My Last $100: Turning 24 Like a Boss

by Natalie San Luis

I turned 24 last Tuesday, which (I think) means that I am no longer in my early twenties so I should probably stop shopping at Forever 21 and eating beef jerky for breakfast. For my last weekend as a 23-year-old, I visited some friends and family in Austin. True to the slug, it (my money and my youth) was here and then it was gone.

$12: Beer, cheese fries, and three rounds of pool at Crown & Anchor, the bar where I have celebrated every minor and major achievement and milestone for the past three years.

$22: Tickets for a friend’s concert and a particularly expensive Lyft during “prime time.” Is it just me or does “prime time” imply the opposite of an additional fee? Subprime time, amirite?

$4: My former co-op housemates generously let me sleep on their couch for a few nights. I wasn’t planning to buy them a card until I found one at a corner store that said on the front, “Thanks for letting me sleep on your couch,” and on the inside, “I did not masturbate on it.”

$3.50: One pint of amazing, vegan cookies-and-cream ice cream from Sweet Ritual, a vegan ice cream shop inside a juice bar.

$44: I unexpectedly started my period and had left my DivaCup at home t(-_-)t

I bought a new one, and I also bought two bags of chips so that I wasn’t the person buying only a menstrual cup at 7:30 in the morning.

$8: Dippin’ Dots. Self-explanatory. It’s the ice cream of the future.

$4: Beers bookend this hundo. The last bit of cash I spent before I turned 24 went to Jester King, a brewery in the Texas Hill Country, in exchange for a four-ounce pour of a farmhouse ale brewed with oyster mushrooms and salt. Sounds dicey but it was actually really refreshing.

Natalie spends all her money in Texas and tweets @nsanluis.

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