My Last Hundred Bucks: Expectations vs Reality

by Kevin Nguyen

$100! It is a lot of money, and yet, it is also not a lot of money at all. Where did your last hundred bucks go, Kevin Nguyen?

How I Thought I Spent My Last Hundred Bucks:

$15 on happy hour drinks at an Irish pub near work. (I’m only now realizing that when someone says “but it has a good happy hour,” it really translates to “we probably shouldn’t go there.”)

$25 backing a Kickstarter campaign for an illustrated tribute to Metroid (which seems like exactly the kind of endearing, nerdy thing Kickstarter was built for)

$10 at a new bakery called Crumble and Flake for a chocolate croissant, scone, cream puff, and tummy ache

$9 for lunch at the cafeteria (I work at one of those big tech companies that has a cafeteria, but not one of those Google-type cafeterias where the food is free.)

$20 on a ticket to see Beach House in October

$6 to do laundry (In my building, to wash and dry is a criminal $2 per load, and I usually have to dry things twice.)

$8 for two slices of pepperoni pizza at a food truck

$2 for an iPhone/iPad game called OLO, which I still haven’t played

$5 to rent This Means War on Amazon Instant Video, apparently the price of seeing what would happen if McG directed The Bachelorette (I fell asleep halfway through.)

How I Actually Spent My Last Hundred Bucks:

$23.71 on happy drinks (had two more drinks than I thought)

$35 backing a Kickstarter campaign (backed for more than I remembered)

$10.75 at a new bakery called Crumble and Flake

$8.21 for lunch at the cafeteria

$29 on a Beach House ticket (CONVENIENCE FEES SDJFKLSJDKFJALJFDS)

$6 to do laundry

$10 for two slices of pepperoni pizza (forgot about the tip)

$2.18 for an iPhone game

$4.99 to rent This Means War

The Additional Hundred Bucks That I Didn’t Even Think About:

$78.28 for utilities

$9.99 for an Rdio subscription

$8.75 for a Hulu Plus subscription

$20 for a New York Times digital subscription

$4.75 for coffee

What I Thought I Spent: $100
What I Actually Spent: $251.71

Kevin Nguyen is an editor at The Bygone Bureau. He also writes a monthly book column for Grantland and tweets from Seattle.

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