As mentioned many times, I don't buy stuff, so that in itself controls my expenses.
My current monitoring of my expenses is pretty much to understand how freegan life changes has helped reduced my overall expenses and also to have a look at all my special/misc expenses.
Cos it seems like every month, there's always a special expense that crops up.
So I'm thinking, over a long period, special expenses isn't really special anymore, and basically it means that special expenses are monthly normal expenses.
Expenses this month really went through the roof.
Mainly due to the special expenses.
My wife had a dental expense half paid last month $600, an $700 paid this month.
We went to Taiwan, $636 for our hotel for the both of us.
My wife sponsored her family to go so this expense is doubled.
My wife also sponsored the flight tickets which were paid for some time back already.
Food in Taiwan was covered by my wife's family.
Business food and transport is $187.95.
The flights to follow my wife were paid for last month.
Gifts are small things like buying some edibles from Taiwan for my wife's colleagues, or buying coffee or a meal for friends. $31.50.
The wedding gift of $100 is a red packet for my wife's colleague.
Actual living expenses is just $237.15.
But this is cheating a bit cos we were out of the country for 2 weeks.
Although I don't think this would increase by much if I were in Singapore cos I would have gotten most of my stuff for free anyway.
So I'm sure you all realize by now, my greatest expense is my wife.
LOL, I'm kidding, anyway, she's working so she can do more or less what she wants.
Which is one of the reasons why I broke down the expenses, cos sometimes, it's hard to determine who's expenses are who's, cos our expenses are still ours as a whole family.
Whatever my wife does and her decisions will still impact our total savings rate and overall AUM.
But some readers may want to see my personal expenses which I would think are super low.
But yet as a household, it's hard to keep total expenses low cos it won't be fair to impose the same standards on my wife. The only thing I can do is to just provide free food and stuff so that her daily meals are free as well.
Hopefully in the next few months, expenses will stabilize and we won't have special expenses anymore and for one month we can just have one nice small number. But maybe that's impossible cos something always crops up? Another holiday? Other replacement items? etc...
Maybe I've always been confident in keeping my living expenses low, but in real life, all the other special expenses are also considered living expenses so... maybe my real expenses aren't as low as I deem it to be...
Oh well, let's monitor for a few more months, or maybe til the end of the year to see how this works out.
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