On Income Growth and Partial-View Seats

Do we really ever change our spending habits?

I bought my Hamilton tickets on December 7, 2015. They’re “partial view,” which I understand from various theater forums isn’t that big of a deal, plus you more than make up for it by being three rows away from the stage.

But I picked the partial view ticket because it was the cheapest one, which made sense if you consider what I was earning last year: $5,136 before taxes in November 2015, with $767.50 left over after I set aside cash for tax, debt, savings, and basic living expenses.

Tallying Up My New Savings Plan: November Edition

So yeah, of course that partial view ticket was the right choice. At $190.20 (after you included all of Ticketmaster’s fees), it represented 25 percent of my available discretionary cash in November.

Almost immediately afterwards, my income started to grow.

This year has been an unusual one, money-wise, because I am earning more money than I’ve ever made in my life but I haven’t really started to make significant changes to my lifestyle. I moved into a bigger apartment, but I am still sitting on Ikea’s Cheapest Couch and sleeping on Amazon’s Second-Cheapest Mattress. I’ll take a Lyft to the airport instead of spending 90 minutes on public transportation, but then I’ll stay in the Pod Hotel.

But I’ll be fully out of debt very soon, and I’ve got a three-month emergency fund, and once I’m out of debt I’ll be able to take that percentage of my income and put it towards a Roth IRA.

After that, I keep telling myself, I’ll stop feeling like I have to buy the cheapest things and start investing in the comfortable couches and full-view seats.

Which is also what I’ve been telling myself ever since I started writing for The Billfold.

I’ll be very curious to see what I actually do.

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