We spent a solid two weeks on the other side of the globe this quarter. Two years ago, we went to Thailand in January for ten days and came back all of $900 lighter. This time we got out of the freezing northeast and went to Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. I have yet to calculate the final bill. I’m sure it will be more than $900, but should still be pretty reasonable. So most of the photos you’ll see in this entry come from that trip.
I should also mention that, due to one simple typo in my calculations, our savings rate for 2018 was 48.7%, not 43.2% as I had said. Watch your negative signs, everyone!
Total Expenses: $13,225.12
Avg Per Month: $4,408.37
Without Debt Payments Total Expenses: $11,141.38
Avg Per Month: $3,713.79
Savings Rate: 41.8%
Summary
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Serious Stuff | $3,105.55 | $1,035.18 |
| Food | $2,431.07 | $810.36 |
| Transportation | $732.64 | $244.21 |
| Utilities | $878.86 | $292.95 |
| Fun Stuff | $3,979.68 | $1,326.56 |
| Pets | $294.21 | $98.07 |
| Miscellaneous | $1,803.11 | $601.04 |
Q1 is typically one of our higher-spending quarters during the year. That is when the Christmas spending comes due, and when we’ve had some big trips in the past few years. Our savings rate would’ve been higher though. Since Marge just started a new job, she had to take our trip unpaid since she didn’t have the vacation time accrued yet, so our income wasn’t as high as it could’ve been.
Details
Serious Stuff :
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Mortgage | $2,083.74 | $694.58 |
| Medical | $95.22 | $31.74 |
| Home Maintenance – Contractors | $926.59 | $308.86 |
Standard mortgage payments this quarter. I did make some extra payments on our HELOC, but I count those as Rental expenses since we used it as a down payment on our first duplex. As for medical expenses, why are you interested in the details? What are you, some kind of sicko? We did have one major home maintenance expense. We paid to have our hot water boiler fixed/cleaned. We had a high efficiency boiler installed almost ten years ago and neglected having it cleaned. Well, it started making rumbling sounds and shutting off intermittently. So the lesson is, have your boiler cleaned every so often!
Duck kway chap
Food:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Groceries | $1,594.80 | $531.60 |
| Wine & Beer | $25.90 | $8.63 |
| Dining Out | $650.60 | $216.87 |
| Takeout Food | $159.77 | $53.26 |
| Total Food | $2,431.07 | $810.36 |
No excuses. We spent a lot on food this quarter! That grocery bill is totally out of bounds. I still don’t know how we do it. Too many boxes of spring mix salad greens and packages of smoked salmon?
At least our dining expense was spent overseas and with family and friends in New York City. We don’t normally dine out at home. We got to try many new and weird dishes in southeast Asia. The blob with the green worm things on it is chendol, a shaved ice dessert served with coconut milk, green jellies, and in this case, durian on top. (I could do without the durian) The soup at the top is duck kway chop at a roadside stall, and the noodles below are assam laksa. I came back craving some of these, but alas, it’s not easy finding Malaysian cuisine in upstate New York. Come on, globalization! Hurry up!
After some modest success growing herbs outdoors last year, I started an indoor grow box to start some herbs from seed this year. Maybe I’ll do an entry on that, but basically it’s a cheap cooler with a hole cut in the top for a daylight LED bulb. I’m starting to see some buds a week after starting them, so hopefully it will work out and I’ll at least save on herbs this year.
Air Asia flight arrives in Langkawi
Transportation:
| Quarterly Total | Month Average | |
| Auto Maintenance/Tolls | $163.24 | $54.41 |
| Gas | $347.40 | $115.80 |
| Parking | $102.00 | $34.00 |
| Bus Tickets | $120.00 | $40.00 |
| Total Transportation | $732.64 | $244.21 |
That’s a first class seat, guys
Gas expense was a bit higher than it used to be because Marge is having to drive to work now. Parking expense is entirely for parking at the train station. Once trip was for going to visit the grandparents in Buffalo at Christmas, and once for taking the train to NYC for our flight to Malaysia. Among our frequent flyer miles, we even have Amtrak points, so we can hack train tickets, but the parking is not free. Over the Malaysia trip, my car battery died, and it was old enough that I just went ahead and replaced it, which is the bulk of the auto maintenance cost.
Chinese New Year in Hong Kong
Utilities:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Cable | $149.97 | $49.99 |
| Electric | $164.07 | $54.69 |
| Gas | $446.41 | $148.80 |
| Telephone | $30.00 | $10.00 |
| Water & Sewer | $88.41 | $29.47 |
More adventures in cable. A week before our trip, our internet went out. The cable company shut off internet to our entire block because there was some threat of an overload on the cables or something. I don’t know. But we spent A WEEK without internet, and actually had to leave on our trip with the thing still not working. We had our phones, but there’s only so much you can do on phones. There are bills to be paid, and as prolific credit card churners, there’s like a dozen credit cards to be paid! So I actually had to go to the library with my laptop and pay credit cards. I also rented a bunch of DVDs while there (Back To The Future II, Creed, Point Break) since we only have television through the internet. The library is a great resource, but man am I glad that’s over.
Supertree Grove
Fun Stuff:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Entertainment | $327.52 | $109.17 |
| Recreation | $1,134.25 | $378.08 |
| Travel | $2,517.91 | $839.30 |
The bulk of our Travel expense is our annual Cape Cod vacation rental. I’ll be getting some of it back as a security deposit. Another big part is AirBnB rentals for an abandoned trip to Norway. Ugh. I had booked a solo trip to Bergen for a week, as I did last year, on Norwegian Air direct from Newburgh, New York. Wouldn’t you know it, but they were flying this route with Boeing 737 MAX aircraft. Yeah, the bad one. So they cancelled my flight and offered to route me from New York City through Oslo and on to Bergen, which added 3-4 hours each way and was on different travel dates. I said no thanks. So I’ll be getting a refund for the flight ($250) and for the AirBnB rentals ($600) in the next quarter.
The bulk of Recreation expense is our annual camping trip to the Thousand Islands in September. You have to reserve it far in advance, and I will get a partial refund for the days we don’t use. Also, fees for Marge’s dance studio were over $300. She takes classes and choreographed and danced for a show.
Recreation also includes all of the fun we had in Southeast Asia! The Singapore Zoo, the Singapore National Museum, Peranakan Mansion in Penang, and so on. One day I will write about this trip!
Entertainment includes things like Netflix and Hulu, tickets to a Belle & Sebastian show in July, a New York Times digital subscription, and tickets to see The Favourite at a fancy cinema in New York City.
Pets:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Boarding | $194.40 | $64.80 |
| Food | $61.91 | $20.64 |
| Other | $37.90 | $12.63 |
| Total Pet | $294.21 | $98.07 |
This was mostly paying for a rabbit sitter for our two weeks away. They don’t come cheap!
Miscellaneous:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Cash | $37.00 | $12.33 |
| Charity | $210.00 | $70.00 |
| Clothing | $139.60 | $46.53 |
| Gifts Given | $955.44 | $318.48 |
| Home | $378.17 | $126.06 |
| Personal Care | 82.90 | $27.63 |
Gifts Given includes Christmas, plus some souvenirs we bought overseas. Home expense includes dumb things like toilet paper, and also a humidifier for our bedroom because I constantly wake up with a sore throat in the winter from how dry it gets. Also, a “new” (used) Canon camera because I dropped my old one on the Cape Cod beach and I couldn’t get it it work again. Charity deductions automatically come out of my paycheck every two weeks. I increase the amount every year. Cash is the miscellaneous cash expenses I’ve managed to spend and not track.
Goal Progress
Total 2017 Spending of $30,000:
- Spent so far: $11,141
- On track to spend: $44,564
We will exceed this goal once again? Probably.
Savings Rate of 65%:
- Savings Rate so far: 41.8%
Hopefully we can get this up again. Our method for calculating our savings rate is shown here.
Max Out 457 Plan and Roth IRAs
- Goals: $18,000 in 457 Plan / $6,000 in each Roth IRA
- Saved so far: $4,496 in 457 Plan / $1,000 in each Roth IRA
This should be fairly easy. Just as a reminder, the limit on Roth IRAs this year is $6,000, so increase your contributions!
Contribute to Marge’s 401(k)
- Goal: $10,000
- Saved so far: $2,961
Marge has a nice selection of funds in her 401(k) at her new job. But with the changes in the tax law, I did some calculations, and at our income level, it isn’t really worth it to max out. Maybe you remember my breakthrough analysis Ranking The Retirement Accounts. But basically, it is worth contributing to deferred tax retirement accounts to the point that we keep any of our dollars out of the 22% bracket. So basically by contributing around $10,000 this year, we should stay completely in the 12% bracket. Now that’s planning!
Read 24 Books
Not doing so well on this front. I managed to start a load of books, but only finished three. I started three other e-books that auto-returned to the library when I accidentally turned on my Kindle’s wi-fi, so I will have to finish them later. But all three books I did finish (above) are fantastic. I seem to go on these streaks and read two or three similar books, completely by coincidence. Bad Blood and Billion Dollar Whale are both about financial fraud. Right now I’m in the middle of three books which all focus on people living in the middle of nowhere (one is avoiding the law, the other two are religious nuts) There seems to be an Elizabeth Holmes frenzy going on right now, and I can tell you that the HBO documentary is good, the podcast is better, but the book is the best.
Years of Savings:
This magical calculation demonstrates how far we could get if we kept living every month like this ones listed above. We take our investable assets and divide them by our monthly expenses above. The number to shoot for is 25, because at that level of savings, you could afford to live forever on your money stash. According to our monthly average non-debt expenses and our investable assets, we have…
8.6 years of savings
Retirement Location Possibility!
If we take that number of years of savings above, and divide by 25, we can figure out where in the world we could afford to retire right now by dividing another country’s cost of living price index by our own cost of living. I averaged Buffalo and Hartford for our own cost of living since those are the closest to us on Expatistan’s index.
Our International Retirement Cost of Living Number is….
53.2
According to Expatistan’s index, that means we can retire… nowhere!