Interview with Kelly Wood

Kelly is a 24 year old female graduate student at Drexel University with student loans and a part-time job

She feels she’s spending too much money on eating out as well as groceries. While she’d like to reduce spending for both of these, she’d like to focus on spending less on eating out. It’s less healthy and also more expensive than making meals at home.

The convenience factor plays a big role in this overspending. She feels it’s just much less time-consuming to eat out then to figure out what you want to eat, go to the store, and actually prepare the meal. Kelly thinks that “spending too much” is a very personal issue, and cannot easily be quantified. She personally tries to memorize how many times she eats out per week, but doesn’t have a specific budget.

Kelly used to balance her check book before she had a computer, but now she just checks her PNC online bank account. She used to spend more time on it manually, but not anymore.

She feels that writing out a budget of what she needs every week, and balance it out afterwards, would help track her spending. Kelly says she’s too lazy, though, and doesn’t have the time to do this.

Kelly’s short-term goals (while in school) are to have enough money for school and living expenses. Long-term goals include a life free of stress, where she doesn’t have to worry about spending too much money. If she would be able to reduce her overspending, it would go towards her savings.