Expenses Update: June 2017

We spent about $4,300 in June and yes, even after May’s large travel expenditure, this month includes air tickets too.  After including this month’s expenditure, our average expenditure this year has settled at around $4,593 for each month.

If we were to stick to a budget of $42,000 for this year, it would leave slightly about $2,000 for each of the remaining six months. Which, if we were to keep, would in all likelihood leave us very miserable. So the odds are that we will spend the remaining $14,000 or so within the next three months and that we are going to break $50,000 of expenditure once again this year.

When you are bringing in more than enough of the dough, it’s really hard to rein in some occasional splurges and luxuries. This year, travel is likely the main culprit, with already $6,000 spent on that category so far.

Eating Out: $465.30

Hawker ($226.40) – A busy month packed with lessons. Therefore, fewer cooked meals and more meals ate out at food courts and hawker centres.

Fast Food ($14) – One Wing Stop meal and an apple pie.

Restaurants ($224.90) – Only 7 meals ate out in restaurants. In fact, surprisingly, there was a two week period when we did not visit any restaurants at all.

Groceries: $271.10

Supermarket ($171.10) – 4 visits to NTUC in total. One of those visits included buying some expensive boxes of frozen scallops.

Wet Market ($100) – Three trips to the Kovan market to get the usual chicken breasts, thighs and halibut.

Beverages & Snacks: $64.70

Snacks ($55.40) – A meet-up with a close friend at a dessert cafe and some durians were the main contributors.

Beverages ($9.30) – 2 Koi macchiato drinks since there was a 1 for 1 promotion going on. And an additional cup of tea o.

Utilities: $224.65

Electricity, Gas & Water ($107.45) – Electricity usage went down to a much lower level at 317kWh for this month. 46KWh of gas and 6.1 Cu M of water meant the bill added up to $107.45.

Cellphones ($117.20) – $61.55 for me and $55.65 for the Mrs for our mobile services. Mine comes with upsized data. We also subscribed to Data Passport so that we could use the data from our monthly plans in Melbourne.

Transport: $209

1 EZ Reload transaction for the Mrs. 2 pretty expensive cab trips and both of us also topped up $60 each for the past two weeks to take advantage of Grab’s promo codes.

Departmental: $291.40

Clothes ($103.80) – Money spent at Uniqlo and Decathlon as we are still trying to resist sales. I have to admit I do have a big pile of new clothes accumulated already.

Personal items ($20.50) – A new water bottle for me as the previous one is already more than 3 years old.

Books ($68) – One trip to Popular to get more books for the Mrs’ new students.

Electronics ($99.10) – I bought another two cartridges of ink for the printer and a new HDMI wire as the previous wire was no longer functioning.

Miscellaneous: $1,069.10

Gifts ($323) – A baby shower, birthday gifts for my bro-in-law’s girlfriend and two boxes of Royce chocolates for two of my students’ birthdays.

Medical ($121) – Some tests performed at the hospital.

Others ($105.10) – SPH enticed us to buy a plaque for our feature in the newspaper last month and we obliged.

Travel ($520) – Yes, we will be travelling again soon, in early November. Scoot tickets booked to Taiwan!

Total: $2,595.25

Overall Total: $4,280.25 (included fixed expenses of $1,685)