Second remote job nets me about $1,900 a month after withholding. I expected to be sitting on ten grand by now and the balance has gone from $4,100 to $4,700. I don't feel like I'm splurging — no new car, no holiday — so I'd like to hear from people who found where it actually went, because I clearly can't see mine.
Disagreeing with the lifestyle creep framing, or at least adding to it. The second job costs money to have. Mine cost me: a second monitor and desk setup ($380 one time), an extra $65 a month on the home internet tier because two video calls at once broke the old one, and about $200 a month more in childcare because my old schedule flexed and the new one doesn't.
That's roughly a quarter of the take-home gone before a single coffee. Add under-withholding, which most people on two W-2s have, and the number you think you're earning is not the number arriving.
The fix that finally worked for me was boring: the second job's pay never lands in the account I spend from. I set the direct deposit to split — the whole second cheque goes to a separate savings account at a different bank with no card attached.
Eight months of that and it's $14,800. Same spending habits, same weakness, I just made the money annoying to reach. I did nothing else.
Splitting the deposit is the only version of this that has ever worked for me either. Manually transferring on payday failed about every third month, and always in the months where it mattered.
Check your withholding before you conclude the money vanished into coffee. My "$1,900 a month" second job turned out to be about $1,500 a month once I owed the shortfall in April. I was mentally spending money that was always going to be clawed back.
Worth a preparer's time for one session if you've never had two W-2s at once.
Automate the transfer on payday and cap the spending account. Willpower is not a plan when you're working seventy hours.
Mine went on convenience across the board, not one line item. Cleaner, delivery, taxis instead of the bus when I was running late between shifts, buying things twice because I couldn't find the first one. None of it looked like splurging on any single day.
I'd say track four weeks before you change anything. You can't fix a category you can't name.
@spreadsheet_tabs · 6mo ago · 3 replies
I exported twelve months of statements and sorted by merchant, which took a Sunday afternoon and was genuinely unpleasant. Two categories ate the entire second income for me: food delivery went from $95 a month to $410, and I had quietly stopped cooking because I was working past 8pm most nights.
The rest was a rounding error of subscriptions I'd added "since I can afford it now." Six of them, $74 a month, none of which I'd have missed. The second job didn't fail, my spending just expanded to match the hours I no longer had.
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@budget_bruno · 6mo ago
Ran a rough version of this on three months of statements and delivery plus taxis is £460 a month I would have sworn was closer to £150. I genuinely did not know.
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@gongfu_greta · 6mo ago
It's always the category you can't picture as a single purchase. Nobody remembers thirty-one small ones.
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