Personal finance columnist M. P. Dunleavey lost $10,000. Her year-end financial review showed an inexplicable, gaping hole in her bank account. Where did the money go? Large hidden bank fees? Identity theft? Drugs?
I ran through the numbers again with my husband, and he reached the same conclusion: approximately $10,000 was missing in action. That was the vacation we didn’t take, part of the new roof we might need, some terrific wine we didn’t drink. Now we really wanted to know where that money went.It wasn’t long before it showed up. After sitting there for a while at the kitchen table, stunned, my husband said, “Thirty dollars.”
He explained his theory. One day, we were about to visit friends and had offered to pick up dessert and wine — which came to about $30 . The next day we had a birthday to attend and a prescription to pick up, and we spent about $30. We took out the calculator: $10,000 divided by 365 is about $27.
It wasn’t that we spent $30 mindlessly every day, but once we started digging for the “we’re not really spending any money” money — a trip to Lowe’s, new shoes for my son, iTunes downloads for my husband, a new work outfit for me — all the little things fell into place.
M. P. Dunleavey lost $10,000 to teach us a lesson about nickel and diming our savings away. Her loss is a reminder that every time we go to the ATM, every time we stop for take-out, every time we reach for our wallet, money seeps from our bank account. There is a line between ascetic saving and carefree living, but as Dunleavey points out, it will shift between people and bank accounts: “It’s too stressful to monitor every dime you spend — yet it’s vital to know where your money is going, so that it goes toward what matters most.”
I would drink $30 worth of scotch a day if I was married to that nag.
Holy shit! Money I spend comes out of my bank account!?!?
Next article please.
diggers and redditers – check your snideness at the door.
There is something to take away from this; even ‘experts’ make mistakes or find a way to improve…simple oversight does happen to everyone.
That story is contrived BS of the worst sort. It’s clearly a made-up revelation meant to impart a lesson. Nothing was ever missing, that’s just a label they applied to make it more dramatic for print. Insultingly transparent junk writing.
I think many of the commenters here didn’t actually read the article. Carey’s writeup on the article (“inexplicable, gaping hole in her bank account”) is a bit misleading here.
And unless you are only making $20,000 a year, $10,000 is not really a lot to spend in a year. It comes out to, er…only about $30 a day! The point is, you could make any seemingly trivial expense look like a much worse sum when you look at it annually.
WOW – y’all are harsh, and tightwads to boot. Great if you want to save. Great if you keep track of every dime. Personally I am not going to freak out every time I need to pick up wine and pastries for a dinner party. I know how much my bills are. I know how much I need to save for retirement/emergencies/etc. After that, I don’t drive myself nuts – life is too short! I respect you guys for tracking every penny, but not everyone who doesn’t track every penny is a moron. I still have savings and no debt, so personal spending style is really noone’s business after that.
Wouldn’t it make sense to have a separate credit card or a wallet compartment for this ad-hoc purchases?
Gee, it’s just like that time I realized that I had totally lost $36,500 from my savings account last year, until it suddenly occurred to me that maybe the practice of lighting my daily after-evening cigar with a $100 bill was somehow related to the loss.
This column can be summarized in six words: Little purchases, over time, add up. Not exactly a groundbreaking concept.
@discounteggroll: Exactly, M.P. is a prime candidate for a good ol’ budget and cash-based envelope system for spending.
Maybe the point of her employ as a personal finance columnist is for readers to see her transformation from financial fool to financial semi-pro? sophomore?
For goodness sakes, how does a personal finance columnist not run a budget and keep track of her expenses. It takes her until the end of the year to realize that she’s spent an extra $10k? I know how much I’ve spent at the end of every month and I don’t write a column advising people what to do with their money.
Use a budget and you won’t randomly spend $30 every day. Plus $30 is a heck of a lot of random expenses day after day.
And unless you are only making $20,000 a year, $10,000 is not really a lot to spend in a year.
@Shadowman615: Maybe if you know where it’s going but the point here is that she didn’t. I would think that if you’re on a budget 10K in unaccounted for spending is a lot no matter how much money you make.
I’m not understanding all the hoopla over the photo. I don’t even know how Consumerist got it: I’m not seeing it on the NY Times web site.
@fredmertz: The thought of Jim Kramer in a spandex tank top just made me throw up a little. Thanks.
We need a “Dumbass tag” for this one.
/Oh wait, this isn’t Fark…
I actually liked this story. Please don’t hesitate to post more like it.
She has 3 people in her family and is talking about $9 a day per person.It’s not hard to spend that. It’s easy to loose track of.
I can see that this is a contrived story but it is a nice reminder that the little expenses add up. It shows how a couple of $$ per person per day can be a huge expense.
It was written in a way that the writer wasn’t berating her reader for not being perfect. I liked it.
Yes. Living costs money. According to the article, I can presume about $10 a day ($30/3 people).
So the solution is….die or take a vow of poverty.
As for me, I’ll spend that pocket change, make my life a little brighter, and not lose any sleep. For farks sake, you make it to spend it! Just do it within reason, and a few ‘day to day’ expenses are certainly within reason!
@popeye_doyle: Hey, fleshbot is that way —>
I try never to take financial advice from women who dress like lap dancers (nor lap dances from women who dress like stock brokers)
@backbroken: Except that this is 10 grand outside of their budget that they had no clue what happened to.
So take your food, your rent, your utilities, car, insurance, gas, etc. Take all those out of the budget. Take out any big items you plan and budget for, or anything else you have to pay regularly.
Now, after all that, I don’t know about you, but I’d be surprised if I spent more than 100 bucks extra a month (3 a day), and most of that, I knew I was spending at the time and actually, yknow, kept track of it.
Which is what I’d expect a finance columnist to do.
1) Her boobs and lack of makeup have nothing to do with this article, and I hope beyond hope that you are a 13-year-old boy and that’s all that accounts for your misogyny.
2) If you think her boobs require surgery, you obviously haven’t seen many real boobs.
Jesus christ.