Expenses Update: February 2016

2 years of recording expenses has finally yielded some fruits for me.

Knowing how difficult and cumbersome it is for me to track her expenses, Mrs 15HWW asked me to download the app for her and yes, from next month onwards, she will be tracking hers! 

Instead of bothering her every night about how much she spent, I just have to combine the entries once a month!

Anyway, for Feb, although it was a short month, expenses were anything but low!


Eating Out: $848.70

Hawker ($254.60) – Slightly lower since with the CNY celebrations, we had more meals at friends relatives’ places.

Fast Food ($20.30) – 1 Mac & 1 KFC meal together. The enjoyment of these meals is indeed dwindling, but the convenience is still a temptation.

Restaurants ($573.80) – With more weekday nights committed to lessons, we cherish our dinners together and tend to spend it more often at some of the restaurants at Waterway Point.

Groceries: $223.40

Supermarket ($126.70) – Stuff for the annual steamboat, some drinks and of course, mandarin oranges.

Wet market ($96.70) – Some meat, vegetables and seafood. We cut back on the seafood slightly (i.e. less prawns) since the prices were really quite absurd.

Beverages & Snacks: $63.90

Beverages ($16.40) – Koi Green tea with 25% sugar is a real weakness now.

Snacks ($47.50) – As the Gelare outlet at Waterway Point was having a opening promotion, we found ourselves there once every few days. Well, each of us probably had about 5 servings of half a waffle during the last two weeks of February.

Utilities: $157.59

Electricity, Gas & Water ($80.59) – Electricity usage increased with 249kWh used. But interestingly, the bill came down as the electricity tariffs decreased. 14KWh of gas and 6.5 Cu M of water make up the rest of the utility bill.

Cellphones ($77) – $45 for the Mrs and $32 for me.

Transport: $100

1 EZ Reload transaction for each of us.

Departmental: $207

Clothing ($207) – A big haul from Uniqlo as we bought some jackets for our upcoming trip to Taipei. A 30% staff discount (from a dear friend) definitely helped.

Miscellaneous: $2,800

Gifts ($700) – Chinese New Year angbaos. This was slightly lower as we pared back on some of the ang baos that we gave, in light of the lower incomes we are bringing in this year. For the “more distant” cousins/nephews, instead of $20, we scaled back to $12.

Air tickets ($2100) – Yes, I do realise after this experiment that travelling is still quite fun. Especially having not boarded a plane for close to two years, I am looking forward to the upcoming Taipei trip in April. The bill for 4 air tickets (including in-laws)  finally came in!

Total: $4,400.59

Overall Total: $6,222.59 (included fixed expenses of $1,822)


expenses

16 Replies to “Expenses Update: February 2016”

  1. Hi Mr 15HWW, what app are you and Mrs 15HWW using to track your daily expenses? I’m struggling to find one that combines both mine and my husband’s expenses!

  2. Hi All,

    For those who are interested in the app that we use, it’s HomeBudget on the iOS.

    I don’t think there is a sync function and I would probably have to manually combine after the end of a month.

    Going forward, there’s a chance I might purchase the YNAB app since I have always heard rave reviews!

    1. YNAB is really awesome but it has gone the business model of recurring payment, but it provides instant web-sync now. Still, something that I would gladly pay for.

      THEN you can get your wife to key in ALL her expenses and share a combined budget if that’s what you prefer LOL 😀 Without YNAB, I would never have gotten my wife onto the budgeting 贼船.

      1. Hi Kevin,

        YNAB sounds chim to me, to be honest. And recurring payment is something that I actually hate to have more of in my life. I guess I will just do it manually. Not sure if all the frills would add value to my life.

        Thanks for the heads up though and I read your post on YNAB!

  3. i am just too lazy to keep track my expenses for every month.
    as long as i know how much we ( me and hubby) have to save then we just save that amount.

    any extra saving is always good:)

    i think we seldom overspent.

    1. Hi yeh,

      I agree. To be honest, there is little need for us to budget. However, the act itself would curtail abit of spending and make us slightly more efficient with our money!

  4. Hi Mr15HWW,

    I just came back from Taiwan too! I got some crazy good deal on scoot, combined one way economy and one way scoot biz for $350 per person. I hope you got a good deal too! Enjoy your trip, it is nice to be out sometimes 🙂

    1. Hi Ellaa,

      Definitely looking forward to my trip! Our deal is slightly more ex at $530 for SQ? But already on promo, so oh well.

      And welcome back to the blogging scene after 5 months. Good analogy with your thermal cooking pot!

  5. Hello there! Really love your work! I’ve been using iXpenseIt for iOS for the last eight years or so. It’s a real workhorse of an app and can do a lot, and it’s as complicated as you want to make it. But the developers stopped updates since Sep 2014 and it’s starting to look quite dated.

    Right now I’m trialling Wally which is also for iOS and it’s a free app. I like it so far. It’s not as sophisticated as iXpenseIt, but it’s also simple and elegant to use, so you can check it out.

    Anyway, I’ve just started doing something similar to your site and I look forward to learning from you.

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