🎂 Age: 55
📍 Location: Texas
💼 Occupation: Director of Technology
💍 Marital Status: Married (29 years)
💸 Annual Income: $212,000
💰 Total Weekly Spending: $2,245
Kortne describes herself as “a compulsive spender sometimes,” but after listening to HerMoney for years, she wanted to see what would happen if she tracked every dollar.
What unfolded was a week that blended discipline and indulgence: marathon travel, meal prep mastery, a surprise Bruno Mars splurge, subscription audits, and a lot of reflection.
“I feel like I have a really good life. I’m really blessed,” she told Jean Chatzky.
Here’s how the week unfolded.
Day 1: A $4.86 Snack and a Check-In with Her Trainer
💸 Total Spent: $4.86
Kortne’s week began with what looked like a near no-spend day — just $4.86 for a snack. But the small purchase bothered her.
“I am slightly disappointed because I meal prep and I take all my meals to work… and I have not had to buy a snack on my way home from work in a while.”
Instead of ignoring it, she texted her trainer. “I did let her know I was hungry and I needed to eat.”
Food, for Kortne, is fuel. Her late mother taught her early on: “You eat to live. You don’t live to eat.” That mindset stuck. “I tell people I’m not looking for a party in my mouth. I just need some energy,” she says.
Day 2: Subscriptions, Self-Care, and a Costco Run
💸 Total Spent: $954.65
Tuesday totaled $954.65, but most of it wasn’t impulsive. There was a $500 credit card payment, a $79 massage membership, $75 for lashes, tailoring costs, and a $159 Costco runm including a stainless steel garbage can she’d been watching for weeks before it went on sale.
Her massage membership isn’t an indulgence, she says, it’s maintenance. “I figured if I get a subscription, that will force me to get a monthly massage as my body needs it.”
As someone who’s run the Boston and London marathons two weeks apart, she sees it as preventative care. “I have to do this to maintain and keep my body moving.”
Day 3: Comedy Show Tickets and Thinking Twice About Subscriptions
💸 Total Spent: $87.64
Wednesday’s spending was lighter: $66 for a ticket to see Michelle Buteau and a $21.64 charge for an Adobe subscription that reminded her of something she’s been meaning to clean up.
“It was going to cost me more to cancel it than to just pay the monthly fee,” she explained. She doesn’t have a rigid system for subscription reviews, but she’s gotten more proactive over time. Over the Christmas break, she sat down and combed through her checking account line by line.
This year, she’s taken her self-audit a step further by experimenting with ChatGPT as a budgeting tool. “I love it,” she said. “I literally will have a whole conversation.”
When she told ChatGPT she wanted to build a 2026 budget and entered her income and expenses, the tool responded that she appeared to have a surplus and asked how she wanted to allocate it, toward vacations, home repairs, or additional investing.
That prompt nudged her into action. She’s now collecting estimates for interior design work so she can prioritize what she actually wants to spend on next.
Day 4: An $820 Concert Splurge
💸 Total Spent: $820.62
Thursday brought the biggest splurge of the week: two Bruno Mars tickets. “I did not realize the tickets went on sale today… I’m like, oh, I gotta get these tickets.”
Her 21-year-old daughter didn’t ask her to get them, but Kortne knew she was a fan and that she’d love it. “When I was a child, that wouldn’t have happened; my parents would not have been able to do things like this for me.”
Experiences, for Kortne, are non-negotiable. Why? “You can never take away my experiences,” she says.
Day 5: First Class Math
💸 Total Spent: $160
Friday was a travel day. Kortne spent $36 on gas, unsurprisingly given her 27-mile commute each way to the office. “I normally have to fill my tank up every five to six days,” she explained, a reminder that some expenses are simply the cost of routine.
The bigger decision came when she checked in for her flight to Portland for a half-marathon. An offer popped up: upgrade to first class for $124. She took it.
“It is a four-hour flight,” she said. “The airline ticket was only like $200… so I felt good about getting my upgrade to first.”
This is classic Kortne math. She’ll pack her own meals to avoid a $15 airport sandwich, but she’ll absolutely pay for comfort when it makes sense.
Even on a travel day, her spending reflects intention: splurge where it improves the experience, optimize everywhere else.
Day 6: Efficient Travel
💸 Total Spent: $121
Saturday began in Portland and ended in Salem, Oregon, where she’d run her half-marathon the next morning.
“This is simply a day trip,” she said, a tight turnaround with efficiency built in.
Her hotel was covered by travel points. A rental car would cost around $50 (to be finalized the next day). Saturday’s out-of-pocket total came to $121.
That included:
- $24 for a Zara shirt
- $6 at Trader Joe’s for water and ginger juice
- $4 at Walgreens for Lysol
- $59 to change her assigned seat
- $25 for dinner
- A small Apple Pay charge for gum
The $59 seat change stung a bit. “They assigned me to row 32 out of 36 rows, and I did not wanna sit all the way in the back of the plane,” she said.
Still, where she really shines is meal planning. She ate breakfast before leaving home. She brought snacks on the plane. She packed her lunch. She brought her pre-race meal. She even packed lunch for the airport the next day.
For Kortne, travel is not an excuse to abandon discipline. It’s an opportunity to prove she can maintain it. “I feel like spending money in the airport for food, $15 for a sandwich. Absolutely not,” she said. “I always take my food to the airport.”
And that’s the throughline of her week. She isn’t restrictive. She’s selective.
Day 7: Race Day
💸 Total Spent: $96.51
Sunday wrapped up Kortne’s whirlwind half-marathon trip; race in the morning, flight home in the afternoon, back to Dallas by evening. Her spending for the day was relatively modest: $96.51 total.
Despite traveling home on race day, she didn’t spend a dollar at the airport.
“I didn’t spend any money on food at the airport,” she said. “Fortunately, I meal prepped, and I have food available to eat at the airport and immediately after the race because I was famished.”
The timing was tight — race at 8:30 a.m., flight at 2 p.m. — and she didn’t even have time to eat at the race itself. Instead, she relied on the food she’d brought from home and stored in her hotel room.
Again, efficiency over impulse.
Final Reflections: Discipline + Joy
💸 Total Weekly Spend: $2,245
By the time she landed back in Dallas, the week’s total came in at $2,245.
“Was I expecting to spend that during this week? No,” she said. “I wasn’t.”
But context matters. There was a $500 credit card payment earlier in the week. There were concert tickets. There was travel for a half-marathon. This wasn’t a typical week, and that realization was clarifying rather than alarming.
“It was very eye-opening,” she reflected. “It also made me think like, where else can I cut costs?”
One immediate change she will make is switching from the six-pack gallons of water she typically buys weekly from Costco. “We have a water filter here in the house… we have filtered water at work.” It’s only about $5.69. But as she put it, “a little bit here and there… it adds up.”
MORE ON HERMONEY:
- A Week In Her Wallet: A 35-Year-Old Nurse and Money Coach Who Swears by Systems
- Which Budgeting Method Can Help You Become Debt Free The Fastest?
- Ask Jean: What’s The Best Way To Set Up A “Gift” Fund For My Nephew?
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