 Austin, Texas. It is the most expensive city in Texas. With all the people moving to the city, including me, it remains the fastest growing major metro in the country. I moved here in June 2019, right after I graduated from UCF in Orlando. My boyfriend and I moved here without ever visiting, so it was a pretty big culture shock, especially when we saw how much rent was compared to our super cheap college rent. We live about 15 minutes from downtown Austin and without traffic, you can really get anywhere in 20 minutes. The thing I spend the most money on is definitely food. I'm a huge foodie and I love splurging on a great meal. I also like to shop, but nowadays I save my money for big purchases to invest into my business. I'm a freelance videographer and photographer while also doing YouTube and Instagram on the side. Hey y'all, what's up? My name is Sonali. Like I said, I'm a 23-year-old recent graduate living in Austin, Texas. Today, I'm doing the What I Spent in a Week Challenge and I'm actually collaborating with my friend Cicely on this video. She is a 22-year-old who lives in Austin, Texas too, so we thought it'd be fun to compare our spending habits and see who spends more or less. Definitely check out her video after you watch mine. I will be linking it in the description box as well as her Instagram while you're there. Check it out. She has really great content. So for starters, I do have a bunch of subscriptions and auto payments such as Netflix, Spotify, Google Drive, Pixie Set, all of that, and rent obviously. Me and my boyfriend split a 2x2. It is 1800 per month for 1298 square feet. So I won't be including any of these expenses in my grand total because I wasn't built for them while I was filming this video. I actually have no idea what the grand total is, but you guys will find out at the end of this video. I haven't totaled it up yet, and I'm a little nervous to share because it definitely was a little bit more of a spendy week and I didn't really mean for it to be, so let's get started. So starting off with Monday, I go to Orange Theory Fitness Monday, Wednesday, Friday. My membership is $149 for Unlimited, but I will not be including this in my grand total because I wasn't charged while I was filming this video. But technically, if you wanted to split it up, it would be $13 per class if I was going to go three times per week. Usually, I'll go to the 9.30 a.m. class and so by the time I get home, it's like 10.45, 11, and then after a shower, I eat an earlier normal lunch, like around 12. Today, I just ate cereal because we didn't do our grocery shopping. I usually say Sundays are for grocery shopping, but most of the time we forget, and Ryan always likes to say that Mondays are for grocery shopping, but I cannot disagree more because, you know, you have to have groceries for Monday. After Ryan came home from work, we were planning on going grocery shopping, but I actually wanted to stop in this place called Snap Kitchen. It's basically where they sell like pre-made food. I was really hoping we could get like two or three dinners from here, but honestly, nothing looked that satisfying, and it was like not super cheap. Like a little thing of salmon would have been like $10 or something, and me and Ryan could get like two bigger pieces of salmon for like $12 at the grocery store. So it just didn't make sense, especially because I do have the time to cook. Sometimes I just choose not to because I'm a little bit lazy, but I like to cook. So after that, we made our way to Whole Foods, and we ended up eating at the hot bar, and their fried cauliflower is so freaking good. I could eat that all day long. It's so yummy. And I got like a bunch of other things. I just like filled my plate, like with all these different sides. We didn't end up going grocery shopping this night because Whole Foods is just a little bit out of our price range. We usually just go to Walmart instead of even HGB, just because it is a tad bit cheaper. So on Tuesday, I had ramen for lunch, which was probably not the healthiest, but again, we didn't go grocery shopping. So I didn't really have much to choose from. For dinner later that night, I met up with my friend Taylor, and we got some sushi. So that adds to that day, but I think Tuesday might have been my cheapest day. Wednesday morning, I went to the Texas Capitol because I had a graduation photo shoot there. So I did have to pay for parking, but it wasn't too expensive. I think it was like around a dollar or something. And then after that, I went to Orange Theory Fitness. Once I got home from that, I made these frozen dumplings that I think they like really messed up. I think they were like burnt, but I still ate them. They were pretty good. So later that night for dinner, we had these non pizzas, and they're from Deep Indian Kitchen. They actually gave us a couple of their frozen foods to try out for free the previous day. So I did a little bit of an unboxing on my Instagram stories, but my favorite was the spinach non pizza. It was so freaking good. Once they were done baking, I ran out the door to my next shoot because the traffic is so bad here in Austin, you have to leave like 30 to 40 minutes earlier than anything. After my shoot, I went straight to pick up this wooden shelf that I found on Facebook Marketplace. You can literally get lost on that thing for hours and just look at all these like cool decor items and furniture and like technology. Everyone's just selling anything. So it's really cool to look on there and let go. But yeah. So I found this wooden shelf and I thought I would get it because I'm just trying to like accumulate more stuff to finally decorate my whole apartment. It's for the most part like furnished. It's just not decorated. Like all the walls are pretty much plain except for like this one corner because it's like my filming corner. So that's definitely going to be my goal in the new year is to you know, decorate my apartment especially in the guest room because when guests come finally, I want them to you know, be like, oh, it's cute. So on Thursday, I somehow found myself on the Pink Lily website. I think I was like looking at hats because I'm like obsessed with these lack of color hats. They're just a little bit out of my price range. So I was trying to look for like a dupe. So I was on Google shopping and the Pink Lily website came up. But shout out to the blogger named Shay Lee because I used her code and I got, I think it was 20% off, which was like a good amount, especially because I think I had to pay for shipping. So I ate at home pretty much the whole day. But for dinner, I ended up needing a few more ingredients. I had pasta, but I wanted to make a lemon like carbonara type thing. So I needed Parmesan cheese and lemons and I think a few other stuff and I ended up getting wine. So you know, it kind of got a little bit more expensive than I thought it would be, but me and my boyfriend split that. Later that night, I had a mini heart attack because I realized I didn't buy my flight for Christmas yet and I was worried that I was going to get way more expensive if I didn't buy it right then and there. I am flying Spirit, so it definitely was one of the cheaper options because I was looking at Delta and even with all my Delta miles, it still would have been almost the same price as a Spirit round trip. So I just went with Spirit because Ryan was going to be on the same flight. Plus, I had to buy my dogs round trip with me on Spirit because I did some calculations and even if we got like a really, really, really cheap dog sitter, it still would have been cheaper to fly her with me and fly her back, which is kind of annoying, but it's fine because I love having Sophie with me, especially during the holidays. On Friday, I started my day off with Orange Spirit Fitness again and I ate at home for lunch. Since I make a lot of my content about Austin, Texas and my move here, there's a lot of companies that reach out to me to send me free products or free experiences and I was so freaking shook when Drybar reached out to me to set up a complimentary blowout. So I got that done and that was actually my first time getting a Drybar blowout, which was a great experience. I got Lil Rose too and I ended up having to pay for parking and I also tips the lady that did my hair. Right after my blowout, I drove up to the domain to beat traffic, so I ended up working out of Starbucks, but I didn't get anything because I was going to meet up with Cicely right after at Velvet Taco. I barely ate anything this day, so I wanted to get three tacos and corn, but I guess God was telling me that I didn't eat three tacos because she didn't bring up one of my tacos, so I ended up only having two tacos and a street corn, which ended up being cheaper, so it was fate. When we were walking out of Velvet Taco, I saw that there was a Jenny's ice cream and this is something super freaking famous in Georgia and Atlanta where I'm from and so when I saw that, I was like, oh my goodness, I want Jenny's. Oh my god, it's the greatest. I was telling Cicely how it's so yummy and the guy was like, hey, do you guys want free ice cream? We were like, what? How? Why? Basically, it was the grand opening of this Jenny's location. I think it may have been the first in Austin. I may be wrong about that, but I know there's one opening on South Congress, so I'm pretty excited for that one because I live closer to that, so that was pretty cool and that definitely made my day. Once I got home from the domain, everything just went down from there, so basically I bought a new MacBook. My computer has been so freaking slow these past couple of weeks, especially as I'm getting more work because I multitasked between video editing and photo editing, so that takes up a lot of just energy storage, all of that on my computer, which makes it go really, really slow and the new MacBook 16 inch came out, so I was kind of researching a little bit about it and I decided that it was time for an upgrade. I am so freaking grateful because I actually have an uncle that works for Apple, so he was able to give me 15% off my new MacBook, but the price was still actually insane. I know this is going to sound crazy, but to preface, I did get a ton more storage. I customized it. I got the graphic cards. I did a lot of add-ons, which I never knew you could even do, so the total of this one item was $3,751. Yeah, that stings. Like I said, I'm a big believer of investing your money back into your business. I don't really feel that guilty about it just because I know it is a very practical decision and I'm obviously going to use it every second of my life, so I don't feel guilty in that aspect, but I do feel guilty because I'm filming this video and it's kind of embarrassing to share, so don't judge me. It was for my business. On Saturday, I did a friend's headshots near the Trader Joe's. I did park in the parking garage, so I wanted to get my parking validated and I ended up just picking up a couple of items at Trader Joe's, so I got these really yummy truffle almonds. If you guys have not tried this and you love truffle, I highly recommend these. They're so good. I probably bought them at least six times already, and then I got these apple cider donuts, which were actually disgusting, so yeah, don't buy these. These are really gross. Later for lunch, I was really craving dim sum, so we ended up going to Lin Asia bar, but I guess I was just that hungry and really into my dim sum that I forgot to film this, but then for dinner, we actually got something really small because we ate lunch so late, so I got Tom Cuss soup from a Thai restaurant and that was only five bucks. On Sunday, we started celebrating my birthday a little bit early, so we went to Matty's for brunch. We got these really good donuts, a biscuit, and then I got fried chicken eggs Benedict. Later that night, we went to see a movie and we actually have the A list and C pass. This is pretty much like movie pass where you can see up to three movies per week and it's $20 per month, so I'm not going to count that because again, that was like an auto payment subscription. I also had birthday rewards, so I got a free large popcorn and a free large drink, so the grand total is drum roll please. As you all can tell, this was a very, very expensive week and I was not planning on buying this much stuff at all. I feel like if it wasn't for the MacBook and the flight, it definitely would have been a more normal amount. I hope you all enjoyed this video and I want y'all to comment down below what you guys spend the most money on. Is it food? That's definitely it for me most of the time. Is it technology? Is it just auto payments? Is it rent? Let me know. Don't forget to check out Cicely's video to see how much she spent in her week. I will have that link down below and if you guys are interested in my life here in Austin, I'll also have some of my moving vlogs and my Austin vlogs down below. I'll see y'all in my next video. Bye!