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How Much Money I Spend in a Week as a 25 Year Old Doctor

2020-02-05 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 18:22 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Money and investing (also: Business and entrepreneurship) · mode: Reflection and life update · tags: His own numbers, His medical past, Family, Sponsor segment present

Ali adds up a standard week of spending as a 25-year-old junior doctor (£488.50, or £701 with the mortgage), finds it about equal to his post-tax doctor's pay, and concludes that earning more matters more than cutting lattes, while hospital food and the commute are where he could save.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Why he is breaking down a week's spending

00:00:53 — Weekly expenses, Monday to Sunday

  • ★★ On Monday Ali spends £61.12, including a £30 singing lesson and £10.17 of diesel for about 76 miles of driving to and from work. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ After a colleague comments on his unhealthy eating while he has lunch in the doctors' office, Ali buys a cookbook on Amazon for £11.68, as he is trying to eat a little healthier. — 00:01:56 · Amazon
  • ★ On Tuesday Ali spends £70.66, about $93.30. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ A cleaner comes to Ali's flat once a fortnight; he splits the cost with his housemate, paying £12, and his Wednesday spending comes to £43.87. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ On his Thursday off work Ali teaches physiology at a Cambridge college in the evening and buys £8.07 of snacks for his students on the way to the supervision. — 00:03:53 · Cambridge
  • ★★ On Friday Ali and his brother drive up to the Cotswolds to spend the weekend with friends. — 00:04:22 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★ On the drive to the Cotswolds Ali and his brother buy batteries so they can record an episode of their weekly podcast, Not Overthinking, in the car. — 00:04:52 · Not Overthinking, Taimur Abdaal
  • ★ Ali's Sunday dinner is rice and aloo gosht made by his mother. — 00:05:50 · Ali Abdaal's mother

00:06:31 — How he affords it: online businesses since the age of 15

  • ★★ Ali says he can afford his coffees, lunches and trips mainly because, besides his full-time job as a doctor, he has online businesses he has been building since about the age of 15. — 00:06:49
  • ★★ Ali taught himself to code at about 12, in secondary school, and has been building websites and trying to make businesses ever since. — 00:06:49

00:07:10 — Sponsor read

  • ★★ Ali's mortgage is about £1,250 a month, plus about £200 a month in ground rent and maintenance fees for his flat. — 00:08:16

00:08:31 — Life maintenance: mortgage, bills, gym, car

  • ★★ The rent Ali's housemate pays him covers the mortgage interest, the ground rent and the maintenance fees, so what Ali pays each month is pure principal. — 00:08:45
  • ★★ Ali does not count the £850 a month his flat costs him as an expense, because it all goes to paying off the principal of the mortgage. — 00:08:45
  • ★★ Ali thinks his £90-a-month membership of a fancy gym with a spa is worth it, because being a member encourages him to go more. — 00:09:44
  • ★★ Ali's life maintenance (council tax, gym, broadband, energy, water, car insurance and car upkeep) costs £102.66 a week, or £315.16 with the mortgage. — 00:10:13

00:10:36 — What he pays for apps

  • ★★ Ali counts 15 paid apps that he can remember on his list of subscriptions. — 00:10:39

00:12:07 — Conclusion: the totals, his pay, lattes, hospital food and the commute

  • ★★ Ali's app subscriptions cost him £18.70 a week, less than he had thought. — 00:12:07
  • ★★★ In a standard week Ali spends £488.50 ($645), or £701 ($925) including the mortgage. — 00:12:36
  • ★★★ Ali's recent post-tax income as a doctor has been about £1,900 a month, so with spending of about £2,000 a month he is running at a slight deficit. — 00:13:00
  • ★★ Ali found he had been paying slightly too much tax; with that corrected he expects to just about break even or save £100 to £200 a month. (hedged) — 00:13:00
  • ★★ Ali finds spending about £1,900 a month on expenses a little much and had wanted the figure to be significantly lower. — 00:13:29
  • ★★★ Ali would not give up the small oat milk latte from Starbucks he buys halfway through his hour's drive to work to save three pounds: it is one of the things in life he really enjoys. — 00:13:58
  • ★★ Ramit Sethi (quoted): Ramit Sethi's idea, which Ali likes, is that you need not cut out lattes to save money: big decisions such as a lower mortgage rate, earning more or a pay rise matter far more. — 00:14:25
  • ★★ Making this video showed Ali he spends a lot on food at the hospital with no need, which is partly why he wants to cook at home and meal-prep with a new Joe Wicks cookbook a senior doctor sold him on. — 00:14:25
  • ★★★ Ali is fine spending £5 to £15 on a takeaway or dinner at work, because being able to make YouTube videos in the evening without worrying about food is worth far more to him. — 00:14:55
  • ★★ The money saved by eating out less does not persuade Ali to cook; the health argument does: he knows eating healthily and cooking for himself would obviously be good. — 00:15:40
  • ★★ Ali says that once he starts cooking for himself efficiently, he may make more videos about it. (hedged) — 00:16:09
  • ★★ Driving to work and back costs Ali about £11 a day in fuel, out of the £80 to £100 a day he makes at work. — 00:16:09
  • ★★ Ali likes living in his own place in Cambridge, so for now he thinks the £11 a day in fuel and two hours of driving to work are worth it. — 00:16:09 · Cambridge
  • ★★ As a long-term life plan, Ali would much rather live a lot closer to work. — 00:16:55
  • ★★ Ali wants to make more videos about personal finance, which he calls a really important topic. — 00:16:55
  • ★★★ Ali thinks that if you care about personal finance, earning more money by doing other things is a lot more effective than cutting down on little expenses. — 00:17:25

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

People: Ali Abdaal's mother · Joe Wicks · Ramit Sethi · Taimur Abdaal

Projects: Not Overthinking

Organizations: Airbnb · Amazon · Starbucks

Places: Cambridge · Cotswolds

Products: Adobe Creative Cloud · Bear · Castro · Day One · Drafts · Evernote · Hinge · Huel · Instapaper · Medium · Notion · Spotify · Tinder · Todoist · Ulysses · YouTube Premium

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