Ways and Means: 2019 Recap

If 2018 was my year of travel, 2019 was my year to stay home and well, ostensibly work on a book. So toward that end, I made a few plans as possible and basically interspersed months of being in my little writing cave versus running off to play for a bit. All in all, I ended up spending more than when I spent months traveling around Asia. How can this be? Let’s find out! Hint: House stuff…

First up, month-to-month variable expenses. With a rough budget of $1,600 a month, I came in under in three months, February, April, and July, which likely coincided with when my book drafts were due. Turns out staying at home is cheaper! (But is it really?!)

• Jan: $2,500
• Feb: $1,400
• Mar: $2,000
• Apr: $1,250
• May: $2,400
• Jun: $2,000
• Jul: $1,500
• Aug: $2,000
• Sept: $2,700
• Oct: $2,000
• Nov: $3,400 (adj to $2,400)
• Dec: $3,900 (adj to $3,000)

As you can see, January, May, and then September, November, and December were way over. I’ll get to those last two months later. But suffice to say, I ended up dropping an average of $2,300 a month instead. However, that is split between the first six months at about $2,000 and the latter six months at $2,600 a month.

Wait, but if I use vacation offset for November and March — which is fifty percent of the vacation money — then I guess those numbers would drop! So it would be -$1,000 for November and -$800 for December. Hooray for fuzzy accounting!

This year’s big four category breakdown is:

• 🌮 Food: $11,500
• 🎩 Shopping: $8,000
• 🎭 Play: $4,500
• 🚌 Transportation: $3,000

That’s all a nice drop from last year actually, albeit not by much. Overall I spent $28k on variable expenses, $30k on fixed expenses, and a whopping $15.5k on annual expenses. That’s $73.5k for the year, pre-tax. That’s a smidge over 2018 and way over the $42.5k I spent in 2017 — aka the year I didn’t have a house. So yes, I’m living a $100k lifestyle. My goodness… It feels awful!

Let’s break down the annual cost of a house shall we? My faux mortgage is $2,000 per month, and then there’s $550 a month in bills for monthly house cleaning, internet, HOA, water, gas and electricity, four times a year pest control, and a quarterly gardener. In addition, there is the fun toll of property tax, which is twice a year at about $3,500 each, and then house insurance for $800 per year. All told, owning a house costs about $3,200 per month. Total monthly expenditures including variable, fixed, and annual expenses? A whopping $6,750. Yowza! I don’t make that much, so um, yeah.

Aside from running at house, there’s the random big things that happen. In my case, 2019 was the year of the closet and the Quiet Cool. Both have changed my life for the better, but they were by far the biggest ticket items on the Annual tab. My lovely closet was $3,000 and installing the life changing Quiet Cool cost $2,350 all inclusive.

My other big ticket items included a new tattoo ($1,200) and a new iPhone 11 ($1,150) to replace the one I dumped in an Uber while on vacation. The latter is paid by the company though, more or less. Other stuff: Fantasy basketball fees for five years ($450), iPad Mini 5 ($400), a wonderful music from the front row ($400), two classes at Poway Adult School ($400), two surfboards ($350), a face laser session in Taiwan ($350), a haul of Magic cards ($300), and a stupid toll road late fee that was overdue ($250).

There were seven flights I bought this year, two of which were not for me. Eight if you count the one that flew me back from Taipei at the beginning of January but was technically from December 2018. Total for that was about $2,800, but I roll in rides from the airports and whatever luggage or crossing fees there are. So a total of about $3,200 on flights.

And similar to last year, here were my various trips out of San Diego and how much they cost,  including all expenses, flights, and accommodations.

• Taipei (Jan): $1,100 / 14 nights
• San Francisco (Jun): $760 / 7
• Taipei (Nov): $3,250 / 17
• Mexico City (Dec): $4,650 / 19

Throw in a couple visits to Los Angeles and that’s all she wrote for this year’s travel. Oh the final tally is about $10k for two months away from home.

Now onto our favorite section of reporting, tags! Food, as usual, was the biggest expense, adding up to a total of $11,500, which works out to about a thousand dollars per month, or $32 a day. Of that, a little less than half was “dining out / shared" (defined as eating with other people, or you know, bringing food to the family). Eating out solo was around $3,000 and then groceries and boba tied at a little over a thousand dollars each. Trailing the pack is the nebulous “snacks” which I think I should probably break down into actual snacks and liquid like substances. Do I smell a new tag for 2020? Cue the excitement!

There was aslso three thousand dollars worth of shopping this year, which doesn’t even encompass the $1,800 I spent on clothes. I spent $150 a month on clothes?! I need to dig deeper here, as I sure don’t feel like I dressed like a hundred and fifty bucks! Oh I see, two of those items were wedding outfits and one was basketball shoes. Okay, I feel slightly better.

Then there was a shocking $900 spent on games, most of which was games for the Switch ($700), with a smattering on board games ($100), iOS and PC games ($100), and the aforementioned three hundred dollars on Magic cards.

Oh that $3000 on shopping was about evenly split between generic “shopping” and “gifts.” Generic shopping included a lovely display only bike helmet, custom pants from Etsy, two wetsuits, a pair of watches, and then various bags, figurines, electronics, and backpacks, etc. Okay I can live with that.

Broadly speaking, “gifts” covered things that I just had to get other people, highlighted by a tremendous shopping spree I did for George in the night markets. The poor kiddos got so little, but mom got a lot! Woohoo! Oh lastly for shopping, there was $600 spent on books, which about equals movies — a personal record low for movies I’m sure — but that technically goes into the "play" category.

Also I don’t know what went into “car” but it was a whopping $2,500, and plus $1,600 of gas. Most of that is car insurance of course. While we’re on transportation, I spent over a thousand dollars on taxis this year. That’s actually way lower than usual. But should I be tracking Uber Eats and food deliveries? Hum, maybe another new tag!

Instead of the typical pie chart showing “Spending % vs Category”, we’re gonna throw up the categories in a spreadsheet for extra clarity. Strangely my “drinking” vaulted up from $400 last year to $600 this year. I’m not sure what that was from since I swore I drank much less than when I was traveling?

Lastly, I realized my monthly subscriptions are costing $170 a month. That’s SimpliSafe ($25), NBA League Pass ($20), Netflix ($16), Spotify ($15), Bluehost ($13), GoDaddy ($12), Soundcloud Pro ($12), Logitech Circle ($8), Chase Sapphire Preferred ($8), Patreon ($6), Marvel Unlimited ($6), YouTube Red ($5), another Logitech ($4), 1Password ($3), two iClouds ($6), Nintendo Online ($3), Sticher ($3), and then Instapaper, Google Drive, and Bear. Can I cut any of that two thousand annually? We’ll think about it… Note: Seven of those qualify for “entertainment,” and that’s $70 per month.

Does that cover it all? Have I learned anything new? Well, I guess I learned that having a house is expensive, even though I thought I was getting a deal! Thanks Mom! I guess it’s time to get out there and make some more money...

Oh wait, I better address why November and December were so high! For November the answer is easy: lots of shopping in Taipei over that trip. And in December the answer is also pretty easy, as it was basically also vacation with a friend visiting from Japan, and then a New Year's Eve week or so with another visitor from Mexico City. All told, that back half of December pushed up the variable spending for those two weeks. But it was well worth it! 2019 ended with a bang and we're ready for the travels and fun of the upcoming year!

#tbt: Comparatively, a decade ago I was living off unemployment while writing a book and living halfway between San Diego and San Francisco. Too bad I didn't have this great budgeting report back then to see how I was living then!

Mexico City: 🇲🇽, 🌮, 🌸

Ah, Mexico City! I had been thinking I’d spend one or two months in CDMX in 2019, but due to time constraints and a November spent in Taiwan, it only ended up being three weeks in Mexico. As expected and endlessly recommended, Mexico City was dreamy.

It had lovely weather, great food, tons of culture, interesting people, public transportation galore, and was quite cheap. While I was hoping to stay in neighborhoods that were a little less well-trodden by visitors, I did end up basically in Roma and Condesa, split between three AirBnbs -- to get to know different parts of the city, ala Tokyo. I went to CDMX with my usual packed items and nobody else in tow. Yes, it was a pure solo trip, my first in some time. Friends, where are you?

From San Diego, it was recommended by many to just take the Cross Border Express from the border to Tijuana. The CBX is a short walkway that connects the countries and it truly was an easy route, with immigration being a breeze. And with no direct flights from SAN to MEX, it was actually cheaper to do it this way, including the Uber down to the border from my house.

All in all, flights cost me $550 — including a hundred in extra luggage fees and a seventy dollar change fee for a flight I booked incorrectly. However, if I had planned earlier it could have been slightly cheaper. (Flights from SAN, LAX, or NYC all seemed about five to six hundred dollars.) I flew Volaris down and Aeromexico back. The CBX tickets were about $50 round trip and then you have to pay $30 for a visa if you’re staying in Mexico for longer than a few days. With the ride shares to and from the airport -- $150 total, $60 on the way down and $80 on the way up because we took an XL on the return -- everything cost about $750 to get door to door.

• Airbnb 1 (Roma)
• Airbnb 2 (Condesa)
• Airbnb 3 (Condesa)

The exchange rate is roughly twenty pesos to one U.S. dollar, and things were more expensive than Taiwan, but not by that much. I rented pretty big Airbnbs each time, because it was relatively cheap and I was halfway expecting visitors. The three places were about $80-90 each, and for nineteen nights the bill came out to a total of $1,900.

Overall, I spent about two thousand dollars on other things while down there. The bulk of that was food of course, with $300 in shared meals, $180 in solo dining out, $50 in snacks, $50 in groceries, and $35 in boba. Yes, there is plentiful boba in Mexico City and I had it seven times. Delicious!

For the most part, single meals were roughly twenty bucks if you went fancy — like expat brunch at Lalo — or half that for Uber Eats delivered poke. If you went to taquerias and such, an entire meal was probably about eight bucks. I did have one big meal at Iyazaka Kura ($120 for two), another at a steak house ($120), and then a few fifty dollar meals at assorted places. Broadly speaking, snacks and coffee was about two or three dollars. Plus I developed a habit of getting chocolate croissants each day from the local bakery, and those were like four dollars for all the deliciousness.

Recommendations: Go Myang for sundubu-jjigae, Super Mikasa for Japanese and udon, Green Corner for brunch, Marlindo for fish tostadas, Lardo for pastries, and La Casa De Tono for basic Mexican staples.

Museums in Mexico City were plentiful, but knowing I would go back soon, I basically only hit four or five of them. Entrance fees were roughly five dollars or so, excepting the Museo Juguete Antiguo (Antique Toy Museum) which my friend highly recommended to me. I'm coming for you next Soumaya and Casa Barragan.

The biggest ticket item for the trip was front row tickets to Book of Mormon, which was glorious because there was nobody else in our row for the second half and seeing a musical that up close and personal is the way to really live. It reminded me of the days when we’d win the Rent lottery and get to be within spitting distance of the cast.

I watched quite a few movies while down there too, mostly in malls, which were about five dollars per ticket. There’s a movie theater, the Cineteca Nacional, that I wanted to visit because it looks so beautiful, but I haven’t been yet. And of course I hit up a few karaoke places, which cost maybe fifteen dollars an hour for a private room, or about the same for a few hours at a public karaoke spot. I’ll be exploring the karaoke of Mexico City in full next time down.

As for clubbing, I only went to two places: Departamento and Patrick Miller. Entrance to Departamento was ten dollars, and it was a smaller place that is basically just all dancing. I found it my first night out and basically it became my spot immediately. Things are open late here, another huge plus. Patrick Miller is only open on Fridays, and the dance circles are wild, well worth checking out for three dollars person. There are a ton of other clubs and places to check out nightlife, but I haven’t explored them yet. I did hit up a few bars, but not too many since well, I don't really drink?

Oh I also did a bit of shopping, in preparation for a wedding, mainly getting two pairs of shoes at Galerias Insurgentes. There is this Mexican brand, Panam, which makes athletic shoes for quite cheap, like fifteen dollars, and they were much higher quality than the night market shoes in Taiwan. Excellent stuff. Shopping in Zona Rosa and a Zara set me back maybe seventy dollars for two jackets and a shirt. And I got two haircuts, for seventeen dollars each.

And I can't not mention SIM cards! Even though Verizon has free texting messaging, I found out quickly that you are throttled after 500MB a day, and that just wouldn’t do. So I stopped into an ATT store and got a SIM and fifteen gigs of data for fifty dollars.

Ubers were cheap, mainly three to five dollars, I took forty-three of them, totaling $150, with the max one being six bucks. The Uber from the airport to my first place was eight dollars. And I had to bike ride while I was there obviously, and while there are many bikeshare options, I went with the seemingly most popular one, Ecobici. Weekly passes are eighteen dollars, and it’s not much more for an annual pass, but I believe you need a Mexican phone number and address to get an annual pass. I’ll have to find out next time I’m there. Oh, the subway and bus rides are like five pesos, so a quarter regardless of distance or transfers I believe.

The last thing I want to highlight is the food tour that I took, on the recommendation of my friend. He used Eat Mexico when he was there and while I’d never actually done one before, it made a lot of sense to me!

I chose the Navarte at Night option and it was $120 with tip, and it led to meeting my first new friends in the city. In the future I’m curious about more tours in foreign cities -- especially any art tours -- but I could also just explore on my own too I guess. Once you find local friends, every day is a guided tour! Still, even with more time down there, tours seem like a fun and new way to get to know a new place. If you’re on a short trip, I’d highly recommend it! Maybe next time I’ll be leading a boba and karaoke tour...

Overall, I spent $4,600 for three weeks in Mexico City, with $750 to get there, $1,900 for AirBnbs, and $2,000 for expenses. That a hundred dollars a day of variable expenses was roughly what I spent per day in San Franciso earlier in the year — and that trip included free housing — or the same amount I spent for two weeks in Bali. For a winter retreat, Mexico City seems tops so far!