Tag: money

This website was archived on July 21, 2019. It is frozen in time on that date.

Sonya Mann's active website is Sonya, Supposedly.

Planned Monthly Spending

Posted on by Sonya Mann
A Mirror of Competing Beauties of the Green Houses by Katsukawa Shunshō (Japan, 1726-1792) and Kitao Shigemasa (Japan, 1739-1820) via Wikimedia.
Half of A Mirror of Competing Beauties of the Green Houses by Katsukawa Shunshō (1726-1792) and Kitao Shigemasa (1739-1820) via Wikimedia.

I want to share my new personal budget. My salary recently jumped $25k — I graduated from $30k per year with no benefits to $55k per year with insurance and other benefits. This triggered the necessity of re-budgeting, in a wonderful way! Having more money is great.

You can check out the spreadsheet, but I’m probably going to adjust that over time, so here’s how I’m currently breaking things down in terms of approximate monthly costs:

  • Rent and utilities: $750 (I live in Richmond, CA; soon will be sharing a one-bedroom apartment with my boyfriend)
  • Car insurance: $84
  • Health and dental insurance: $300 (I elected to stay on my parents’ plan and receive a monthly credit from my employer)
  • Food: $200
  • Cell phone: $52
  • Netflix: $10
  • Internet: $17
  • Planned Parenthood donation: $10 (tax-deductible)
  • Saint James Infirmary donation: $10 (tax-deductible)
  • Stratechery membership: $10
  • Longreads: $5
  • The Marshall Project donation: $10 (tax-deductible)
  • Latterly: $2.67
  • Gimlet Media: $5
  • Instapaper: $2.50
  • BigCartel: $9.99
  • Vanguard Roth IRA: $460

Total cost: $1,938.16. Since I’m drawing $4,583 monthly (approximately $3,070 after taxes) there’s about ~$1,000 of room for me to give more to charity, spend more on media, and save more! Woohoo. I’ll have to figure that out. At the moment I particularly want to focus on charity — I’d like to increase my donations to Planned Parenthood and the Saint James Infirmary, but PayPal doesn’t offer any immediately obvious way to do this. I’m also considering Compass Family Services.

Frivolous possibilities: The Economist for $13.33/month and Stack Magazines for $8.30/month.

money to burn - illustration
Illustration by Michael Statham.

Edit: I posted an update, and then an article about why I choose to be financially transparent.

One Millennial Spends This Much On Journalism

Posted on by Sonya Mann
pile of newspapers
Photo by Jon S.

Writing “Case Study Of A Magazine Purchase” made me consider the amount of money I spend on media every month. I suspect that I’m more extravagant than most people, but I’ve never added up the $$$. Here’s my list, in no particular order:

This is all for digital material. $36.17 per month; debatably actually $26.17 because The Marshall Project is a nonprofit and the donation comes off my taxes. Either way, it’s really not much. I could easily drop $36.17 on dinner or drinks.

I also periodically buy books and I benefit from my parents’ subscriptions to The New York Times, the New Yorker, The Sun (print), and Funny Times (print). I suppose you could include Netflix, but that erodes the focus on journalism.

weathered stack of newspapers
Photo by Dave Crosby.

Currently I’m considering a subscription to The Economist. Their one-year bundle would run me $13.33 per month, whereas the two-year option comes out to $11.63 per month. Either package includes Espresso, their “daily briefing” app, which I really want (Nieman Lab did a fascinating interview with Tom Standage re: digital strategy). I’ll pull the trigger if I get a raise.

Wealth-Adjacency Privilege

Posted on by Sonya Mann
gold ingots and gold coins
Photo by John Louis.

Sara Bibel writes on The Billfold about having a rich uncle:

“When I was making big bucks, I offered to pay my uncle back for the tuition assistance he had given me. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘I don’t need it.’ I feel guilty about this privilege, that I am not saddled with the debt that has made life difficult for so many people I know. I do my best to pay my good fortune forward. […] Access to wealth, and the knowledge that comes with it, is like getting compound interest on your entire life.”

I said this on Facebook, but I think it’s worth noting here for posterity: I also have the privilege of wealth-adjacency — more than that, actually, because my immediate family is financially comfortable as well as my relatives. I would be in a drastically different situation without robust health insurance and parents who could support me into my early adulthood. That doesn’t even address the money-manipulation comfort that Bibel brings up in her article (which I’m still learning).

"Invest in sharing!" A street art stencil featuring the "get out of jail free" card image from Monopoly board-game. Found painted on the sidewalk in New York City in 2007.
Photo by Jonathan McIntosh.

Something that should happen more often: Rich people mentoring poor kids specifically regarding personal economics. (Also systemic policy reform of various kinds, but let’s not get too excited.) If I’m ever wealthy by virtue of my own actions, I hope I will take the time and energy to hang out with a low-income high-school student and, I dunno, impart some knowledge. And buy their textbooks. Is that an unrealistic notion?

Of course, the policy reform is what would really help — if only moneyed interests didn’t have such a stranglehold on politics! One of the cruelest symptoms of growing up poor is that the whole arrangement is rigged: financial security is unattainable — but if you somehow magically attain it, you can’t handle your newly healthy bank account because you haven’t been able to practice not being broke. (Warning: both articles contain offhand references to sexual violence.)

Cracked.com is not your typical progressive publication, but apparently they had the sense to make John Cheese an editor. The brilliant Tressie McMillan Cottom has also written wonderfully on this topic.

Boss Life: Surviving My Own Small Business (Book Review)

Posted on by Sonya Mann
Paul Downs, author of Boss Life and owner of Paul Downs Cabinetmakers
Paul Downs, author of Boss Life and owner of Paul Downs Cabinetmakers.

Running a small business can be brutal. With the publication of a new book, Boss Life, you don’t have to learn all the hard lessons on your own. Instead, read about the mistakes and occasional hard-won triumphs of Paul Downs, an old-school entrepreneur who describes himself thus: “I am a survivor, but not a financial success.”

This first-time author founded and manages the furniture company Paul Downs Cabinetmakers, which has been in business for twenty-nine years, since 1986. He also formerly wrote for The New York Times and happens to be my uncle.

Yes, I’m related to Paul Downs, but allow me to insist that I won’t be the only one who thinks Boss Life is great. Downs uses real numbers and anecdotes, some of which do not flatter his personal judgment, to illustrate the larger principles. His candor makes the book fascinating.

Boss Life: Surviving My Own Small Business
Boss Life: Surviving My Own Small Business by Paul Downs, published by Penguin’s Blue Rider Press.

Luckily Boss Life has almost nothing to do with woodworking, though that is nominally the content of Downs’ company. The book is really about sales. It’s about marketing and customer acquisition. It’s about cash flow, accounting, and management — basically, Boss Life is about economics and human nature.

Downs brings the reader through a year in the life of his company (specifically 2012), beginning each chapter by stating his bank account balance, the value of sales to date, and whether he’s lost money overall. Then he explains the month’s events and why they had the financial repercussions they did.

Part case study and part memoir, Downs’ book is worth reading if you employ people, are employed, or work in any capacity, no matter the size of your operation. That’s my review as a reader, not a niece.

A rosewood-and-ebony conference table designed and built by Paul Downs Cabinetmakers.
A rosewood-and-ebony conference table designed and built by Paul Downs Cabinetmakers.

How Do People Manage To Do Jobs They Love???

Posted on by Sonya Mann
hunched over spooky creature illustration
Illustration by jessicanicole______ on Instagram. Yes, that many underscores in the username.

During the past few days I’ve been thinking about art and money, about ways to be entrepreneurial while working with art. (Contemplating such things has even entailed posting on my neglected curatorial Tumblr.)

I love the idea of being an art broker, or a dealer, or whatever the correct term is for a person who represents artists and sells their work. The whim has caught me and it’s bouncing around in my brain.

Of course, I love the idea, but I would probably be bad at dealing art. Go-get-’em sales-sense is not my forte. I can be relatively charming but hawking wares makes me squeamish. The hard-sell approach is painful.

colorful abstract money painting
Ten-cent painting (see what I did there?) by Jason McHenry.

ArtBusiness.com has this subject locked down and reading those articles did not make me feel like selling art is lucrative. Not that I’m surprised. People do it for love, not money, like writing. Spoiler alert: creative pursuits don’t make you rich unless you’re incredibly lucky and at least somewhat talented. “Starving artist” is a valid cliche.

The devil on my shoulder — we’re all born with one, I think — discourages every fantasy. I can’t decide if it’s practical or defeatist.

Grotesque painting, Familiar, by Bruno Nadalin; $50 on Etsy.
Grotesque painting by Bruno Nadalin; $50 on Etsy.

Sign up for my newsletter to stay abreast of my new writing and projects.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program. If you click on an Amazon link from this site and subsequently buy something, I may receive a small commission (at no cost to you).