In our How I Manage My Money series, we aim to find out how people in the UK are spending, saving and investing money to meet their costs and achieve their goals.
This week, we speak to Lorna Luo, 32, who lives with her parents in London and works freelance in artificial intelligence (AI) connected to medicine. Lorna quit medicine and has seen her pay rise sharply. She has £150,000 in cash Isas and has started a self-invested personal pension since going freelance. Lorna doesn’t want to be working in her seventies.
Monthly budget
My monthly income: I earn £315 a day from my freelance role as a healthcare and medical informatics editor for The BMJ. Before tax, on a monthly basis, I can make about £6,000 to £6,900 a month, depending on how many hours and days I work. I take home around £4,000 a month and always set aside money for tax.
My monthly outgoings: I’m not currently paying anything for accommodation and bills, but have put payments down to start renting soon. Groceries, £100; petrol, £50; mobile phone, £35; money into a self-invested personal pension (SIPP), £500; money into savings accounts, £1,050; eating out and takeaways, £50 to £60; clothes, £10 to £20; renting a movie online, £6; travelling on the tube in London, £30. I don’t have any subscriptions.
