This was a fun quarter. Starting out in April, we were exploring Peru, then we decided to finally eradicate our house of bats, I biked to work a ton, and we ended the quarter doing a lot of work outdoors on our stone patio. Oh, and we had our offer accepted on a rental property! Despite all this excitement, we only spent $3,556 per month on average including all debt payments.
Green numbers are lower than last quarter.
Red numbers are higher than last quarter.
Total Expenses: $10,668.08
Average Per Month: $3,556.03
Excluding Debt Payments Total Expenses: $7,443.60
Average Per Month: $2,481.20
The Necessary Evils :
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Mortgage | $2,091.00 | $697.00 |
| Student Loans | $627.48 | $209.16 |
| Car payments | $500.00 | $166.66 |
| Home Insurance | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Property Taxes | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Medical | $6.00 | $2.00 |
| Rental Property | 795.00 | N/A |
Rental Property is a new expense this quarter. The $795 relates to our purchase of a rental property. Appraisal and inspection costs.
We made one $500 car payment, and paid nothing extra on the other loans this quarter. We were mostly saving up for the closing on the rental property.
The Patio: Beginnings
Home Maintenance and Improvements
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Contractors | $608.00 | $202.67 |
| DIY | $1,002.20 | $334.06 |
For contractors, we told you about how we hired Batman. The $608 is the first half of eradicating bats from our house for good.
All of our DIY expense is related to the patio we’re building out back. There’s basically over $770 of materials, including $500 worth of cobblestones, some tools and a permit. I’ll tell you all about the patio in a future series.
DIY Doughnuts
Food:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Groceries | $1,013.85 | $337.95 |
| Wine & Beer | $73.63 | $24.54 |
| Dining Out | $371.03 | $123.68 |
| Takeout Food | $132.61 | $44.20 |
| Total Food | $1,591.12 | $530.37 |
We almost came in under $1,000 for the quarter on groceries! We have been making a lot of food at home, and I have even gotten into bread-making. And as you can tell from the picture above, doughnut-making!
That dining expense, though? That’s high. Most of that is due to our trip to Peru, where we ate out a lot and spent $273.35 on food in ten days!
Transportation:
| Quarterly Total | Month Average | |
| Auto Maintenance/Other | $281.83 | $93.94 |
| Gas | $187.91 | $62.64 |
| Car Insurance | $732.40 | 6-month premium |
| Parking | $75.76 | $25.25 |
| Bus Tickets | $65.00 | $21.67 |
| Total Transportation | $1,342.90 | $447.63 |
Man, is car insurance ever expensive! We sipped gas for the quarter, though, averaging three fill-ups each month. That, five bus passes and my bike got me to work all this quarter. There’s also a NY state registration in there, and an online defensive driving course which should reduce our insurance expense.
Utilities:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Cable | $269.16 | $89.72 |
| Gas | $284.01 | $94.67 |
| Electric | $169.70 | $56.57 |
| Water & Sewer | $113.22 | $37.74 |
| Telephone | $7.66 | $2.55 |
We have been having some fantastic months in utilities. Our latest combined Gas & Electric bill for June was $90.56, our lowest bill ever in this house! That’s six years!
Cash-based accounting resulted in four Cable bills being paid this quarter. It’s normally $71, but as you’ll see in a future post, it’s about to get a lot lower.
Fun Stuff:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Entertainment | $152.26 | $50.75 |
| Recreation | $151.00 | $50.33 |
| Travel | $1,020.41 | $340.14 |
Again, we like to travel, so that expense came out large. There’s a few hotels from Peru in there, along with all our transportation around Peru, and an expensive crap hotel in Queens so we could get our early morning flight from JFK.
Recreation is basically also all having to do with Peru, between all the museums and Inca sites.
Entertainment includes Netflix, Hulu, PaperbackSwap fees, a few albums, a few movies in the theater like Mad Max and Roar, a double feature at the drive-in theater (Jurassic World and Spy) and a few of my favorite podcasts and radios hows like The Sporkful, Radiolab, This American Life and WFMU’s Do or DIY and Busy Doing Nothing. Yes, I donate to podcasts. You have to support the things you like!
We spent $1,020 on Travel this quarter. Well, we did travel to Peru after all!
Pets:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Boarding | $240.00 | $80.00 |
| Food | $194.44 | $64.81 |
| Medical | $135.41 | $45.14 |
| Other | $33.69 | $11.23 |
| Total Pet | $603.54 | $201.18 |
What can I say? One greyhound and two rabbits can get expensive. Maeby’s annual checkup is included, and the cost of boarding her during our Peru trip. And fifty pounds of rabbit food!
Miscellaneous:
| Quarterly Total | Monthly Average | |
| Charity | $136.00 | $45.33 |
| Clothing | $155.61 | $51.87 |
| Computer | $32.24 | $10.75 |
| Gifts Given | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Home Furnishings | $8.00 | $2.67 |
| Home Supplies | $54.00 | $18.00 |
| Personal Care | $544.79 | $181.60 |
| Postage | $6.98 | $2.33 |
The computer expense is actually the balance I paid for a used 4th generation iPod Touch. My old one’s screen went bad, and I sold it for $40. I bought a new one for $73. So, net, the new-to-me iPod Touch cost about $32.
That outsized Personal Care includes Marge’s 18-month gym membership of $468. So it’s not, like, really expensive shampoo or something.
Clothing expense is all Marge’s, the most expensive being a new pair of Keen sandals for $55. I bought no clothes this quarter. I did buy a pair of shoes which will hit next quarter.
Back in January, I made up some goals for the year on the fly. Here’s how we’re doing so far.
Yearly Goals Progress, six months in:
Gas:
- Goal: Under $1,000.
- Spent: $457.91
- On track to spend: $915.82
Coming in well under $80 a month lately. We’re on a great track since our last three years’ gas expense totals have been $2,251, $2,574 and $1,422.
Dining Out:
- Goal: Under $1,000.
- Spent: $537.31
- On track to spend: $1,074.62
Uh oh. Last time I said it would be easy to come in under $1,000. But after eating out a bunch in Peru, our total for the year so far is over $500.
Om nom nom
Takeout Food:
- Goal: Under $1,000.
- Spent: $370.78
- On track to spend: $741.56
We’ve done really well for the past quarter, hardly ordering out at all. Our past three years in this category have been $1,301, $1,627 and $1,208. So this is shaping up to be a good year.
Clothing:
- Goal: Under $1,000.
- Spent: $477.13
- On track to spend: $954.26
Doing pretty well here. We’re on track to meet our clothing expenses for 2013 and 2014, which were under $1,000 each year.
Years of Savings:
This magical calculation demonstrates how far we could get if we kept living every month like this quarter. 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 expenses and our investable assets, we have…
4.63 years of savings
But if you take out the all of the debt expenses and consider only what we would have been spending had all of the loans been paid off, we have….
6.64 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 used Rochester, NY, for our own cost of living since it is the closest city to us on Expatistan’s index and is very comparable price-wise.
Our International Retirement Cost of Living Number is….
39.02
According to Expatistan’s index, that means we can retire… nowhere!