Expenses Update: September 2017

Even though we spent above $4,200 this month, I thought it was quite an impressive feat considering we made a couple of frivolous purchases like the $1,200 laptop and a $230 Samsonite luggage.

Most notably, the duality of cooking more often at home and enjoying meals out on weekday afternoons instead of weekday evening/weekends was pretty powerful and our food expenses came down quite drastically as compared to the earlier months this year. There’s really little to no feelings of deprivation on this front.

Average expenses for the year remained at around $4,260 and I reckon we will hit $42,000 of spending by the end of October.


Eating Out: $416.60

Hawker ($122.30) – It seems ridiculously low and it’s a amazing we are spending less than $5 a day on meals at food courts and hawker centres

Fast Food ($41) – 2 Mac meals as I do enjoy the Nasi Lemak burger and 1 Wingstop meal with a friend

Restaurants ($253.30) – On our own, it really makes more financial sense for us to enjoy some weekday lunches at restaurants and then cook our lunches on weekends. A recent go-to place is Dian Xiao Er’s set lunch special for two where we get to order three dishes. Comes with brown rice and tea too. It’s probably more than a 40% discount as compared to ordering the same dishes in the evening.

Groceries: $297.10

Supermarket ($145.80) – 5 visits to NTUC and another to Sheng Siong just to get the discounted Haagen Daaz icecream.

Wet Market ($151.30) – 4 trips to the Kovan market to get the usual chicken breasts and fish like halibut and salmon. We have also upgraded to the uber sweet “white corn” occasionally. Interestingly, we have cut out the chicken thighs as we become better at steaming and appreciating the chicken breasts.

Beverages & Snacks: $27.30

Snacks ($22.80) – A trip to Gelare and a yoghurt from Milk & Honey

Beverages ($4.50) – Some cups of sugar cane at a hawker centre

Utilities: $232.55

Electricity, Gas & Water ($135.35) – Electricity usage skyrocketed to about 436kWh for this month. 50KWh of gas and 8.2 Cu M of water meant the bill added up to $135.35, the highest utility bill I have ever seen for our household.

Cellphones ($97.20) – $51.55 for me and $45.65 for the Mrs for our mobile services. Mine comes with upsized data to 7GB.

Transport: $50

1 EZ Reload transaction for me. We still have quite a bit of credits in Grab and slowly finishing them off when we go to some of our students’ places.

Departmental: $1,573

Clothes ($15) – One on-sale top for the Mrs at H & M.

Personal items ($292) – A new water bottle for the Mrs, change of a pillow and our mattress protector and we bought an “atas” Samsonite Plutus luggage for about $230 off Carousell. It was a credit card gift and the seller was eager to get rid of it.

Books ($66) – We bought a soft copy of Prelim papers for our P6 students, some other useful materials and a couple of books for our students’ birthdays.

Electronics ($1,200) – We bought a new laptop for the Mrs at about $1,299 which also means we get to utilise the $100 of cashback we had stored up from a long time ago on our Stanchart Manhattan Card.

Miscellaneous: $20

Gifts ($20) – Some cookies and popcorn for our students’ birthdays.

Total: $2,616.55
Overall Total: $4,277.55 (included fixed expenses of $1,661)


5 Replies to “Expenses Update: September 2017”

  1. Yes we enjoy the executive set lunches too on weekdays! They are value for money and are significantly cheaper compared to if you order them a la carte! Dian Xiao Er happens to be one of our favourites too!

    1. Hi Kate,

      Yes, Dian Xiao Er is really great. You would probably get a good meal for three at about $37 and most of those dishes (esp the duck) are quite hard to replicate at home.

    1. Hi John,

      We do watch movies. Just rarely in the cinema.

      We generally prefer couching in front of the huge 55 inch TV in the comfort of our home.

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