Money Diaries: A Week of Spending with Elizabeth Meyer
Hey working artists: hope you all had a beautiful holiday! We’re back with our next installment of Money Diaries, featuring the mind behind Working Artist: Elizabeth Meyer. Join her for a week of working in a demanding full-time job in PR, spending responsibly, and laying the groundwork for the publication you’re reading.
P.S. If you’re interested in submitting a money diary of your own, our inbox is open: workingartist2000@gmail.com
There are moments, when walking between buildings along an avenue, a slip of sunshine reaches through a crack in the brick facades, and everything is illuminated. I find joy like this, which occurs briefly and often enough, that I keep going. Since June, I leap from moment to moment, struggling and then calm and struggling and then, briefly, illuminated with joy.
I began my job in June as an Account Executive at a well-regarded financial communications firm where I earn six figures annually. It is an intense job in the sense that you are expected to be available at all times, and the work never stops (mornings, evenings, nights, weekends, holidays: it never stops). When I first started, it was very difficult–I cried everyday after work and on weekends, fought the urge to cry in the office, too. Then, the need to cry faded. While I was working I realized I could handle everything and only when I stopped working would I become overwhelmed.
Now, I am in a place where I accept that I can and will keep going. I am tired and I don’t have the time I want to work on projects like this magazine or my writing as much as I otherwise would. I also feel myself growing. For the first time, I have pushed through the feelings of deep fear and panic surrounding the intensity of the job. I feel myself becoming disciplined. I am learning. I understand what I value and who I want to be. More importantly, I understand what I do not value and who I do not want to be.
This is a week in my life and my wallet as a young woman working a high-pressure job in finance in New York City when all l really want to do is write.
Monday, August 12
6AM - I wake up to my alarm, think briefly of returning to sleep, and then think briefly about how miserable I would be if I didn’t work out and end up sitting at my desk all day. I have a small gym in the basement of my building which is painted blue and which costs $100 a year to use. I paid my $100 two years ago and have never received a request that I pay again.
I have a free trial for a private coaching app that I am nearly finished with. I sent myself another free trial through another email, so hopefully I can set up a fresh trial. I like the app because it pushes me to lift weights, and I have gotten really into longevity training.
7:20 AM - My boyfriend Harrison and I walk to the train together (-$2.90). Harrison works in film distribution in New Jersey and wakes up early with me to commute an hour each way to his job. We do The New York Times Crossword puzzle on the train and get off together at Times Square. I take the cross-town S to Grand Central.
As I am leaving the station, I feel my right ear lobe and notice my earring is missing. I am very sad for a moment and then I move on because I cannot let myself be sad over something I cannot control. The earring was a cheap pearl that my mom got me from Kauai. Cheap but a reminder of a special time when my family was together.
8AM - I get to my desk and get an iced cold brew from the kitchen which is free because my office has coffee on tap. I begin working. The moment I sit down I am inundated with emails and things to do.
10AM - Still working
12PM - Back to back to back phone calls
1PM - A brief moment, grab the leftover peanut butter noodles I got for free from CHLOE (run by the woman who started Beatnic, formerly By Chloe) on Saturday night and eat them (free). They are delicious.
1:30PM - More phone calls
3:30PM - I get my first ever business card. It comes in a gorgeous white box, and when you open it, there is a neat stack of crisp cardboard with my name written across the front. On the back of the card it says “Take Control.” I find this funny because I have been working with my therapist on letting go of my need to control everything. I have a deep fear that terrible things might happen at any moment. This is funny because terrible things have happened, and they were terrible, and I am still here.
4PM - Still working
6PM - I leave the office and get an email from my boss that a document I circulated to the team needs edits “ASAP.” I sit down in the lobby and make the prescribed edits.
7:08PM - I swipe into the train ($-2.90) and arrive downtown to watch the NYPR vs. New York Magazine corporate softball game. The New York Magazine guys are wearing all black and smoking. I am rooting for NYPR because my friends Lily and Sophie play for the team. I used to play on the team as an honorary member last year when I had the time. The sun sets, and it feels refreshing to be surrounded by warm and kind people. I try to read a little but decide I want to be present just for a moment.
8:30PM - Game over, we lost. Lily, Sophie, and I walk to Caffe Reggio to read and drink hot chocolate. By the time we get there, I am too tired and decide to walk back up to the train.
I walk through the West Village which is quiet and dark. It is a walk I have taken many times since moving here for college when I was eighteen, and which I have taken through many moments of sadness or uncertainty. I feel a knot somewhere between my throat and my chest, and at the same time, I feel very peaceful.
I get to the station and take the train home (-$2.90). My blood sugar is crashing on the train– going into the 50s.
9PM - I make it to my stop and get a Rice Krispies treat from the grocery store for dinner ($3.99). My eighty year old roommate, Irene, is having a dinner party when I get home. Lots of white haired women in kaftans. I go to my room and type out a rough draft of the money diary just so I have everything down, brush my teeth, and call Harrison who is visiting his family in New Jersey. Then I go to bed.
SPENDING: $12.69
Tuesday, August 13
6AM - My alarm goes off and I set a timer for twenty minutes. At 6:20 I put on a podcast to wake me up and get out of bed. Ironically, it is a podcast about celebrities and their “true selves” co-hosted by a therapist who specializes in helping people find who “they really are.” Who am I, really? I do not want to be awake, but I must continue moving forward. I get dressed quickly (a reiteration of yesterday’s outfit), grab my book and my work laptop, and head out.
I want to walk a little bit, take in the fresh air which is nearly autumnal, so I turn right and walk up and down the verdant hills of Riverside Drive. Sometimes I can pretend I am in London when I take this walk. All the grey stone and the grey sky and the green trees looking greener in contrast with the greyness.
I hate to say it, but I am a die-hard fan of Blank Street Coffee’s matcha latte. It is the only matcha latte I have had that is not too sweet, nor does it have the bitter after taste a lot of cheap matcha has. I treat myself to a small iced matcha with almond milk (-$5.89) and walk to the train station at 86th (-$2.90). I eat a granola bar from the office on the train because my blood sugar is going low from that brisk morning walk.
7:40AM - I arrive at the office and start browsing the media for any updates to send to our client who has just announced a board change. We have bagels and lox upstairs. I help myself to some lox (free).
I crank out a few employee letters that only take me a few minutes to put together, and I wonder if my pace is too swift–if people dawdle as a way of protecting their time and sanity.
10:30AM - Client call.
1PM - Quick walk with my friend, Madeline. I discuss the goal of making it through one year of this job and then maybe attending graduate school. I decide I need vegetables and go to Sweetgreen for lunch (-$14.37).
6:40PM - I leave the office and walk up to Land Thai on the Upper West Side which is a nice way to get some exercise in.
7:30PM - I have a double date at Land Thai on the Upper West Side with Harrison and his high school friend Jonathan and his girlfriend Lisa, a self-proclaimed “philosophy girl” with two masters degrees. I feel terrible because I am on the verge of crying the entire dinner simply from exhaustion. Jonathan and Lisa finish their food and Harrison and I barely touch ours. Harrison goes to the bathroom for a long time, and Jonathan ends up paying the bill. Not sure if he will ask us to reimburse.
9PM - As we leave the restaurant, Jonathan and Lisa walk south arm in arm. We go north, and I start crying, and Harrison informs me that he has been throwing up in the bathroom from food poisoning.
SPENDING: $23.16
Wednesday, August 14
6AM - Wake up to my alarm, decide to sleep until seven.
7:20AM - Hop on the train to work (-$2.90). Get some reading done which is nice and very grounding.
7:40AM - Blood sugar is low, so I end up buying one of those Rice Krispies treats from Starbucks (queen of supporting not-so-great chains, I know), and head into the office (-$2.50).
11:40AM - The office provides free lunch. I have celiac, so I have a gluten-free shack burger from Shake Shack which is cold by the time I get it and a gluten free cookie from 7 Gram which is still warm. I am grateful that my office provides options for me to eat, though I also know that if they didn’t, I would probably say something. I spend too much time in that place to not be fed from time to time.
7PM - I leave the office and start walking. I call my mom and then, as I am entering Central Park, I get a phone call from a woman named Maddy who went to my college and spent nearly four years working at the same firm I work at. We end up speaking over the phone for nearly an hour. It feels so freeing to have someone validate my experiences and affirm that I will be ok. It makes me remember that I will be ok. It makes me trust the feeling in my gut that I am not pushing away my creative dreams but am instead taking a route that will give me the connections and freedom to make next steps.
It makes me feel less lost and less like a failure for struggling.
7:30PM - My dad calls and we have a heart to heart about corporate America. He tells me about his own experiences as a consultant early in his career. Growing up, my parents tried their best, and they were also working full-time in demanding corporate careers. Their work afforded myself and my brothers so many phenomenal resources including fully-funded after school activities, private schooling, and the ability to graduate college without taking out loans. But I also hold on to some resentment towards them for not being there when I was struggling mentally and physically throughout my teens between my diabetes diagnosis and wavering mental health.
I now have more empathy for them. I think I better understand what they did and why they did it in their careers. Because of them, I know that I will always have a safety net if there were an emergency. I also was given the privilege to have never experienced my parents working very hard for very little money, and I think in some ways this makes me feel a glimmer of safety in pursuing my passions.
Of course, I was too scared to do so right after college, which is why I am where I am now. But, I think it is necessary for me to be a little lost to understand what I need to feel at peace and aligned in my life.
8PM - Take the train home at 96 even though it feels too close to justify paying for the train (-$2.90).
8:30PM - Harrison is tutoring which is his side gig. I have leftover Thai for dinner, am hit with a wave of exhaustion, cold call Kate to ask her about how to develop a LinkedIn presence for this magazine, wonder if the protagonist of my little novel that I have been writing more in my head than on paper lately should be a writer or not, and I go to bed.
SPENDING: $11.20
Thursday, August 15
6AM - Wake up, gym, free app trial, weights
7:20AM - Train (-$2.90). NYTimes crossword puzzle with Harrison. I hug Harrison on the 42nd street train platform and head to the S while Harrison heads to Port Authority. We tell each other that it will be a good day.
8AM - I feel more together at work today. I feel more calm and in control and less lost at what I am doing.
1:20PM - The day progresses. I have left over pad thai for lunch. It is very dry.
3PM - I go talk with some co-workers who give me advice on the job and frankly tell me that they struggle too and that the first three months are very difficult. It is very nice to talk openly with my peers. I am also proud of myself for making friends at the office. I remember how shy I was when I started college and how that shyness has faded a bit.
6PM - I leave the office a little early. I meet Harrison downtown, and we take the train uptown (-$2.90) to an adorable restaurant by our apartment called Abigail’s. The food is surprisingly delicious, and the service is phenomenal. They have a 12 oyster and prosecco special for $12. We also get a dessert called the “90s cruise ship” which is a mixture of different whipped things and raspberry, and we split the bill (-$44.78 for me).
I am telling Harrison that I don’t think I have the spark required to thrive in this type of corporate job that my boss or some of my coworkers have. I have made peace with the fact that my spark lies elsewhere and that is an exciting thing. Harrison tells me that he is frightened he has lost his spark.
SPENDING: $50.58
Friday, August 16
6:30AM - Wake up, gym.
7:40AM - Work from home day. Go outside for a quick coffee and immediately get a slack from my boss asking her to call me. Literally run home.
8AM - Work, etc.
2PM - Frozen Ikea turkey meatballs for lunch. See a giant cockroach right outside of my bedroom door (my 80-year-old insists on calling them “waterbugs”). Grab a broom and smash it from afar. The adrenaline from the whole ordeal keeps me going, and I am very proud of myself for my cockroach / waterbug smashing abilities and for overcoming my fear of large bugs crawling about just outside my bedroom.
5:30PM - Teams call to congratulate ourselves for getting a big lift of docs out today.
5:45PM - Immediately have more work after said meeting.
6PM - Decide to go on a quick run to preserve my sanity. Feel immediately calmer, more aligned. I am beginning to think about graduate school. I really want to find a semi-interdisciplinary program where I can focus on narratives of chronic illness. My whole pitch is discussing the ways we talk about illness in the legal and financial spaces (the two corporate industries I’ve worked in since graduating) and how it is equally important to have an accessible framework for discussing illness in mainstream media and literature.
6:30PM – Meet Harrison and his mother, Wei, on 65th and Riverside Blvd for dinner at Vin sur Vingt. I realize that I am ravenous–have been going, going, going so much all day, that I haven’t really eaten (Ikea meatballs aside).
I love Wei, she’s very funny and very kind, and when I miss my own family, it is grounding to have an adult who cares about me to talk with. Tonight we discuss my job over glasses of champagne. Wei worked as an analyst at a large investment bank before having children, and she shares some good insight on the corporate world.
I tell Wei that at some point, probably in the next year, I will have to make a big change. She agrees.
Vin sur Vingt gives us free champagne at the end of the meal as an apology for the slow service which is very kind.
Wei pays the bill (free).
9PM - When we get home, there is something almost jovial in our mood–the mood between Harrison and me. I am still hungry so we walk to a bar near the apartment and I get some tacos and rice and beans. Harrison is morose, he won’t listen to my pep talks about applying to film school. He won’t listen to me trying to tell him that he has enough materials for a strong application. He sips his drink that is simultaneously so spicy and acidic when I try it, I pucker as if I’ve just shoved a lemon with jalapeno in my mouth.
I end up paying the bill (-$38) and we walk home.
SPENDING: $38
Saturday, August 17
8AM - Alarm goes off, go back to sleep–one eye open, one eye shut.
9:15AM - Get an email from my boss to schedule something.
10:30AM - More work emails, walk over to a friend’s to play a board game and realize I have messed up the dates and that we are supposed to go over tomorrow.
11:30AM - Eat halal in the park, a moment of peace, then run back to the apartment for a work call. Harrison pays for the halal.
5PM - Finish working and lie in bed staring at the ceiling.
6PM - Walk to 96th because the train isn’t running down from 110 and hop on the 2,3 to Crown Heights to meet my friend Claire who I have not seen in a while (-$2.50). Claire is an actress, and we met while she was acting on the set of a movie Harrison co-wrote and produced.
7:30PM - Arrive at Claire’s and eat take out sushi which Claire never lets me pay her back for. We discuss a screenplay I wrote that I would love Claire to act in. Claire has a beautiful suggestion about the voice-overs in the screenplay which she believes are “too much”--she reminds me that film is a visual medium and there is more you can play with and show rather than say. It is unlike writing in that way. I find this all very daunting and exciting.
We talk about graduate school and art and acting and writing. I tell Claire about my job. We talk and talk and talk and then I ask Claire if I can interview her for this publication, and she obliges.
9:45PM - I get an email from work and hop onto a Teams with my co-worker to build out an agenda for a call tomorrow morning all while sitting on Claire’s couch. Claire, opposite of me, holds her glass of wine and watches.
10:30PM - I leave Claire’s thanking her and apologizing for transforming her couch into my home office. I run into my friend Sophie who funnily lives very close to Claire. We talk and then I walk alone into the night until I am too tired to walk anymore and call a car to take me home (-$47.82 eek).
SPENDING: $50.32
Sunday, August 18
9:30AM - Work call
11AM - Harrison and I walk to our friends’ apartment to play a board game called Wingspan that they love. Our friends are our first couple friend, Sophie and Wesley. Sophie is transferring to Barnard and starting very soon. Wesley works as a software engineer at a startup.
Wesley makes us avocado toast on the expensive gluten free bread (-$10.10) I brought over. The avocado toast is very tasty.
1PM - I am very rude and take a nap in the middle of the board game on the living room couch.
2PM - Board game still going, sunshine peeking out from a rainy morning.
3PM - Board game has ended, and I get third place out of four people. Harrison and I go to Dos Toros for a bowl that Harrison buys and I cry on the sidewalk.
4:30PM - Harrison and I go on a run which is very safe and calming.
6PM - I do some writing and magazine work while Harrison calls his friend Nicky to discuss a film they worked on together that is now in post-production–(this is the same film that Claire acted in.)
7:30PM - Harrison and I go to the grocery store for dinner ingredients (-$47), and Harrison makes us chicken and rice and salad with tomato and cucumber and halloumi cheese.
10PM - Fall asleep
SPENDING: $57.10
It has come to my attention that perhaps a reflection on this week and my spending habits might provide some nice closure to this diary.
Here are some thoughts.
First, sometimes I feel guilty/worried about spending money, especially on meals that I can make for myself at home. On Saturday, though, when I paid for an Uber home, I felt deliciously opulent. It was the most wonderful feeling to think to myself “why do I work so hard if not to splurge on an Uber home from Brooklyn on a humid and rainy night?” and then to go ahead and order said Uber home.
Second, often I feel lost or like I am wasting time in the wrong place. Sometimes I feel sharply honed into achieving what I want, which is to write and to put together a magazine where I can talk to artists about why they create and how they are able to do so. Sometimes I am too burnt out, and sometimes I am brimming with energy to go go go, create create create. This is a strange year, and I keep moving forward because I literally do not know what else to do.
Third, even though I am making a lot of money, I don’t feel that way. I feel like I am living paycheck to paycheck, and this makes me nervous. Part of this is because I have the privilege to put such a large sum of money into savings, and so I don’t see all that much of my paycheck, part of it is because I am me, and I am always a little neurotic about money.
I remind myself, I have friends, I have Harrison, I have a family that loves me. No job can take that away. No hard year in New York can take that away. I am Elizabeth. I am ok.
That is all for now, I think.
Elizabeth Meyer is a writer and freelance journalist based in New York City. She also spends twelve hours of her day advising public and private companies on communications strategies to help navigate unexpected, high-stakes corporate events and reputational attacks. She is very tired.
Elizabeth co-founded Working Artist to build a space where the financial realities and difficulties of navigating the healthcare system can be openly discussed and where creation for the sake of creation can be celebrated.
