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How Much Money I Spend as a YouTuber (2021)

2021-12-24 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 21:27 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Money and investing (also: Business and entrepreneurship) · mode: Reflection and life update · tags: His own numbers, His own products discussed, Family

Ali goes through what he spent in 2021, converted into dollars: about $89,462 of personal expenses (rent and mortgage, takeaway, books, a car for his mother, a personal trainer, outsourced laundry) and $1,513,314 of business expenses, led by salaries, the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, taxes and coaching.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Intro: the other half of his 2021 money story, his expenses

  • ★★ Ali has lived in London since moving there around mid-August 2021 and has been paying about $3,650 a month in rent. — 00:00:29 · London
  • ★★ Ali pays in pounds but gives all his 2021 spending figures in dollars, converted from pounds. — 00:00:29

00:00:41 — Rent in London and the Cambridge mortgage; buying is also money down the drain

  • ★★ Ali still pays the mortgage on the Cambridge flat he and his brother own jointly; he does not count the mortgage's principal payment as an expense, since it goes into home equity. — 00:00:58 · Taimur Abdaal, Cambridge
  • ★★ Of the roughly £1,200 a month the Cambridge flat costs, about £200 ($266) is ground rent and maintenance and about $531 is mortgage interest at around 1.6%; Ali calls both money he can never get back. — 00:01:27 · Cambridge
  • ★★★ People often call renting money down the drain, Ali says, but owning a home also brings ground rent, maintenance, property taxes in the US and mortgage interest that are just as unrecoverable, so the buy-versus-rent calculation is not that simple. — 00:01:57
  • ★★ Ali's housing cost $24,160 in 2021, about $2,014 a month: $14,600 for four or five months of rent in London and $9.5K for the Cambridge flat. — 00:01:57 · London, Cambridge

00:02:26 — Food: takeaway, restaurants and groceries

  • ★★ Ali spends $40 to $50 a day on takeaway, about $1,200 a month or $14,400 a year, because he tends to get takeaway or eat out for lunch and dinner. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Ali likes takeaway on Deliveroo because it is so convenient; with so much else on, cooking and cleaning up are a very low priority in his life. — 00:02:55
  • ★ Ali has said for years that he wants to cook more; a 2022 New Year's resolution may be to make more effort at cooking. (hedged) — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Ali goes to restaurants about twice a week at about $40 each, $3,840 a year, and spends only about $70 a month, $840 a year, on groceries. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Ali's biggest personal tech purchase of 2021 was a $4,600 Alienware gaming PC for World of Warcraft and streaming; he used it for a few months, then lent it to a friend, and calls it pretty unnecessary. — 00:03:40 · World of Warcraft

00:03:51 — Stuff: tech, books and audiobooks, clothes, personal care, homeware

  • ★ Ali spent about $5,130 on personal tech in 2021, including a $130 massage gun and about $400 of Philips Hue smart bulbs and other smart-home bits. — 00:04:09 · Philips Hue
  • ★★ Ali buys about 15 Kindle books a month at about $9 each, about $135 a month or $1,620 a year, by his Amazon order history. — 00:04:38 · Kindle, Amazon
  • ★★★ Ali spends a lot on books and audiobooks because they are the single highest-return thing he could spend money on; whenever someone he respects recommends a book, he buys it at once and starts reading. — 00:05:07 · Audible
  • ★★ The underwear Ali uses is Uniqlo AIRism, by far the best boxers he has ever worn. — 00:06:01
  • ★★ Ali spent about $2,800 on clothes in 2021, mostly on a shopping trip about every three months at $700 to $800 each. — 00:06:01
  • ★★ Ali pays $53 a month for Heights, a smart supplement he takes two tablets of every morning; he also invests in the company. — 00:06:01
  • ★★ Because they were making money, Ali and his brother bought their mother a car in 2021 for $16,000 each, $32,000 in total. — 00:07:39 · Taimur Abdaal

00:07:52 — A car for his mother; subscriptions and apps

  • ★★ Ali first puts his 2021 dating-app spending at $414: Hinge Premium $234, Tinder Gold at $20 a month from January to September, $180, with a Bumble lifetime subscription bought the year before; Muzmatch premium was free as he is friends with the man who runs it, whom he interviewed on his podcast. — 00:08:08
    • a number in question (doubtful): "$414" — check against the recording
  • ★★ Ali is no longer using dating apps. — 00:08:37
  • ★★★ If Ali could only ever have one subscription in his life, it would be Audible, which he finds incredibly valuable; Audible does not sponsor the video. — 00:08:37 · Audible
  • ★ Ali pays $100 a year for Sam Harris's Waking Up, the app he uses to try to get into meditation. — 00:08:37
  • ★★ Ali spends about $150 a month, $1,800 a year, on the gym: David Lloyd in Cambridge, now Virgin Active in London. — 00:09:07 · London, Cambridge
  • ★★ Ali spent $3,330 on travel in 2021: Croatia about $800, Amsterdam about $2,000 and Pakistan about $500, where he paid only for flights. — 00:09:36 · Pakistan
  • ★★ Ali outsources his laundry for about $50 a week, about $2,400 a year. — 00:09:36
  • ★★★ One of the best ways to use money to buy happiness, Ali says, is to eliminate the things you find unpalatable: he hates laundry, and paying $50 a week to save even an hour is a no-brainer. — 00:09:36 · money buys back time

00:09:38 — Travel, services and outsourcing, bills and his personal total

  • ★★★ Ali grants that it is privileged, but says that if you have the money you should outsource the things you do not like doing. — 00:10:05
  • ★★ For most of 2021 Ali has had a personal trainer at about $110 a week for two or three sessions, $5,280 a year. — 00:10:39
  • ★★★ Ali calls a personal trainer a no-brainer expense if you can afford it: since getting one, working out is much more fun and he is more likely to stick to it and push himself. — 00:10:39
  • ★★ Ali says he will always have a personal trainer in future, a no-brainer if you can afford it and value your health and, like him, cannot motivate yourself to exercise. — 00:11:08
  • ★★ Ali spent about $1,500 on lessons in 2021: about $1,000 on art lessons over a few months and about $500 on guitar lessons. — 00:11:08
  • ★★ Ali has quit both his art lessons and his guitar lessons because he had no time left in his calendar for them, but may resume them some day. (hedged) — 00:11:37
  • ★★ Ali leaves out of his 2021 expenses his investments in real estate, stocks and shares, crypto (random altcoins he probably lost money on) and angel investments in startups. — 00:12:07
  • ★★★ Ali's personal expenses for 2021 total $89,462, a monthly average of $7,455, lower than he expected. — 00:12:36
  • ★★ Ali's business figures are exact, from accountants and bookkeepers, while his personal figures are rough estimates, as he keeps no detailed personal budget spreadsheet, though he probably should. — 00:12:36

00:13:05 — Business: salaries and the Part-Time YouTuber Academy

  • ★★★ Ali's business spent $501,987 on salaries in 2021; the team grew from four people in January to seven or eight around June and now has 17 full-time staff. — 00:13:05
  • ★★ Ali's business spent $150,626 in 2021 on contractors and freelancers for marketing, social media and branding, including an agency that made some of his YouTube videos as a trial. — 00:13:34
  • ★★★ The Part-Time YouTuber Academy is by far the biggest source of revenue for Ali's business, more than 50% of it, and cost $197,678 to run in 2021. — 00:14:04 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Much of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy's cost is paying affiliates who bring students to the course. — 00:14:33 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ For the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Ali's business pays big YouTubers to coach some students, as well as student supporters and alumni mentors who give students feedback. — 00:15:02 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Ali's business moved into its studio in October 2021; it costs $14,600 a month, $58,400 for September to December. — 00:15:02

00:15:15 — Workspace, food, equipment and supplies, software subscriptions

  • ★★ With the studio and WeWork in Cambridge, Ali's business spent $65,877 on workspace in 2021, which he thinks has been very worth it. — 00:15:33 · Cambridge
  • ★★ Ali's business spent $69,980 on tech in 2021, more than it should have, because his Tesla was broken into and about $25,000 of gear was stolen and had to be replaced. — 00:16:00
  • ★★ Ali's business spent $50,272 in 2021 on general office expenses such as team gifts, parcels and stationery, which he wants to look at closely and cut down. — 00:16:30
  • ★★ Ali's business spent $49,755 on software in 2021, including Workable for hiring, ConvertKit for email, Zoom for Part-Time YouTuber Academy events, Grain, Ahrefs and Adobe Creative Cloud. — 00:18:07 · Zoom, Part-Time YouTuber Academy

00:18:23 — Coaching and business travel

  • ★★★ Ali's business spent $74,644 on coaching in 2021 (business, book, finance, operations, management and leadership); he calls it genuinely really useful and a steal for the value. — 00:18:36
  • ★★★ In 2022 Ali wants to spend more on coaching, so that every team member with significant responsibility, such as managers of other staff, has a coach weekly or every two weeks; he thinks the return is astronomical. — 00:18:36
  • ★★ Ali's business spent $18,540 on travel in 2021, mostly a trip to Monaco with a videographer, Amber and Angus to film the Deep Dive podcast with Oliver Cookson, author of Bootstrap Your Life, who grew MyProtein from £500 to £350 million. — 00:19:05 · Deep Dive, Angus
  • ★★ Taxes and fees of Ali's business came to $195,941 in calendar 2021, including £16,434 of PayPal fees but not corporation tax, which he expects to be huge. — 00:19:34

00:19:50 — Taxes and fees, the business total and sign-off

  • ★★ On his business's large tax bill Ali says it is fine: they are making money, having fun and want to pay their fair share. — 00:20:04
  • ★★★ Ali's business expenses for 2021 total $1,513,314, a monthly average of $126,110. — 00:20:33
  • ★★ Ali hopes revenue keeps up with expenses so the business can keep having fun and helping people while being just about profitable. — 00:20:55

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Asked about it in the comments, Ali confirms that Jack Edwards works for his business as a contractor and says he is very lucky. — creator comment
  • ★★ Ali uses sun cream, calling it one of the most evidence-based skincare things. — creator comment
  • ★★ Ali confirms he also donates under his Giving What We Can pledge to give 10% of his income; the donations are not in this video's figures. — creator comment
  • ★★ Ali tracks the business's money with an accountant and Xero, and his personal spending with back-of-envelope calculations. — creator comment
  • ★★ Ali agrees that renting and maintenance are not simply wasted money: he used "money down the drain" in air quotes, as that is what many people call renting. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: business expenses · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Also: People: Amber · Angus · Oliver Cookson · Sam Harris · Taimur Abdaal

Projects: Deep Dive

Works: Bootstrap Your Life

Organizations: Amazon · David Lloyd · Deliveroo · Heights · MyProtein · Netflix · PayPal · Virgin Active · WeWork

Concepts: affiliate marketing · angel investment · money buys back time

Places: Amsterdam · Cambridge · Croatia · London · Monaco · Pakistan

Products: Adobe Creative Cloud · Ahrefs · Alienware Aurora R10 · Audible · Bumble · ConvertKit · Grain · Hinge · Kindle · Muzmatch · Philips Hue · Tesla Model 3 · Tinder · Uniqlo AIRism · Waking Up · Workable · World of Warcraft · Zoom

Only in the description or credits: Giving What We Can · Jack Edwards · Xero

Also centred on business expenses: How I Bought a Brand New Tesla Half Price

Replies to

  • continues · How Much Money I Make as a YouTuber (2021)💰 (original, 2021, not in this wiki)

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