Expenses Update for January 2015

Here's my inaugural post on my personal monthly expenses. I also wrote a summary of my personal finances (including expenses incurred) for 2014 here.

Breakdown of expenses:

• Clothing: $130.90* - This includes laundry, some of which we outsource to our friendly neighbourhood dhobi.
• Food: $1780.22* - Food is averaging at $30 almost a day with the bulk allocable to dining at restaurants. Yes, it's sinful but we eat out most of the time and at restaurants most of the time, with the occasional splurge on fine dining. If there is some fat that can be weaned from the expenses, this would be it but we are folks who enjoy our food.
• Health Care: $482.98 - This was unexpectedly high because of the stupid flu I have been going on and on about. Four trips to the doctor and one to the pharmacist ended up costing about $200. The rest can be attributed to largely health supplements. I'm a health junkie and am a VIP member at iherb.com - more on that next time, I'm sure!
• Home Office: $11.75 - Purchased some stationery from Popular. Nothing much to see here so move along, folks.
• Household: $283.70* - This covers largely the quarterly aircon maintenance contract we signed for 2015, and housekeeping (which is something we outsource as well to a part-time helper who comes about once a week to clean up).
• Others: $600 - A one-off work-related expense. 
• Parents: $2000 - Because I'm a good boy deep down.
• Personal care: $329 - This covers haircuts, hair treatment and some face serum I bought for my metroself.
• Property: $293.76* - Quarterly maintenance expenses for our house
• Tax: $1108.07 - Death.. and taxes. Certainties in life.
• Travel: $121.60 - This relates to transport actually, so it covers top up of EZ-Link and taxi rides. I don't drive but Mrs RetailTrader does.
• Utilities: $153.57* - Covers electricity, water, internet, cable tv. Yeah some people think we are using a bit too much aircon.
• Mrs RetailTrader: $4 - Erm not going to say too much on what I spent $4 on Mrs RetailTrader ;)

Total: $7,299.55

* - denotes expenses that are shared with Mrs RetailTrader

Top 5 categories: 1) Parents (27%) 2) Food (24%) 3) Taxes (15%) 4) Others (8%) 5) Health Care (7%)

I think amongst the Singapore bloggers who track their expenses, mine must be one of the highest hahaha. Well that just means I have lots of room to improve :) But February's expenses may be higher because it's CNY season and my first time giving out red packets. And furthermore in January I could skip my monthly mortgage payments because we credited excess sums into our mortgage savings account last year. Let's see where we end up. My goal for this year ultimately is to save 50% of all income (including trading income).