This year was a bit convoluted because I was in Taiwan for the first three months, followed by two months in San Diego, two months in New York, one in Brazil, two more in San Diego, November in Taiwan, and then December in San Diego. So basically my rent situation was all over the place, going from about $800 in Taiwan to $1,500 in New York to none when I was living at home. But in sum my fixed costs came out to be about $550 per month averaging it all out. That’s pretty low because I basically paid for about half a year of rent. But that means variable was high...
And as you’ll see by my month-by-month variable expenditures, everything was all over the place. And I can’t even say that living in San Diego was cheaper or anything, as my second highest month was April, right when I moved back home from Taiwan!
- Jan (TPE): $2,000
- Feb (TPE): $2,100
- Mar (TPE): $2,700
- Apr (SD): $3,000
- May (SD): $1,900
- Jun (NYC): $1,850
- Jul (NYC): $3,150
- Aug (BRA): $1,500
- Sep (SD): $2,150
- Oct (SD): $1,250
- Nov (TPE): $2,000
- Dec (SD): $1,900
Separating that into categories looks like this:
- Food: $10,700
- Shopping: $10,650
- Play: $4,850
- Transportation:$3,650
- Misc: $500
So let’s talk about that “annual” number actually. The goal of the annual tab is to throw in vacations, travel, big ticket items, etc. I earmarked out a few thousand but went way over that as I flew around a lot this year. Vacation wise there was a road trip down Taiwan’s east coast, a sunny jaunt to the Philippines, and then the trip to Brazil. Throw in flights in-between all the cities I was hopping back and forth from, plus a wedding in Arizona, and that shot my annual expenses through the roof.
All in all though, it wasn’t too bad, as flights, hotels, rental cars and everything came out to be about $5k total, and maybe $2k in big ticket items and another $1k on other annual stuff. The total breaks down to about $8k in the “annual" ledger, but I offset about a quarter of that off with my tax return. (Also, some of my flights were paid by the company, when I could swing it for work-related stuff.)
I actually need to go into the budget spreadsheet and revamp a few things. Something I did want to track separately was what kinds of things I paid monthly subscriptions for. Technically that’s all under “fixed expenses” under the Budget tab, but I also wanted to have more detail so I started a separate “subscriptions” tab that tells me how much I pay annually, monthly, and reminds me when to renew.
Stuff I pay a monthly subscription for: Netflix ($12), Spotify ($10), Marvel Unlimited ($10), iCloud storage ($3), and Stitcher for podcasts ($1.33). That totals roughly $35. On top of that, I have a few annual subscriptions that I paid for up-front, including a Citibike pass ($170), Bluehost for my websites ($155), Soundcloud Pro for podcast hosting ($135), NBA League Pass ($130), and two iOS apps ($5). That comes out to about $55 per month. Somehow my bank has been charging me $15 per month for my checkings account, which I gotta go fix. But if I minus that, I have about $90 in subscriptions per month.
Now let’s talk about what I spent my money on by looking at the detailed “tags report." As usual, food was a doozy. Exactly 34% of my variable spending was food-related. That includes dining out, snacks, and groceries. Since I don’t really cook, that’s almost a non-factor. What I do a lot is eat out, and that cost upwards of $650 a month, and accounted for fully a quarter of all my expenditures. Here’s the thing: I don’t even like eating out!
The dream is to replace a lot of meals with Soylent (but that’s not super cheap either actually), and my goal is to somehow make the dining out portion of my budget much lower. I do eat a lot of snacks though, and all those bobas and drinks and sweet things add up to almost $200 per month. Will I cut that stuff out? Never! I'd rather starve...
A huge riser this year was in shopping, which has traditionally been about half of food spending. But instead, “shopping” — which includes general shopping, online shopping, gifts, household needs, beauty stuff, and books — came out to 33% of my budget too. That’s almost $10k each into the food and shopping categories!
Actually, if you minus out about $2k in the big ticket category, "shopping" itself drops down by a lot, but I still spent about $300 per month buying stuff. And another $140 in “online” category which is actually still just shopping so I should figure out a better way to tag this stuff. Stuff that goes into online is stuff digital related, or maybe from Amazon. Bad tagging, as I'm realizing.
So what kinds of stuff did/do I buy? I see a pair or two of shoes, a couple of fantastic Forever 21 trips that were a couple of hundred dollars each, a new Kindle White, some haircuts, lots of contacts and (sun)glasses, some Fiverr logos, two Apple TVs, two tattoos, and lots of iOS apps. Actually I should figure out how much I pay for my various URLs, of which I probably have six or seven. Those are roughly $12 each per year I think, and I currently mark them under each month but they should be under “annual.”Oh and I just spent $100+ each on a new toaster oven and these amazing chambray dhoti pants I’ve been lusting after for months. (But I’m using credit card points to pay off those pants, more on that later.) Overall nothing really stands out except I guess I love shopping! And all those little things add up I guess. Quite the leap in shopping over 2015 I’d say, but I wouldn’t take any of it back!
And for all that traveling I did, it amounted to about the same as my play and transportation categories. Some years I go way over on taxis, but due to not being in New York that much, and the low cost of taxis in Taipei, my taxis expenditure was a measly $160 per month. Damn, that still sounds pretty high right? Taxis and public transportation used up about $210 per month, versus $100 per month for car and gas. Those numbers would be totally reversed if I lived in San Diego more, as I would be driving a whole lot more in the suburbs. Bleh.
As for my “play,” I spent $400 a month there, which was basically some combination of karaoke, a few clubs, some museums, and anything that would be regarded as “doing something.” Actually, that’s about all I do. But movies was a big one, with $1k total spent on them — time to MoviePass again? — and 3% of my total variable spending. For comparison’s sake, I spent $300 dollars on books this year.
And I didn’t really do that much this year outside of the usual singing and dancing. I did go to a bachelor party mandated burlesque show, four theme parks (Disney, San Diego Zoo, Sea World, Potterworld), a Chuck Klosterman talk in Brooklyn, the NBA Draft, Eclipsed on Broadway, Tiger Style at the La Jolla Playhouse, another Wicked musical viewing, and Sleep No More back in the summer. That’s not a lot of events right? And I’ve completely given up drinking, yet somehow still spent $300 on drinks over the year. Social graces I guess.
So there we have it, 2016 in a financial nutshell. I suspect the next year will be much different, as my circumstances are about to drastically change. So this four year window of running around and not being an adult and doing whatever I want could all be in the rearview window soon. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!
But before I go, let’s talk briefly about my newfound love: rewards credit cards! This topic really requires its own post but somehow I am only put onto this world of credit cards in the past few weeks. And then I spent three whole days researching and talking to people about getting the right credit card. I applied for three or four credit cards in my excitement — a big no-no, actually — but ended up cancelling most of them and going with the Chase Sapphire Preferred. (I was rejected for the Reserved, which I reaaaaallly wanted).
Now, I should have been using a rewards credit card during all these travel years, but I haven’t been! Part of it is because I didn’t know about this stuff -- tsk tsk, to so called “friends” of mine for not ever talking to me about this stuff -- part it was my credit history was pretty bad until recently, but mostly I just didn’t realize the advantages of using credit cards. Aside from the rewards there’s additional services, insurances, concierges, etc. You just gotta know which credit card is best for you, aka the most free shit. I recommend checking out Nerd Wallet. Or just come ask me as I’m literally become an expert. I now understand what all those "what's in your wallet" ads are about; I guess I just simply overlooked them before.
So yep, I can’t wait to get double points on all my travel and food! In fact, by using the budget spreadsheet and its tags, I was able to easily figure out which card would work best for me, since I could narrow down exactly how much I spent on travel and dining and shopping and gas, etc. That's synergy!
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