- Hi Glamour, welcome to my house!

I hope you're hungry.

My name is Courtnee Futch, I'm 25 years old,

and I live in Jersey City, New Jersey.

By day, I'm a marketing manager

at a food startup in New York City,

and in my spare time I run two food e-commerce businesses.

My businesses are called the.spred,

which is my private catering service

and dinner party service,

and thundercakes, which is my e-commerce bakery.

And here's how I spend my money.

I make $98,000 a year in my nine to five,

and anywhere between four to six thousand dollars a month

depending on what events I'm throwing that month.

I have around $12,000 in a traditional savings account.

I have no money in retirement, yet.

I have $60,000 in student loan debt,

all of that actually comes from my undergraduate degree.

I do have my master's, but that was paid for

in full by a fellowship.

I have one credit card, I typically

put most of my business expenses on it,

and for everything else I use my debit cards.

I'm pretty strict now about the way

that I use my credit cards because

coming straight out of college,

I was not the most fiscally responsible

and wracked up a good bit of change on a few retail cards.

I live in a lofted one bedroom in Jersey City

and it's 1100 square feet.

I spend $1750 a month in rent and about $190 in utilities

I spend a little over $300 a month in subscription services.

I travel into New York City Monday through Friday

for my nine to five, and I spend about $81 a month

for my unlimited commuter card.

My apartment is eclectic and cozy and warm and lived-in.

On the morning of an event, I typically wake up around 9 AM.

My bedroom is really cozy,

so because the space is pretty open,

it's kind of hard to close it off

and really have that sense of privacy,

so I like it to feel very airy, very light.

So my favorite piece in my bedroom

is actually my nightstand,

so I bought it for $5 at a yard sale on the side of the road

and took it home, sanded it down,

painted it like this really pretty midnight blue,

and gave it a lot of really funky, gold detailing,

changed out the knob for some crystal,

and I really love the complement of the orange.

I ended up getting into DIYs because both of my parents

are incredibly crafty.

Growing up with that influence

made it really easy for me to kind of

find pieces of my own that are really quirky

and colorful and remake them.

The piece that I get the most compliments on

is my periwinkle blue vanity.

Also a Craiglist find, I found it for $150.

At first I painted it black,

which ended up being a very terrible choice for the space,

and then later decided I wanted to paint it

a really festive, kind of dainty periwinkle blue.

Another way that I decorate the space

using my own resources is with painting.

I recently picked up portraiture,

so I'm attempting to teach myself how to paint faces.

On this particular day, I'm getting ready

to host a dinner party.

On the day of an event, the first thing

that I'm going to do to prep for it

is I'll usually get started working on the sides

and putting all of those in the oven.

The most used space in the apartment

is definitely the kitchen.

I wanted the kitchen to feel loved.

I wanted the kitchen to feel very colorful

I wanted it to not take itself too seriously,

so I think food has to come from a place

of a lot of love and lot of energy and a lot of character,

so I tried to incorporate as much of my personality

into it as I could.

The kitchen when I moved in was all white,

there was no back splash, I actually was able to put that up

myself, which is pretty exciting, peel and stick.

And also, in an attempt to cover up a fridge

that's pretty regular, I put temporary wallpaper on it.

Both projects in total cost about $50.

I've had my main company, thundercakes, for seven years.

On a busy month with thundercakes

I'm spending anywhere between four to $500

on ingredients, about $30 per month on my website,

$400 for my photographer, and about $100 for marketing.

Every so often, I'll have the need to hire a courier service

to handle deliveries that are too large for me

to deliver myself, and I typically end up paying

somewhere between $100 to $250

depending on the size of the order.

Each cake sells for about $40, and I typically

make $30 profit per cake.

In a busy month, I'm typically popping out

about 200 orders.

I started the sister company to thundercakes,

which is the.spred, about a year ago.

Per event, I'll spend about $550, maybe 600

to feed about 30 guests.

The smallest dinner party that I've had so far

was for six guests, and the largest was for 50,

so it really depends on the event and the occasion.

The liquor and wine costs associated with that

are typically like always $200 each.

I typically spend about $300 per event

for my tablescapes and decor.

There are no location fees because I host here.

I charge between 60 to $70 per ticket

and I usually come out of the event

with about $1200 in profit.

My other business expenses are about $300 a year

to maintain my food processing license

and $299 a year for my liability insurance.

In the future, I'll be spending about $250 a month

to rent freezer and refrigerator space

at a commercial kitchen nearby.

I love working out of my kitchen,

but I'm getting to the point where I really have to expand

and expand into a more professional space.

I really wanted an ode to spices in my apartment,

and I wanted to be able to display my love

for all the spices that I use,

and so I put them on a rack and purchased all of them

from one company, which sources a great deal

of their spices from Africa, which I think is pretty cool.

Spices can be moderately expensive,

especially if you want to invest in quality.

At some point in the very near future,

I plan on upgrading my current oven,

so I am hoping to get a really beautiful

stainless steel one that will allow me

to kind of optimize my baking.

One appliance I definitely wish that I had

was a dishwasher, but I also really enjoy

washing the dishes by hand after each of the parties,

it's pretty therapeutic for me, actually.

So truth be told, I really don't mind.

I spend a lot on flatware, I also spend a lot

on my cooking appliances,

so I feel like that's definitely,

if there's ever a place to invest,

invest in your pots and pans and definitely in your knives,

and of course in your flatware.

Now we've got about four to five hours

before the start of the event, and I've got

a little bit of downtime.

I'll typically spend that time sitting on the couch,

re-watching Scandal, scrolling through Twitter,

or maybe if I have a little bit of time,

I'll start on a DIY project.

So my living room is actually the opposite of my bedroom.

If my bedroom is warm and cozy, then the living room

is kind of cool and collected.

There's a lot of mixed metals and cool colors

and I really wanted it to feel kind of like, sexy.

My favorite piece in the living room

is absolutely my green velvet couch, and I also really

wanted to start investing in pieces

that I felt like I'd carry with me into my future homes,

and would also match with all of the other furniture

that I've either DIYed myself,

or have been collecting throughout the years.

A reoccurring theme in my apartment is definitely texture,

so the blue velvet wall kind of came to me

kind of in a dream, I just wanted something

that felt like very lush and kind of sophisticated

and just me and my staple gun.

Now I move on to prepping drinks.

And I like to do them about two, three hours in advance

so the flavors have an opportunity to meld with one another

so that they don't just taste like pure alcohol.

Fun fact, I actually have a French bartending license.

One of the first companies that I worked with

coming out of grad school sent me over to France

for like a month and a half, and during that time

I took an expedited crash course.

So the cocktail that I'm making today

is called the Miss Rodgers,

because it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood,

and it includes vodka, mint, elderflower,

sparkling rosè, and lemonade.

Final touches before guests arrive

are usually putting on my playlist for the dinner party

and then lighting the candles and just kind of

setting up the table that the food will be going on.

Aside from the chairs, which are the only product

that I rent for my dinner parties,

I buy all of the tablecloths, all of the plates,

all of the napkins so that I can start to build

an event inventory.

Once the table is ready and the food is holding

in the oven to stay warm is the time

for me to get myself ready.

So my closet's a little atypical.

It's kind of like, long and you can tell

it was a DIY from the previous tenant,

who put rods up at the top instead of

having more of the traditional shelf format.

One area that I might splurge on myself in

is definitely shoes.

Just recently, I bought a pair of gorgeous Louboutin

heeled sandals, which I'm very excited

to pull out this summer.

I like shoes because they help my posture,

I do a terrible job of slouching,

but I also really love how powerful they make me feel.

And if I particularly like a pair,

I'll send a picture to my mom and see how she feels

and if she likes them, I'll buy her a pair too.

I have to literally force myself

to participate in self-care.

It's very important for me now to find pockets

in my month for dedicated relaxation.

So I pretty recently got into skincare,

one of my best friends is an esthetician

and she makes a lot of recommendations for me.

The price of skincare products is pretty high

and I'd definitely rather spend that money

getting actual services for my face with an esthetician,

but I'm coming around to the idea of spending

quite a large chunk of change

to maintain my face on a daily basis.

The area that I splurge on the most in my life

is definitely in my apartment.

I really want to invest in feeling at home

when I come home, there's not the greatest separation

of work and play here in my space,

because I do use my kitchen for work purposes,

but I really think that it's very important

for the rest of the space to kind of reflect me

and be a place of comfort and solitude.