Welcome to Spending Notes, where we do a weekly deep dive into how our readers spend their cash.
Today: a private school teacher who makes $62,000
Occupation: private school teacher
Age: 44
Location: Greenville, MS
Salary: $62,000 (approx. $2,000 per pay period)
Day One
I’ve been a teacher for a few decades now, and it’s an enjoyable career. My mother was a teacher, so it didn’t take long for me to realize it’s also what I wanted to do. I teach English at a private high school in Greenville. It’s been an interesting couple of years in education, to say the least. I’ve had to switch up my teaching style to accommodate different learning platforms. But overall, I find that my role as a teacher is more crucial than ever. On Mondays, I usually treat myself to a frappuccino from Starbucks. The whipped cream really brightens up my mood.
Total: $6.50
Day Two
Instead of making dinner, I had my son H. order dinner for our family from an Italian restaurant nearby. Over dinner, he asked for a mouse pad for his gaming setup. Apparently, gamers online have been talking about the best gaming mouse pad and it’s absolutely crucial for him to have it. I asked him to text me the link, and it looked durable. H. mentioned it was important to have plenty of room for mouse movement and that it’s important to have less friction for optimal gameplay. I like to show him that I’m interested in his hobbies, so we went ahead and ordered it that night.
Total: $20.44
Day Three
My students had been learning about Beowulf the past couple of weeks, so I had them do a worksheet today. It wasn’t worth a lot of points, which meant it was very low-pressure. Tomorrow, I’ll be showing a little clip from the movie adaptation that I think they might enjoy. Later, they’ll have to write an essay about the relationship between Beowulf and Grendel, but it won’t be due for a couple of weeks. I just figured I ought to assign it sooner rather than later so they know what to expect as far as the workload. No expenses today.
Total: $0
Day Four
With winter break coming up, I decided to plan a trip for my family and I to hit the Mississippi Blues Trail. Mississippi is the birthplace of the blues, and the trail covers a lot of historic blues sites. It gives you a new appreciation for the state. I bought three general admissions tickets for the Delta Blues Museum for me, H., and my partner T.
Total: $38.75
Day Five
This week flew by quickly. I think it’s because I spent a lot of my time grading exams from the last week or so. I try to take it easy along with my students at the end of the week. They usually have difficulty concentrating right before the weekend. I spent the first half of class talking about the evolution of poetry. In the second half, I let them write their own poems about any book we’ve read throughout the semester.
Total: $0
Day Six
- and I went on a morning run today. It’s a great way for us to spend some quality time together, just the two of us. Tomorrow night, we also plan to go out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants.
Total: $0
Day Seven
In the morning, I dropped by our local bakery for some scones. T. and H. love having scones with clotted cream and jam on weekends. At night, I went out to dinner with T. while H. ordered himself a pizza.
Total: $46.77
Total for the week: $112.46
