and shares what he can with the dog.
11am - Baby down for his nap. I got paid last night so I budget that money in YNAB and work.
1pm - Baby awake. I make dino nuggets and carrots for kids’ lunch and I’m starving but don’t have the energy to make anything, so I just start eating prosciutto and goldfish by the fistful. #momlunch (FYI you can buy like 1lb of prosciutto at Costco for $8).
3pm - There is a mega kids consignment sale that happens in our metro area at a few locations several times a year. I frequently consign old kids clothes and toys at these and also buy a lot of the kids’ stuff here too (the steals on really nice quality things is amazing… plus seeing one of these sales reinforces the insane amount of things already in the world. We don’t need to make/buy more.). With COVID they started an online model for their sales which includes curbside drop off for sold items and pick up for bought items. I have to drop off my sold items this afternoon. Due to time and stress I wasn’t able to consign as much, so it’s only about 18 items. I make $52.00 (70% of the total price, sale organizers keep 30%). I pick up a latte from the neighborhood coffee shop on the way and jam out to Betty Who in the minivan. ($5.64 + tip = $7.64)
5pm - Pandemonium when I get back. C. had a couple of rage fits, the baby was asleep but had been crying most of the time (I never set out to be an attachment parent but being born at the start of a pandemic kind of forced it on us, and the baby is really, really attached to me.) My husband looks exhausted from juggling all the kids and wrapping up a few projects from work. We know it’ll be a take out night for us. Take-out is our biggest weakness. I don’t mind cooking but I also don’t love it, so it’s something that I easily pass on if I can. I’m trying to shift to cooking dinner midday when I have more time and energy, and I do meal plan (though it’s more like meal opportunities… I grocery shop and stock the kitchen for scheduled meals at the start of every month but I often hop around the schedule). But take out is one of our few indulgences, and it calls to us far too frequently. It doesn’t help that we live in an area with phenomenal food choices.
7pm - After straightening up and getting the big kids an easy dinner (my daughter actually wanted spaghetti and not take out), I run out to pick up steak fajitas and sopapillas for my husband and me; I order online and do curbside pick up. $49.65. I also run into a beer and wine store to get a 12-pack variety IPA for my husband and a 12-pack of Guinness for me. $45.76
Total: $95.41
9pm- Home, bedtime for kids, clean up as much as I can. While my husband tucks my son in I lay out our Mexican food feast in the family room. He logs into a virtual call with a bunch of his college friends and we eat and catch up with them as we relax. My husband has opted for straight vodka instead of a beer tonight (thanks, pandemic parenting), and I savor a nice cold Guinness. The call ends around 11pm and we watch an episode or two of the Amazing Race, clean up dinner, and then slink to bed around 1am.
Daily Total: $103.05
****
Day 4 - Saturday
8am - Baby awake. The big kids take him into their rooms to play. I get up thirty minutes later when I hear the big kids banish the baby to the hallway, because he started annoying them. Poor baby. He’s smelly because he pooped overnight and the poop is now encrusted on his legs under his PJs, so it’s bath time now. Kids are fun.
10am - I’m starving and the baby is cranky from teething so I have chips and queso for breakfast because it’s 2020 and idgaf. I make my daughter a bagel and cream cheese and give my son cheerios before making a mental note to order a grocery delivery for tomorrow because we’re out of milk. My husband pours me a coffee and we relax a little bit as I nurse the baby. I catch up with my sister via text.
12pm - Baby is asleep and the big kids and my husband are playing video games, so I sit down to do all the things - Work! Bills! Grocery delivery! -- first I make myself a couple fajitas from last night’s leftovers.
I reconcile YNAB transactions and then pay a $25 co-pay bill from a doctor’s tele-visit last month. I’ve had mild to moderate anxiety most of my adult life, and it’s gotten particularly bad in the last few months (um obviously), so my doctor prescribed me low dose Zoloft and it’s been wonderful. Social media likes to tell parents (read: moms) about all the things they should do to raise children (“stop using negative language!” “be supportive of big feelings!”) … but I’m a working mother with three kids in a pandemic, and you know what helps me be a better parent? Medication. Because maybe the pressures of modern American parenthood are unrealistic, and we just need more help. (Descends from soapbox…)
Baby awake before I complete the grocery order.
3pm - I’ve been nursing the baby and doing housework (there are 7 loads of laundry so help me god) before I finally get a chance to finish the grocery order while the kids are outside playing with my husband. I order milk, sprite zero, broccoli, blueberries, queso, cereal, oatmeal, tea (to send out to the virtual party guests), and chai concentrate. Plus a $3 delivery fee = $51.17 We usually do a large Costco trip once a month for staples (about $400), and then I make 2-3 grocery deliveries throughout the month like this to re-stock.
6pm - Somehow the big kids got turned onto this game where they call me The Queen and my husband The King and they’re the maids who have to do whatever we say. I assume it’s divine intervention that they came up with this so I never tempt fate. While they play (slash clean up the house) the King makes dinner - shrimp scampi and a big broccoli, arugula and lentil salad - while I read the paper. I eat a big portion of the salad topped with just a few shrimp because I need the greens like whoa.
9pm - Bedtime routines and the rest of the night is a bit of a blur to be honest. We watched the Great British Baking Show and had a couple beers and cuddled probably. Not sure when we went to bed.
Daily Total - $76.17
****
Day 5 - Sunday
2am - While “awake” nursing the baby I suddenly snap up and remember that the Best Buy and Game Stop Black Friday sales started at midnight. The kids currently play a retro Super Nintendo complete with games from the mid 90s (what can I say, they’re awed by my donkey Kong skills), and we finally figured they were old enough now it’s probably time to bring them into the 21st century. I snag a Nintendo Switch bundle with Mario Kart for $299 from Best Buy after waiting a few minutes (they released stock in waves to prevent an immediate sellout), which we’ll give them for Christmas. Total with tax - $317
9am - up for real now and we’re late. We hurry out the door with a pitstop at Starbucks for coffee, peppermint hot chocolates, pumpkin bread, and bagels ($32). We’re headed up to do a curbside pickup of the stuff I bought from the consignment sale. For Christmas, we try to keep the kids gifts to one big gift (often to share, like the Nintendo Switch), one medium gift, and two small gifts per kid. I managed to finish all the kids Christmas shopping in one fell swoop at the online consignment sale (including gifts for my nephew and two nieces). We also got a bike trailer for kids for about $50 that retails new at REI for $400, plus a lot of clothes. All in I spent $196, and Christmas shopping is mostly done.
11am - after picking up the consignment sale goods, we head to a drive thru covid testing site. I was around a larger group of people (20 or so) for a memorial last week, and I’ve been isolating to household as much as possible since then. I had a negative covid test last Monday, but both my husband and I are getting tested again today. The testing line is looooong in advance of Thanksgiving, and it takes us just under 2 hours to get through. Yikes. The kids are screaming for lunch so we zoom home and I make a quick grilled cheese and serve it with bunches of grapes.
2pm - my brother, sister and I are chatting about a vacation at the lake (about 2 hours away) we had booked for all of us and my parents over New Years. It’s looking increasingly like that would be an irresponsible trip to take given the current covid climate, so we decide to move it to the end of April. My sister and her family live in Canada and we’re going to have to miss it anyway, so at least this way they have a chance at joining us. My brother will call the rental company and move the dates and pay the new deposit ($300). We lose the old deposit, but my card’s travel insurance should reimburse us. I make a mental note to call their claim center this week.
4pm - We log onto zoom for a Friendsgiving get together with friends - there’s about 20 participants, many with young children - and it’s a little crazy. By the time we log off it’s too dark to take the bike ride my son was hoping for, and he has a meltdown.
6pm – I take a shower and then start a K-pop dance party in the kitchen to try to brighten up C. who is still angry about not being able to bike. He eventually succumbs to the BTS beat. Once upon a time I was that music snob that would only go to concerts in tiny venues with obscurely known indie bands, and now I’m moonwalking to Dynamite. Life comes at you fast, friends.
7pm - We decide on takeout again because we definitely fall into a “it’s the weekend, treat yo self” trap and decide to order Thai for lots of leftovers as a way of lessening our guilt over ordering. Our local Thai restaurant will deliver to us. We get curry puffs, yum watercress, pad Thai with shrimp, pad see ew with chicken, and massaman curry. ($74 with tip and tax)
9pm - Kids are all in bed. I do about an hour of work and then tell myself I’m going to fold laundry or do something else productive, but we’re exhausted so we just watch an episode of the Queen’s Gambit and then go to bed around 11:30.
Daily Total - $619 ouch
*****
Day 6 – Monday
8:30am - I’m going to get up early and get some work done today, I told myself last night. Spoiler: I did not do that. I emerge from bed and find my family in the kitchen — my husband finishing up chores and all the kids eating oatmeal with blueberries. I get my daughter set up with school as my husband departs. She’s out of underwear, so it looks like that seven loads of undone laundry is starting to be an issue.
10:30am - baby down for nap. I feel very unproductive. I put a load of laundry in and sit down to work but instead somehow end up browsing political memes on Instagram instead.
12pm - by the time the baby wakes up I have gotten a little more work done. I nurse the baby and then play a few rounds of Crazy 8s with my son. I text my husband the info for our zoom parent/teacher conference with my daughter’s teacher so he can login from work. Conference is at 12:50. I heat up leftovers to eat for lunch and get the kids lunches out (husband made them this morning). I give the baby some apple sauce and rice for lunch.
3pm - Baby is down for another nap. I make myself a chai latte and switch the laundry before sitting down to do more work. It’s half days for my daughter this week because of Thanksgiving, and she and her brother are actually getting along well, so they spend a lot of the afternoon playing outside together. I take a 20 minute break to prep dinner, which is Ina Garten’s Turkey Hash, so it should only take about 20 minutes to throw together at dinner time. I get a good chunk of work done, possibly motivated by the announcement that we get Wednesday off. My husband texts to say his boss gave the green light to go back to full time telework after thanksgiving due to the surging covid numbers. Micro good news, macro bad news.
6pm - I do some more laundry and ”pretend” to sleep in a fort J. and C. built before getting dinner together. I make a few eggs to throw on top of the Turkey hash and toss together a big salad as well. We all eat dinner when my husband gets home a little after 7. Baby has bananas and strawberries for dinner.
8:30pm - Bedtime for all kids. I do a little work and we watch our old standby, the amazing race, while I have a Sprite Zero and a s’more for dessert. The baby isn’t sleeping well tonight so I spend a good chunk of time trying to get him to settle before heading to bed around midnight.
Daily Total - $0
******
Day 7 – Tuesday
8:45am - I’m up! I’m up. I help the kids all get dressed and change the baby. I make a few eggs for myself, a bagel and cream cheese for J., and oatmeal for C. The baby has cheerios and a few slices of banana. I do some housework and try to motivate myself to get some work done.
10am - The baby broke my glasses when playing with them -- probably should have seen (ha) that coming. I hop on Zenni and they have a Black Friday sale (oh no) for 20% off $30 or more. I get two pairs of glasses for me, plus a pair of prescription aviator sunglasses for my husband to put in his stocking. Total with $5 shipping - $48
12pm - Baby is napping and I’m trying to get some work done. The big kids eat their packed lunches and I see my husband has also made a sandwich for me, so I scarf that down over reports. I’m really sluggish again today. I make a chai but it feels like I can’t concentrate. The dog and I usually go for runs 2-3 times a week on a local trail, but since semi-isolating I’ve stayed in and I think it’s starting to really affect my overall state. It probably doesn’t help that I often catch the pup looking longingly at her running harness and then back at me, disappointment evident in her eyes.
1pm - I set up Zoom Thanksgiving for my family. It’ll just be us with my mother and father in law, who live 20 minutes away, for Thanksgiving in person. I spend 40 minutes making a Jeopardy game to play online for my family and then immediately text everyone about how excited I am to play it. I continue to do no legitimate work.
2pm - The baby wakes up the very minute a team meeting is supposed to start. I grab him, turn my video off (no Toobin slips here thanks) and nurse him for the first half of the meeting that goes for about an hour. Afterwards I officially say sayonara to work until next week. During my meeting the big kids have gotten into an argument over video games and it gets uglier than it should. When people ask how it’s going with the kids in quarantine, I relay it this way: imagine you’re a kid again and your sibling(s) are your only playmate or social contact for 8+ months. Even if you get along with them, that’s batshit insane. Sometimes I’m shocked they haven’t done more damage to each other. I’m feeling particularly kumbaya-like and crunchy today so after I calm them down I make us all tell each other two things we love about each other. They tell the baby the two things they love about him are his sweet personality and his fat thighs; better him than me.
4pm - My daughter got a baking cookbook and utensils from my brother and sister in law as an early birthday present in the mail today, and she’s been hankering to make brownies all day. We make a pan and afterwards we veg out and watch tv together for a bit while playing with snapchat filters until my husband gets home.
6pm - I throw together a mongolian beef-esque marinade and toss that with some sirloin cuts in the instant pot, steam some rice, and roast broccoli and green beans for dinner. It’s pretty good but the marinade is a little too sweet for me --- my son eats all the vegetables and none of the beef and rice. He truly is an enigma.
7pm - My husband and the kids go outside to play some catch (in the dark, whatevs), and I work like a tasmanian devil cleaning up the house. When unencumbered by children I think I could set records for how quickly I clean up. I finish by changing out sheets on all the beds, and then take a shower.
8:30pm - Bedtime for the kids; they’re down by 9.
9:30pm - I indulge in one of my favorite teas - African Nectar by mighty leaf; I’ve loved mighty leaf since I worked at a coffee shop that carried their collection, but I try not to drink them too often since I find it’s pricier than your everyday tea. We watch the rest of the Queen’s Gambit. I fall asleep on the couch around 11:30, I’m told, and zombie walk to bed around midnight. I fall asleep reveling in the wonderfulness of the sensation of fresh sheets on shaven legs.
Daily Total: $48
Total Spent: $899.81
**********
Section 5: Reflection
This was a bit of an atypical week for me, because I bought a lot of Christmas presents, which mostly come from our piggybank fund. Gifts and food are for sure my weakness; if I could eat take out all day while shopping for other people I’d be good for life, and I think that was reflected this week a little bit. I was definitely more conscious of my gift spending this week since I had to record it all though. Throughout this year I’ve struggled to find the right balance between giving myself a little grace on spending because oh em gee does my day-to-day feel stressful sometimes, while also being mindful of overspending. Recording everything this week definitely hit home for me that sort of guilt trap I fall into with money (but also how I feel guilty about pretty much everything).