What I’ve spent on my adopted kitten, one week in.

$45: Cat carrier, kitten food, treats (which he refused), and a crinkly confetti toy.

$35: Taxi back from Queens to try and save the new kitten (formerly named Taco) the anxiety of a subway ride. It didn’t work.

$2: Small jars of Gerber’s Chicken and Gravy Step 2 baby food, also known as “kitten crack.” In my ongoing, desperate attempts to bond with the kitten (now named Tim Riggins, because obviously), I dip my fingers in the food and feed it to him while clutching him to my chest so he can feel my heartbeat and perhaps be fooled into believing that I am both a cat and his mother.

$6 (and my dignity): Long-distance charges to Canada when I convinced myself I had lost the kitten and called my parents in hysterics. I spent 8 hours persuaded the kitten had fallen out one of my (screened) windows; sneaked out my (closed) door, or crawled through a (non-existent) hole in my wall. I wandered the neighborhood crying and softly whimpering, “Tim Riggins? Tim Riggins?” (Spoiler alert: He was under my kitchen shelf.)

$20: Rough lost cost of two dirty gym shirts I put in the closet to make a cozy bed for him so that he could imprint on my smell and seriously, I have become one of those people.

$9: Antihistamines. I’m allergic to cats.

$50: Mid-century modern scratch pad.

$109: First vet visit, where I learned that Tim Riggins may only have one testicle. “I’ll just have to go rooting around for his other ball,” the vet said cheerily.

One week total: $276

Meghan Nesmith lives in NYC, has a blog.

The first opera I saw was “Cosi Fan Tutte,” by Mozart. It’s about two dudes who disguise themselves as Albanians to trick their respective girlfriends into sleeping with the other dude, to test how (un)faithful they are. Then they whip off their mustaches and say AH HAH! And then basically they all shrug, laugh, and depending on the production either swap back, OR NOT. It’s a comedy. Allegedly. The title means “They’re all the same.” “They” being women.

I went to opera school anyway.

Saying you want to be an opera singer is like saying you want to be an astronaut, in terms of actual job prospects. There is one full-time repertory opera company in the United States—the Met in NYC. The other top U.S. companies—Houston Grand Opera, San Francisco, Chicago Lyric—all do between four to six shows a year, total. And the same soprano is going to headline most of them, since they don’t overlap.

The thing about opera is that it is really, really expensive. It truly is an elite art form. It costs $100 to $200 to audition, and you have to bring your own pianist, who is $40 an hour. At conservatory, we were always taught to take taxis to auditions, never the subway. We were also expected to do at least one summer opera program each year, in Italy, Germany, Austria or Belgium. These programs ran $3,000 each. Most of my classmates would do two or three each summer. We were taught that we should “rely on our financial buffer” after graduation, and were advised not to get jobs. A job will distract you from opera singing and make you tired, they said.

The operatic voice isn’t fully developed until your mid- to late- thirties. A 22-year-old soprano is sort of a pointless fetus, not worth anything. You’re expected to spend your early- and mid-twenties doing pay-to-sings and grad programs, and then go into a Young Artist Program (YAP). YAPs are essentially residencies with regional opera companies, where you sing small mainstage roles or cover principle artists. You usually get paid like $10K for the entire year, and maybe they cover your housing or something. It’s not an opportunity I could ever afford to do. They’re also insanely competitive, and one of the very few paths to becoming a professional opera singer.

To be an opera singer, you have to be rich. And I’m not. I wasn’t, and I’m not, rich.

I am an incredibly good singer. I’m just gonna put that out there, because it’s true, and I don’t figure there’s any point in being coy about it. In music school, my sophomore year I was the lead in the musical, my senior year I was a supporting role in the opera, and my senior year I was the lead. But I didn’t go on to grad school like 90 percent of my class, because I couldn’t take out any more loans.

After I graduated, I fell into a job in marketing, and I worked there for three years. It was not my dream job—my dream job was being an opera singer—but it paid all of my bills, gave me health care, some stability.

While sitting at that desk job, I checked out playbill.com for the first time, where they post all the Broadway/Off-Broadway/Off-Off-Broadway/Whatever audition notices. And I saw an audition posting for Phantom of the Opera, and I saw that the minimum starting salary for the very lowliest chorus person on Broadway was $1,642 a week. A WEEK. (Now it’s $1,754.) That’s like… $91K a year before taxes? (The stereotype of the starving Broadway hoofer is completely false. If you work on Broadway, you make incredible money. It’s all the time between shows that you have to watch out for.) I made my decision that very moment that I wouldn’t even try to pursue opera, and instead, I would throw myself back into musical theatre.

I love the musical theatre world because it’s a business. It’s the Business of Show. There are 40 Broadway theaters constantly employing actors, every night of the week, and then dozens of Off-Broadway houses, and hundreds of regional theaters, all paying gigs. In musical theatre, you NEVER pay to audition, and they have a pianist there ready for you. Everything about it makes sense and is fair—at least compared to opera. It’s about hard work, and talent, and luck, and showing up.

I’ve been pursuing musical theatre since then, and I never looked back. I still love to sing opera, equally as much as I love singing musical theatre, but I’m very at peace about my decision. It feels more like musical theatre chose me than the other way around.

C.L. lives in New York.

The pile of unread publications on my coffee table attests to my knowledge of the names of publications that keep people informed on many and divergent areas of the cultural spectrum.

n+1: I saw the name of this publication on a blog, in the same paragraph as the name “Slavoj Žižek.” It’s based in Brooklyn. ($35/year)

Lucky Peach: The pork buns at Momofuku are without a doubt the best I’ve ever had. ($28/year)

American Caving Accidents: Cave diving is dangerous business. (included with $40/year National Speleological Society membership)

The Believer: Isn’t it brilliant and convenient that they put the table of contents on the back cover? ($45/year)

The Wire: British. (£56/year)

American Reader: This is a new one. Issues 2 through 4 have thick, pretty, beige covers, but issue 1 clearly had a much lower budget. ($39.99/year)

The Baffler: Really smart bunch of people behind this one. ($30/year)

Vice: There’s boobs in there sometimes. (free)

William Foster lives in Portland, Ore.

One look at all the white spots on my x-rays, and it’s clear I am the kind of patient who makes dentists lots of money. I have had tens of thousands of dollars in my mouth—fillings, crowns, root canals, dental surgery, and much of it has come from my pocket. I am lucky enough to have dental insurance, but it’s not a pay-all, cure-all.

Last year I had my first experience with double treatment. A few days after getting a chipped filling replaced ($36.40 out-of-pocket, $145.60 out of the $1,500 coverage I had for the year), it started to hurt. I was biking home, and the wind sent lightning strikes of pain up through my gums. I pulled air through my tooth, checking to see if it triggered the pain. Yep.

My emergency appointment with my dentist where he did the cold test, cost me nothing. This is the cold test: He puts something cold on your good tooth, and it feels cold. And then he puts the cold probe on the sick tooth, and suddenly you have the absolute worst nervy pain radiating all the way up through your nose. Then your stomach feels sick because you know you have a damaged tooth, and thousands of dollars of work in front of you. The fact that I had just had a filling redone on the same tooth was just “bad timing.” 

I went straight to the endodontist, or root canal specialist. Despite my experience with tooth pain, I have low pain tolerance, and I want it to go away immediately. The endodontist told me that sometimes people split up their treatment over two calendar years—root canal one year, crown the next. Because the tooth was farther back in the mouth, I would also need a crown (estimated $1,000). I decided to get the root canal ($2,390 billed, $1,326 contracted amount. Cigna paid $506 of that, I owed $779.60. Although the procedure was covered at 80%, I had already maxed out the annual coverage) and the required “post & core” treatment ($264, Cigna’s contracted rate but no insurance left) in 2012, and then delay getting the crown until 2013. It would save me at least $500, since crowns are generally covered at 50%. Plus, I could put money in a flexible spending account, giving me a further tax-free discount of about 30%, bringing my savings up to about 70%, or $700 off the total cost. It was a great idea, do it! It just didn’t quite work for me.

Our company announced they were changing insurers for next year, throwing my plan into disarray. Reimbursement rates were lower for out-of-network dentists—and required a $150 deductible. And I couldn’t wait that long. I got the crown, but my anticipated savings of $700 went down to around $400—and it could eventually be less if I still owe money after the claim is settled. So I waited a couple of months to finish dental treatment for what ended up being maybe $400 in savings.

Although that amount is still a pretty sizeable chunk of my paycheck, it came at a high emotional toll. Now that my crown is in place ($633), the pain in the rest of my mouth has diminished, but I’m still in fear that more of my teeth will fail. The pain in that one tooth cost me $2,000, and I have 27 more teeth. My next cleaning and x-rays are in a month, and I might need a therapy session if my dentist finds a cavity. My mouth is a ticking time bomb. Every time you put a filling in a tooth, it weakens it, making it more likely that a tooth will require root canal treatment—or worse—in the future. Fillings have a lifespan of a decade, meaning my teeth will always require expensive maintenance. I’ve already crossed the line from being a compliant patient to a compulsively neurotic one. He better at least tell me my gums look good from all that flossing (I’m an Oral-B Glide girl, $3.80).

Sarah Sluis has a great/expensive smile. 

Guitar enthusiast S.T. VanAirsdale did some arithmetic and figured that the rewards promised to Veronica Mars Kickstarter backers are going to add up! (By his math, just the T-shirts—34,000 shirts at $3.90 each is $132,600—will be 4% of the estimated project budget)

Consistently crazy to me how small amounts of money add up. That’s not sarcasm. I am actually shocked on a regular basis that small sums of money add up to one large sum of money. It’s a cool trick. I fall for it every time.

Premedical classes, $29,348 (and growing because most of this is loans)
Most medical schools require one year plus lab each of General Chemistry, Biology, Organic Chemistry, and Physics. Some schools require more. I took some classes as an undergraduate, but not all, so I had to take Physics and Physics lab, Calculus, General Chemistry, and one semester of Biology in a post-baccalaureate program. It’s rather high because I did my classes at a private university in New York with good success rates for getting students into medical school—super expensive.

MCAT Class, $1,999
You certainly don’t have to take an MCAT class, but it definitely helps. I’m not sure what sort of back alley deal the College Board has with The Princeton Review and Kaplan, but there are a million tricks that you learn in MCAT class that I would never have known had I not spent two nights a week there for three months. To be fair, both Kaplan and TPR have financial assistance programs that you can apply to. TPR’s requires a bunch of essays about why you want to be a doctor, while Kaplan’s is need-based.

MCAT Registration, $240
Required to take the test, although there are fee waivers available.

AMCAS Application Fees, $1,196
$160 initial fee plus $37 for each additional school. I applied to 29 schools, which, I am told by my advisor, is fairly average. There is a need-based fee assistance program available through an application, to which I did not apply.

Transcript Fees, $14
My undergraduate institution charges $7 per transcript. I ordered two, as you’re advised to send one to AMCAS and to have one on hand yourself just in case.

Secondary Fees, $1,930
These are additional fees that you pay to each school to submit your secondary application and be considered as an applicant. I only submitted secondary applications to 23 schools, as one school screened me out before the secondary stage, and when push came to shove I couldn’t motivate myself to submit the remaining five for reasons of geography and time. Most schools will waive or reduce the fee if you have qualified for the AMCAS fee assistance program.

Interviews, $978.48
I was lucky to get a handful of interviews. With the exception of one school that provided me with overnight accommodation, I found that schools provide food while you’re at the campus and help to arrange lodging with a current student, but that for the most part you are on your own for transportation and other meals. I spent the following:
Suit: $300
Bus from New York City to Boston: $50
Rental car for three days to attend two interviews in New England: $199.74
Bottle of wine to bring my student host: $15
Rental car for two days to attend two interviews in New York State: $199.74
Airfare from New York to North Carolina: $169.00
Room rental in North Carolina (thanks, Air BnB!): $45
Vacation time to attend two interviews in New York City: two days (not monetary, but hard won!)

Acceptance Deposit, $202.75 An applicant is allowed to hold multiple acceptances until May, when you have to make a decision as to the school that you want to attend. However, to hold your place, many schools require a (sometimes refundable) deposit of around $100. I’ve made two, one for $100, and another for $102.75.

Total cost of applying, being accepted, to med school: $35,668.23

Rebecca Ross looks forward to tabulating the cost of going to medical school.

Did u know that an exam at planned parenthood is NINETY BUCKS

This is dumb. Sex is dumb. Why does it have to cost $90?

I just thought planned parenthood was supposed to be like $5

Dollar menu sexual health 

“I’m on the pill but I still use condoms every time” brags girl on poster on wall. YOUR MOM MUST BE PROUD OF YOU FOR BEING A STOCK PHOTO MODEL

Soho planned parenthood more like so slow

Not too glad about my planned parenthood doc telling me I should consider going gluten free. She gets taxpayer’s money to evangelize VOODOO.

Did u know they can test for HIV by swabbing UR gums lol that’s where your HIV is. In your gums. oh god

526,600 countertop rapid hiv tests / how do you measure a nyc planned parenthood

sometimes i look at my tween cousin’s instagram shots and feel so jealous she never had to have an std test

don’t have HIV btw

“don’t have HIV” – text to mom

Mom just texted, “I’ll pay half.”

Lauren Rodrigue lives in New York.

1. Social Costs

Please know that if you choose to travel by cargo ship, you will have to suffer many crimes against your sanity, the most prevalent of which will be that you will soon discover that every single person you know and their grandmother has always wanted to travel by cargo ship.

At first you will enthusiastically engage these people, but then you will come to understand that they really just want to talk about their own travel adventures.

Be prepared: Some women will express their concerns about you safety traveling alone. This you will take in stride because it is evident that they care about you. Your male acquaintances will laugh when they joke about how “popular” you will be with the crew and about being alone with so many men “without escape.” A coworker will tell you that you might get raped with the same gravity he would use to chat about how it might rain overnight.

As the time left until you leave ticks down, you will no longer talk to anyone about your trip. It will be your secret.

2. Financial Costs

If you’re going to make this adventure happen, please disregard that your 1,100€ a month job can barely cover your living expenses. Empty your Spanish bank account to pay for the deposit (you can eat light at the end of the month). Empty the bank account back home that you’ve been slowly draining for the past four years to pay for the remainder.

You’ll contact three different companies, all offering the same trip on the same ship, right down to the same cabin, for three different prices. When you ask why the first two are quoting you such high prices, the answer isn’t clear. When you ask one UK-based company if you can pay in US dollar or Euros, the answer is not clear. When you ask if they can price match, they stop responding to your emails. The fare includes the room, all meals, port taxes, deviation insurance—which covers the cost of the ship having to make an emergency stop because you have a grave illness—and the booking fee.

3. Mental Health Costs

When you do settle on a company and itinerary, the “invoice” they send you doesn’t even include your last name and is actually just an excel sheet with a picture of a boat on it:

Your head will scream, international money transfer scam! You will be extremely stressed about sending all of your money away. You will wire the money anyway.

4. More Mental Health Costs

You are required to have insurance to cover any medical expenses you might incur abroad; insurance for repatriation of your body if you happen to die; and travel insurance. Your school’s group policy definitely does not cover anything outside of the country and expires five days before your departure date. You try to figure out if you can get back on your mother’s U.S. insurance—it’s complicated and confusing and you abandon this plan. You settle on a Diver’s Alert Network policy that your dad renews every year. It’s just evacuation insurance and not full-on trip insurance or health insurance, but you give the travel agents that information anyway, and hope for the best. They don’t say anything.

5. More Financial Costs

The cost to get from your home in Madrid to the port in Le Havre, France is about 200€. This involves a 14 hour bus ride to Paris and then a train to Normandy.

You will use your internet skills and Couchsurfing.com to find a family that is willing to host you in a tiny village outside of Le Havre as you wait for your ship to come in. You’ll give them a bottle of wine ($40) and help their teenage daughter with her Spanish homework (free) as a meager thank you for their hospitality. A storm will delay the ship, you’ll have time to explore Normandy while you wait for the go-ahead to make your way to the port. And of course, each of those days will be spent watching the last of your cash dwindle until you aren’t sure if you’re going to have any money for the actual trip itself. Spoiler: You’ll have a little bit. Next time: Where your money will go during a month-long trip in which you are confined to a boat on the water for 90% of the time.

Liz Rush lives in Portland, Oregon and co-authors a tumblr comic strip.// photo by michael bentley

Does this mean that if I got a job because I said meat processing was my dream job but it actually wasn’t my dream job (fish farming) … I’d be breaking the law?

PULLQUOTE 1: “In March of last year, Iowa became the first state to pass an ag gag law in two decades. It is now illegal to seek employment at Iowan factory farms under false pretenses. Not by coincidence, the bill was formulated soon after a 2010 Humane Society undercover exposé of Iowa egg farms went viral. Cody Carlson, one of the egg farm investigators, took an entry-level job at four different farms and wore a pinhole camera to work every day.”

PULLQUOTE 2: “Ag gag laws are already on the books in Iowa, Missouri, Utah, North Dakota, Montana, and Kansas. If Indiana and the 5 other states mulling these bills follow suit, the facilities producing 99 percent of American meat will be completely shielded from the public eye.”

Jaime Rosenthal, a senior at Washington University in St. Louis, called more than 100 hospitals in every state last summer, seeking prices for a hip replacement for a 62-year-old grandmother who was uninsured but had the means to pay herself.

The quotes she received might surprise even hardened health care economists: only about half of the hospitals, including top-ranked orthopedic centers and community hospitals, could provide any sort of price estimate, despite repeated calls. Those that could gave quotes that varied by a factor of more than 10, from $11,100 to $125,798.

One of the many problems with our health care system is that hospitals often have different ideas of what procedures should cost, and for some procedures, “quality” data doesn’t accompany “price” data, so it isn’t clear, for example, if paying for a “Mercedes” hip transplant is better off in the long-term than cheaper options. One good thing about this study was that top-ranked hospitals in the country often offered some the lowest prices for procedures, which: my mama told me, you better shop around, etc.

Photo: Cindy Funk