My Last Hundred Bucks: Necessities, More Necessities, and More Necessities

$100! It is a lot of money, and yet, it is also not a lot of money at all. Here’s where my (literal, actual) last hundred bucks went. Where did your last hundred bucks go?

$29: Unlimited weekly MetroCard (I usually do the monthly, but then this one item would have been my last hundred bucks, so.)

$20: Target, 90 day supply of fluoxetine. (Target is the only pharmacy in the city I could find that does reasonable generic pricing without making you pay money to join a savings club — ahem, Duane Reade. For the record, this prescription at Duane Reade without joining that club is over $100. Compare pharmacies, is the lesson there.) (But if I had bought anything else at Target during my 20 minute wait, I would have had to integrate it into the price of the prescription, obviously. But I put on my game face and abstained, as I am all about Cost Saving Measures.)

$3: Bodega, iced coffee on walk back to Williamsburg from Target. (This was actually whatever the Hasidic equivalent of a Bodega is, and maybe it was actually more like a restaurant with a drink case in it than a Bodega. I walked in and I was the only woman and the only customer not wearing a full black suit and the only person with my legs showing and definitely the only person who was not made uncomfortable by my presence. They still sold me a coffee, though.)

$30: Prune, share of cocktails and delicious things. (Subsidized by my generous and beautiful friends, thank you.) (Also I would consider only eating one meal a week if that meal could be here.) (I suppose I could actually pull that off, actually.) (Did you know, you can spend your money on whatever you want as long as you don’t spend money you don’t have?) (Spending over half of your remaining dollars on fancy food feels really decadent and lovely.) (Maybe only rivaled by spending your last dollars on flowers.) (Though I’ve done that, too.)

$4: Bodega, large iced coffee and two bananas (“Do you eat for pleasure or fuel? I eat for fuel.”)

$5.42: Duane Reade, box of store-brand tampons

$4: Bodega, large iced coffee and two bananas

$6: A happy hour drink tonight in celebration of getting a check in the mail (anticipated)

Photo: Anne Parker

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