Name: Virginia Vitzthum
Age: 48
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Why we care: Vitzthum's first book, I Love You, Let's Meet: Adventures In Online Dating, is the quintessential nonfiction book on modern American relationships. In May, she returns with My Blind Date Went Blind, a hilarious collection of true dating horror stories.

Has the recession impacted you as an author with a day job?

I got a promotion recently, from associate editor to editor of Represent Magazine. I was hired at $41,000, so my raise was to $44,000. But the company is foundation-funded and had taken a big financial hit, so they had asked everyone if they'd like to furlough. I said, "Yes, I'll take off every other Friday and give up a tenth of my salary." So in spite of the raise, I'm actually making less.

Most people probably would've taken the raise.

I've always thought that working five days a week was insane. When I took this very cool job, I was scheming all along, trying to get it down to less than five days a week. I still leave cheaply and I don't have any dependents. My big luxury is living alone in New York City. Otherwise I don't need anything.

I would imagine turning down raises doesn't lend itself to saving money.

I am not saving money. I haven't saved money since I moved to New York. When I lived in Boston and DC and had office jobs, yeah. I have a mutual fund, though, and I recently found a 401(k) that I thought I'd rolled over, but I hadn't. So suddenly I had $26,000 I didn't think I had. Between that and the mutual fund, there's a bit of a cushion.

Did you earn any money from the book?

I got a $60,000 advance from my first book and lived on it for the two years it took to write the book. Yep, I'm the kind of person that can live in New York on $30,000 a year. I did not make royalties on that, though. I did not earn out my advance.

How did your new book come about? Did you need to make money again or did you have a bunch of great ideas?

The publisher came to me and said, "We have a title, 'My Blind Date Went Blind.' We have a title story." A woman at the publisher went out on a date in the 60s and on the date he had a case of hysterical blindness and they said, "Will you come up with a bunch of — a LOT of — funny short stories for $22,500?" I said, OK. And about the next day, I got the job editing the foster care magazine and I was like "Oh shit, I have to have a full time job that's extremely challenging emotionally — in a lot of ways — and it's true of any monthly or quarterly magazine — and write a book."

Did you think about dropping one or the other?

That's a good question. Were I to drop one, I would've said no to the book because the book was not enough to live on and the job was. They wanted to do the book in six months and I asked for a year, and they said OK. And I thought, I could do that.

Blind date: who pays?

Dutch.

Do you find that people still make money a big issue when it comes to dating? "If she doesn't make a move for the check." "He wanted me to pay."

There's not a big assumption about the rules. People are more concerned about lying.

Do you think being single is harder on the bank account than being in a relationship? One means dating more often to find someone and maybe spending a lot to make that happen, but in a relationship, you both parties can end up spending a great deal of money keeping that going.

I'm going to say being single. I think couples tend to have the Netflix date — it gets domestic. After a certain point, it's definitely cheaper, when you end up sharing a one-bedroom apartment.

Related Links:

How to start a business without any money: Handbag designer Lori Chalmers

Learning how to shop: The Sound of Young America radio host Jesse Thorn

Starting out in Hollywood with only $13,000: Hollywood movie producer Scott Goldman