California E&S Insurance

I am 30 years old, make $120,000 (combined $180,000), work as a Clinical Research Associate, and I travel for work regularly **Section 1: Bio** **Age**: 30 **Occupation**: Clinical Research Associate **Hometown**: Minneapolis **Number of PTO days and how you accrue them:** 20 days/year, accrue 6.67 hours per pay period **Section 2: Assets and Debt** **Retirement Balance** (and how you got there): $306,342.40 ($83,376.46 401K, $18,667.20 HSA, $17,043.01 Roth IRA, $187,255.73 in stock portfolio). Husband (H) has a 401k and Roth also. I treat my stock portfolio as a retirement vehicle so I buy stable stocks and plan to not touch it for a really long time. **Equity if you're a homeowner**: $88,889 (We put 20% down for our house we bought in Nov. We saved up for a down-payment on a house for the last couple years, plus a sign on bonus, plus my parents gave us $20,000 towards it). **Savings account balance:** $15,822.91 in my account, $33,000 in Husband’s (H) account. We have fully combined finances but kept our individual accounts from before we were married. All bills and living expenses are paid from my accounts, and H’s account is for emergency funds and his future student loan repayment. **Checking account balance:** $9675.17 **Credit card debt:** None, pay off all cards in full each month **Student loan debt:** H has student loans we’re planning on paying off aggressively once the deferment is lifted. For that reason we’re living mostly off of my income while his goes towards savings and his retirement 401k. **Mortgage debt:** $355,149.59 (We just bought our first home in Nov so this is pretty new to me!) **Inheritance/Gifts:** Full disclosure that my parents started my stock portfolio with $25,000 when I turned 18, and I took over it when I graduated college and started putting my own savings into it. My parents also saved for my college tuition, but I ended up getting a full ride to undergrad. My masters was paid for by my parents and they gifted me $20,000 for our down-payment as a “replacement” for not having to pay for my undergrad. **IF YOU COMBINE FINANCES WITH A S/O PLEASE INCLUDE ALL OF THEIR ASSETS / DEBT AS WELL** **Section 3: Income** **Income Progression:** My first job was in college working in an after school education center part time making $10/hour. My parents paid for all my expenses during college so I put all my paychecks in a savings account. After grad school I worked part time as an education instructor at a zoo and also taught community college part time before landing a job in my field. I've been working in my field for 5 years at the same company the whole time. My starting salary was $50,000 as an in-house CRA. I was promoted internally to a CRA I after 1 year and started making $68,000. This is when I started traveling for work regularly. 2 years later I leveraged an outside offer to get a promotion to CRA II at $92,500. In 2022 I was given a raise to $111,000 to meet the market rate for my position (there’s a high demand and low supply of CRAs). In fall 2022 I was promoted to CRA III at $120,000. **Main Job Monthly Take Home:** $5,552.18 my job, $500 from H’s job goes to my account (the rest of H’s paycheck goes towards his savings for his student loan repayment, currently in deferment) **Deductions (monthly):** $1900 401k (my company matches a %); $78 medical; $10 dental; $7.78 vision; $270 HSA (my company adds in $50/month); about $2230 taxes. **Side Gig Monthly Take Home:** None **Any Other Monthly Income Here:** None. I do get quarterly bonuses depending on my work metrics, but this is unpredictable and I don’t include it in budgeting since it's different every quarter and not guaranteed. **Section Three: Expenses** **Mortgage**: $2169.95 **HOA fees:** $206.50 (this covers exterior maintenance, landscaping, lawn care, snow removal) **Home/Auto insurance:** $170 (this is overestimated since our mortgage payment is supposed to cover our homeowner’s insurance also, but we’re hoping to take that off after a year and pay the insurance and property taxes ourselves instead of being in escrow. Right now our insurance company sends us a check when the mortgage company double pays our homeowner’s insurance.) **Retirement contribution:** I usually put in the $6000 to my Roth IRA at the beginning of the year, but with our recent house buying and all the furniture and expenses related to that, I’m holding off this year until our finances level out (our savings took a big hit). I also transfer money into my stock portfolio irregularly whenever my savings account balance gets higher than needed. **Savings contribution:** $1000 (auto-transferred each month from my checking to savings account) **Electric:** \~$200 (still new to this house so not sure what our average electric bill will look like) **Water/Sewage**: \~$20 (this is paid every 3 months and our first bill was $60 so basing it off that) **Internet:** $55, my work gives me $50/month to cover internet **Cellphone**: $30 (still on my family plan), my work also covers this **Annual payments:** $21/year for Uncommon Goods membership, $139/year for Amazon Prime, $52 gym membership annual fee, $120/year Zoo membership, $342/year for various credit card fees (We have several travel credit cards) **Gym membership:** $42.94/month **Car payment:** None, cars are paid off. Car insurance is bundled with homeowner’s insurance **IF YOU COMBINE INCOME WITH A S/O PLEASE INCLUDE ALL OF THEIR EXPENSES AS WELL** **Day 1 Monday** 7am: I wake up when H leaves to go to work. I lay in bed until 9:30am then get up and get ready for a 10:30am work meeting. My morning skincare routine is The Ordinary hyaluronic acid and niacinamide followed by CeraVe AM moisturizer with SPF. Then it’s time for my commute to work. I walk down the hall to my home office and log on right in time for my meeting. When I’m not traveling for work, I’m working from home, which I love. 11am: Meeting is over and I do my morning routine of making tea while cleaning up the kitchen. Then it’s back to the home office to get some work done. My company is contracted by pharmaceutical companies to run their clinical trials, and my job as a CRA is to monitor individual clinical sites that are running the actual studies (recruiting patients, administering the investigational product, gathering the data and samples, etc.). It’s mostly making sure there’s compliance with the protocol and sites are getting everything done the way the sponsor wants it. 12:00pm: Usually I eat at 1 or 2, but today there’s a 1pm meeting so I heat up leftover laab and rice. Lunch is eaten at my desk while browsing the internet. There’s a baby shower I’m attending this weekend so I order some gifts, a children’s book **($14.59)** and baby towels **($28.11)**. 1pm: There’s an informal meeting with some coworkers in the same position as me to catch up, vent, and share tips. 2pm: The meeting is over and I make calls to potential sites to work on a new study. I answer emails, send emails, and leave a lot of voicemails. 5pm: H gets home and finishes up some work in the office. I pack for my work trip tomorrow. It’ll just be a 2 day 1 night and I always keep the basics (toiletries, pjs, socks, underwear) packed so it doesn’t take long to sort out 2 outfits and get everything ready. 6pm: I pan fry pierogies from Costco with sour cream and carmelized onions (I eat the whole package myself). H has leftovers from a previous day. We eat at the dining table instead of the couch for once and chat about our days. 7pm: We start the new season of Old Enough on Netflix but both fall asleep on the couch at some point. 10pm: Wake up from our “naps” and go get ready for bed. My nighttime skincare routine is The Ordinary hyaluronic acid and niacinamide and CeraVe PM moisturizer. 11pm: I’m in bed, later than I’d planned, but the nap probably contributed. **Daily total: $42.70** **Day 2 Tuesday** 3am: I wake up and get ready in the dark as quietly as possible to not wake H. 4am: My scheduled Lyft picks me up and takes me to the airport (**$63.59** – use company card, includes 20% tip). For work travel expenses, my company gives me a company credit card they the company pays for, but I still have to create an expense report with all the charges and receipts and submit it so accounting can bill our clients for it. Last year I had to pay off the card each month and then my company would reimburse me for the amounts. I wish my company would let us pay for everything with personal cards then get reimbursed, I’d have so many travel points! But that method can be problematic if an employee doesn’t have a high credit limit. Work travel policy allows up to 20% tips so I always tip 20% while traveling for work, even for things I wouldn’t usually tip for, like fast food pickup. 4:20am: Arrive at the airport, through security in less than 5 min. I have TSA precheck covered by work and it’s worth its weight in gold. I wait at my gate for about 30 min browsing the internet since no one is awake to text with at this ungodly hour. 5am: Board my flight to St. Louis, I get a window seat at the front of the plane. It’s not a crowded flight so I have the middle seat empty. I sleep the whole 1 hr flight. 7am: Land in St Louis. Too early to travel to the site so I go to the Priority Pass lounge for an hour. My work doesn’t cover lounge access unfortunately, but my dad has priority pass lounge access as a credit card perk and added me since I travel so much. I buy a Starbucks matcha tea latte and a chocolate croissant to take into the lounge **($10.18** – on company card). I help myself to yogurt parfait and fruit in the lounge. I get comfy and sort through my morning emails. 8:30am: Time to order a Lyft to the site **($34.24** – on company card). Most of my sites are at medical clinics, and some are hospital/university sites. This one is a clinic located in an office building. 9am: Arrive on site, they are super understaffed and busy. I work alone in a windowless room on my computer. Welcome to my world. Today’s visit is about closing out this site; we’ve reached the end of the study and just a few regulatory documents need to be collected and some close out procedures performed. I meet with the principal investigator (PI, the doctor responsible for the site) and the clinical research coordinator (CRC, the role that runs the day to day of the study) and this site is officially closed out! 12:15pm: I collect my last document using my TurboScan app on my phone and leave the site. Lyft to airport **($30.94** – on company card). Normally site visits take the whole day, but close outs are pretty straight forward and a half day is usually sufficient. 12:45pm: Get to the airport, security is empty (TSA precheck is so worth every penny). Back to the same lounge from this morning for an hour before my flight. They don’t recognize me, which I guess is a good thing? I eat lunch at the lounge (mini deli sandwiches, popcorn, chips, soda). 1:45pm: Get ready to board my flight to Las Vegas. On the plane I sleep 2 hours, then for the last hour of the flight I watch Love is Blind Japan that I downloaded on my tablet. It’s a completely full flight, I’m in the window and have 2 people in the middle and aisle seat. 3:45pm: Arrive in Las Vegas. My original connecting flight wasn’t until 6:45pm, but on the monitor I see that there is an earlier flight to Sacramento leaving at 4:30pm. I talk to the gate agent and get a seat on the earlier flight, no change fee since I have status with this airline. I use the time before boarding to use the bathroom then buy a medium French fry from Burger King to eat on the plane **($3.35** – on company card). Airports don’t have the best food options. 4pm: I’m finally on my flight to Sacramento sitting in a window seat at the front, the middle seat is empty, and someone is sitting in the aisle seat. Inflight I eat my fries, get a ginger ale during beverage service, and watch more Love is Blind Japan. 6pm: Arrive in Sacramento. I take the shuttle bus to the rental car center and pick up my rental car **($67.44** – on company card) and drive to a poke place halfway to my hotel. I order poke bowl with salmon and octopus and a guava nectar drink **($23.39** – on company card), then take it to go and drive to my hotel, a Hampton Inn. 7:30pm: Check into my hotel room (get snacks and a soda for free as a loyalty member) and eat my dinner while watching HGTV on the TV and talking to H on the phone. 10:30pm: Time to shower and get ready for bed. I’m in bed by 11:30pm. **Daily total: $0 (all on company card)** **Day 3 Wednesday** 8am: Wake up and time to get ready for work. I check out of the hotel **($220.23** – on company card) and drive to today’s site, also a medical clinic. 9:30am: Arrive at the site. This site is super organized and efficient. I collect documents using TurboScan and get everything done quickly. The PI isn’t available yet so I do work for my other studies while waiting. I start my report for yesterday’s site visit; each site visit requires a report where I detail what was done and track certain metrics like adverse events, protocol deviations, and how many subjects are in the study. 1pm: Finally met with the PI and I’m able to leave the site and drive back to the airport. 1:38pm: I’m on the shuttle from the rental car center to the airport terminal after dropping off my rental car. Checking the airline app, I see that my first flight is delayed by 20 minutes…great… 2pm: I’m through security and buy a slice of spinach and mushroom pizza and 10 garlic knots at the airport **($10.85** – to company card). I fill up my reusable water bottle and proceed to eat my pizza and all the garlic knots while waiting at my gate. The flight is still delayed by about 25 minutes but the gate agent said the plane is in the air and will arrive in 30 minutes. While waiting I browse the internet and answer some emails on my phone. I call Home Depot about our dryer delivery. The dryer is scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning after a 3 month fiasco with backorders and the delivery company somehow losing a whole dryer. We’ve been air drying everything for months and the situation is getting dire. Fingers crossed that the dryer actually makes an appearance tomorrow. 3:20pm: Board my flight from Sacramento to Denver. It’s not too delayed so I shouldn’t have any issues making my connection. I sit in the window seat at the front of the plane. There’s one person in the aisle seat and the middle seat is empty. I nap and look out the window during the flight, having a ginger ale during beverage service. 7pm: Land in Denver. My next flight is the same gate we arrived at, so it’s the same plane. Convenient! I go to the bathroom (I’ve learned to always use the bathroom before buying food so I’m not trying to juggle food while using a public restroom). I’m not really hungry so I just buy a bag of popcorn and a smoothie at an airport convenience store **($8.18** to company card). I add it to my expense report in the mobile app and eat my popcorn while waiting to board. 7:30pm: I board my final flight of the trip, getting a window seat at the front. Thankfully the middle seat is empty, and one person is in the aisle seat so I can stretch out a bit. I finish my popcorn and smoothie while watching Love is Blind Japan during the flight. 10:45pm: Land at the Minneapolis airport and order a Lyft home **($42.91** to company card). 11:30pm: Finally home! I go upstairs and quickly unpack and get ready for bed then crawl into bed with H. I’ve learned to always unpack right away or else everything just stays there too long. **Daily total: $0 (all on company card)** **Day 4 Thursday** 6:45am: Wake up when H kisses me goodbye on his way to work. I then go back to sleep. 7:20am: Wake up and get ready for this dryer delivery. I log on to work and check emails, make a few work calls. 10:30am: Still no dryer. I call Home Depot and they said the dryer didn’t make it on the delivery truck this morning since it arrived in the warehouse after the truck had already left!!! They rescheduled the delivery for Sat. I am LIVID. 11am: The baby towels I ordered for the baby shower are showing as delivered but there’s nothing at our door or mailbox. I go take a look at our neighbor’s doors to see if our package got delivered to them by mistake. No dice, but I’m sure I looked like a creep. I call Amazon and get a refund for the missing package. I then reorder the same baby towels to have it in time for the baby shower this weekend **($28.40, -$28.11 refund from Amazon so $0 net).** I make tea and clean the kitchen. I’m trying to grow some green onions from cuttings so I check them and add more water. I have a black thumb so we’ll see how they turn out. 12:45pm: Heat up lunch which is leftover laab with rice again (we cook in bulk) and have it with tea while finally getting some actual work done. I finish up the reports from my visits. 3:40pm: Still working, snacking on blueberries, apples, and string cheese. The baby towels show up at our door. That was fast! 4pm: It’s actually sunny outside for once so I go for a run for the first time in months. 5pm: Get back from my run and shower. I catch up with my sister on the phone. 6pm: H comes home and we go to a happy hour with friends. I have a quesadilla and root beer, H has a taco and margarita **($46.60 with tip**) 8:30pm: Get home and rest in a food coma. End up napping on the couch. There’s a pattern here? 11pm: We’re both in bed after waking up and getting ready for actual bed. **Daily total: $46.60** **Day 5 Friday** 7am: H kisses me goodbye on his way to work. I mumble something in reply. 8am: Wake up. Check emails on my phone. 9am: Actually get up and do my morning routine. 10am: Log on to work. I have a 4 hour virtual investigator meeting from 11-3pm today so I get lunch prepped and snacks and drinks ready to go. Investigator Meetings happen at the beginning of a clinical study; all the parties involved in running the study get together and there are slide presentations on the protocol, any vendors/portals/systems used, safety, good practice, etc. to make sure everyone is on the same page and questions can be asked and answered. Since the pandemic, all my investigator meetings have been virtual. The sponsor for this one sent everyone a box of snacks to keep us entertained during the 4 hour long zoom meeting. I set up my snacks and add some of my own. While waiting for the meeting to start I see that some bike shorts on Old Navy I was looking at are on sale so I snag 2 of them to wear under dresses and to workout **($20**) 11am: Meeting starts! 12pm: I break open the snacks to stay alert. Zoom presentations are so hard to pay attention to. 12:30pm: 10 min break, I heat up the last of the laab and rice to eat 1pm: I’m so glad I have a standing desk… 2pm: The meeting ends early! I finish up my notes and do some more work. 4pm: My attention wanders and I start looking up flights for a trip in the summer. 5:30pm: H picks up Panda Express for dinner **($21.74)** 6pm: Eat dinner together with H and watch Leverage: Redemption on Amazon Prime. Dessert is some chocolate cake, apples, and string cheese. I call Home Depot and they claim our dryer should arrive tomorrow morning…but I’ve heard that before… 9pm: Work on this money diary and do more research for our trip in the summer. 12pm: Whoops, got too deep in trip research so I get ready for bed. **Daily total: $41.74** **Day 6 Saturday** 9am: Wake up and get ready. Glad that my baby shower gifts came in on time and I wrap them. 9:45am: H is at his doctor’s appointment and pays the copay **($10)** 10am: Our dryer finally gets delivered! But the outlet for it is not drawing power…this is a bad joke at this point. Luckily our house is new so still under warranty so I send an email to our customer care representative to have the electricians come take a look. It’s the weekend so I don’t expect a reply until Monday. 10:45am: A friend picks me up to go to our other friend’s baby shower. The baby shower is fun and I get to chat with friends and celebrate our friend having a baby! Definitely in that stage of life where all our friends are starting to have babies on purpose, and it’s a weird feeling. 3pm: Get home and veg out on the couch watching Leverage: Redemption while snacking on popcorn, fruit, and string cheese while H plays video games. 6pm: Have dinner which is leftover Panda Express. Watch more TV and basically just have a relaxing Saturday evening. H buys a car part **($46.46)**. His car is out of commission right now until it’s fixed. We’re sharing my car for now, which is inconvenient but doable since I usually work from home. 10pm: In bed early since H works tomorrow. **Daily total: $46.46** **Day 7 Sunday** 7am: I want the car today so I drive H to work and drop him off. I’ll pick him up again around 6pm. I get home and lay in bed scrolling on my phone. 10am: Get up and work on this money diary and check my emails. I’ve made plans with friends to go ice skating this afternoon so I enjoy a lazy morning. I do more trip research. Flights to Europe are so expensive! 11:30am: I make 2 fried eggs and eat them over rice with soy sauce. I add some tomatoes because vegetables. 12:30am: Put my ice skates in my car. I drive to the ice rink and skate for a few hours with my friends. It’s extremely cold, but I needed an activity to get me outside in the winter and ice skating is the cheapest. I bought my own skates and there’s free ice rinks everywhere. 4:30pm: Get home and I play Zoo Tycoon on the computer. I played it a lot growing up so it’s nostalgic to revisit the game. I try to find out which animals can coexist with other animals in the same exhibit. 6pm: I pick up H from work and we get home and eat dinner together. We both Play Zoo Tycoon and watch Leverage: Redemption. 10pm: We get ready for bed and I pack for tomorrow’s work trip. **Daily total: $0** **At the end of each day please tally up your daily expenses. Then at the end of your diary please tally up all expenses in the following categories:** **Food + Drink:** $68.34 **Fun / Entertainment:** $42.70 (gifts) **Home + Health:** $10 **Clothes + Beauty:** $20 **Transport:** $46.46 (car parts) **Other: $0** **Total:** $187.50 **Work trip expenses on company card**: $515.30 **Lastly, reflect on your diary!** This was a pretty normal week for us. The spending was about average, if not a little lower than usual. I didn’t realize until writing this that we didn’t buy groceries this week! We usually do a big grocery shop every 2 weeks and cook in bulk to have food for a while. I’m trying to cut our spending since we just bought a house and are saving for a new car and big trip this summer. Before we bought the house I had been making more impulse purchases since we had the disposable income. But now our housing expenses are more than our previous renting expenses so I have to keep that in mind. Honestly, this writing exercise has made me more cognizant of what I eat in a week, and I think I need to add more vegetables. I usually travel for work 2-3 days every week when it’s busy. When it’s not busy, I try to schedule it so I travel 2-3 days every other week. Honestly, it’s gotten to be pretty exhausting. When I started out, I would travel in the day before and try to do some fun touristy things, but now I sometimes just want to be in and out as fast as possible. It also depends on what city I’m going to, I still try to extend my trips to San Diego for example, since I love that place and I usually stay close to the beach. **Update on dryer:** We finally now have a working dryer! The electrician came and it turned out the breaker was installed wrong so they fixed it. Then it turned out the installation people just stuck the dryer duct on the machine without anything to hold it on so we had to go get the parts and attach the duct onto the dryer ourselves. Home Depot did give us a partial refund and a gift card, but it'll be a while before I use them for appliances again...

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  "title": "I am 30 years old, make $120,000 (combined $180,000), work as a Clinical Research Associate, and I travel for work regularly",
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