Money Journal: 1 Week in Minneapolis’s Webber-Camden Neighborhood on a $60K Salary

How far do the dollars of a 50-year-old brewer go?

12:28 PM CDT on September 8, 2025

Giorgio Trovato via Unsplash

Welcome to Racket’s Money Journal series, where you can snoop on the finances of an anonymous Twin Cities neighbor. Interested in submitting your own? Email jay@racketmn.com for instructions on over-sharing the monetary details of your life! (And gang? Let's keep the very popular series going following a long period of dormancy.) H/T to Refinery29 for pioneering a tremendous concept that we’re excited to localize.

Personal Information

Job: Brewer
Age: 50
Neighborhood: Webber-Camden
Education: Bachelor’s
Salary: Roughly $60,000 per year; I’m paid hourly at ~40 hours per week
Partner’s salary: N/A (lone wolf)
Dependents: Lotta houseplants
Estimated net worth: $345,000 across all checking, savings, and home equity

Debt

Credit cards: One card that is paid clean every month.

Vehicle: Financing a 2025 Subaru Crosstrek valued at $39,000.

Home: Three-bedroom house valued at $240K, only $5,000 left to pay off!

Education: Good ol’ state school diploma paid-in-full. Southern Illinois class of ’97—go Salukis!

Assets

Retirement accounts: $337,000 across 401(k), Roth IRA, & HSA accounts.

Non-retirement cash (spend and savings accounts): $7,600.

Miscellaneous things: Too many LPs and various music gear.

Monthly Income

Paycheck amount: Depending on my hours, I take home ~$3,000 per month after taxes and other deductions. Maybe a bit more when OT kicks in.

Monthly Expenses

Mortgage: $500. FWIW: When I moved up here, I had just sold a house to a cash buyer and thus had a substantial down-payment on my current home.

Vehicle: $600 for financing the Crosstrek.

Utilities:

Gas: Call it $60 (in summer, under $20 but winter spikes over $100)
Electric: $60 (same estimation as gas bill)
Water/trash/recycling: $70
Phone: $25
Internet: None (I rely on my phone’s hotspot)
Cable: None

Insurances:

Health: I put $90 per paycheck into an HSA
Vision: $2 per paycheck
Dental: Out of pocket
Bundled home/car: $233 per month

Retirement: 10% of my pre-tax salary every pay period goes into my 401(k); my employer matches 4%. When possible, I max out annual Roth IRA contributions ($7,000) but that ebbs and flows based on unforeseen expenses.

Gas: $50.

Groceries: $50. No shade to the Aldi savers, but Mike’s Discount Foods is the real deal. Also shoutout to North Market’s Wednesday discount produce deal. I also have five garden beds going full-throttle in the spring/summer so my yard is a veritable farmer’s market.

Subscriptions:

Racket: $5 (editor's note: hell yeah)
MPR: $5
Patreon: $5
See/Saw: $4
Aquarium Drunkard: $8
Spotify: $12 (probably drop this soon)
Apple Cloud: $2
House alarm: $50

Charity: Hard to pin a number on it, but I give to Planned Parenthood when possible. I think my last donation was around $100 but that’s not every month.

Money Talk Q&A

Did your family talk about money growing up?

Absolutely. We were a hardcore, coupon-clipping Midwestern household. Further, any childhood income, be it a birthday card, dog-waking/sitting, neighborhood snow shoveling, or my modest grass-cutting empire was split 50/50 between my wallet and a nest-egg (an honest-to-goodness L’eggs egg container) that my parents would channel into a savings account. Often, my dad would chide my more frivolous spending on heavy metal cassettes or concert T-shirts.

Did you worry about money growing up?

I don’t recall being worried about money, but it was evident that we lived/spent/saved alternately than my friends’ families. I thought having an Atari 2600 or a Huffy BMX from Kmart was incredible until I saw the Nintendos and shiny 10-speeds my buddies enjoyed. I got over it…

At what age did you become financially independent?

By age 18, a freshman at SIUC, I was ostensibly “on my own.” All those savings as a child, plus a few grants, paid for tuition/board plus walk-around cash. It’s a distant memory, but I recall paying $3,500 per semester over four years of student life/shenanigans.

How did you learn how to budget your life?

Work and savings were always stressed by my parents. “Work Now, Play Later” was how they would sign off their emails; I studied broadcasting, so it was a charming call back to my major… as if it were the call letters of a radio station WNPL. Any breaks from school, I worked full-time doing data entry through a temp service. It was actually amazing money—$15 per hour or so, compared to the $4-5 per hour I made working part-time gigs at hardware stores or record shops.

Beyond that, I would make these little compromises in my weekly budgets. For example, I’d skimp on running the A/C if it meant I had a few extra bucks to eat out or hit up a show. Most importantly, my dad, an ex-math teacher, taught me the value of compound investments so I was headlong into IRAs & 401(k)s post-college. When you see what a few bucks at age 21 looks like 30 years down the road, it’s a mind-blower. Somewhere I also learned that one should put raises into savings, the thinking being that the prior paycheck was sufficient, so put the surplus towards retirement. Not glamorous, but it is a strategy.

Have you ever received inherited income, major financial gifts, or large insurance payouts?

I did get a pair of sick floor speakers as a high school graduation gift. My sister and I shared a shoddy Ford Escort when we were in high school... I believe my parents bought that, but we were on the hook for gas/etc.

Do you worry about money now?

Only in the sense that it’s my objective to retire by age 56. I’m not angling to die in my brewer’s boots. I tend not to dissect the economy or fret over investment fluctuations, especially since they’re all on the aggressive side. My checking account is my one thermometer. If it starts to get wobbly, I know spending is veering off-course.

How much do you think a person or household needs to earn to live comfortably in the Twin Cities?

Having lived in Chicago, NYC, and small-town Iowa, I’ve experienced a wide cost-of-living range. From that perspective, I think Minneapolis is a very reasonable metro. More specifically, north Minneapolis is quite comfortable. My current compensation is actually the lowest wage I’ve made in over a decade, but earlier strategies have worked to my advantage. Plus, I bike/bus more than drive, my garden feeds me, I pack lunches more than not, I thrift/borrow, etc. Naturally, I’m a single-person household and won’t speak to what it costs to support a family.