I don’t think I mentioned that Swan has been earning money by being a distributor of meat products. Each week she posts a menu/price list, takes orders through Thursday, and delivers (on foot!) on Friday and Saturday. The meat I’ve purchased so far has been high quality (USDA ribeye and baby back ribs). It tends to be pricey, but when it comes to meat, it seems to be true that you get what you pay for.
In other news, I’m taking the first steps towards instituting some budget discipline. When I first moved here, I planned on living large with a monthly budget of 250,000 pesos (around $5000.) and depositing around a thousand bucks into savings each month to fund regular travel. My sloppy spending habits and inflation have combined to where I’m regularly moving money from my savings account to make up for monthly shortfalls. That’s not sustainable over the long haul, and now is the time to institute some self-discipline. What that will mean in practice remains to be seen, but I’ve downloaded a budget tracker app to monitor my spending. I’ll gather data for the month of July and then make some decisions on how and where to reduce spending.
So, yesterday was the first day of that process, and I wound up spending 68,000 pesos ($1230.). Yeah, that’s a lot, but there are unique monthly expenses that occur on the first, so not surprising. Here’s the breakdown of my spending:
- Rent: 35,000
- Helper salary: 21,000
- Meat purchase: 6,000
- Beer: 1,550
- Restaurant food: 1,380
- Lady drinks: 1,355
- Charity (Joy’s medicine): 1000
- Gifts (bought chocolate from the Belgian vendor): 500
- Transport (trike fare): 200
Now, it was Saturday night, and I wound up barhopping with some of the Hash guys, so those beer and LD numbers are a bit higher than normal. I ate at John’s place and then brought some takeout food to Hideaway, which isn’t normal. Anyway, there’s plenty of fat to be trimmed as needed, so I’ll have a better picture of my budget diet to come at the end of the month.
As mentioned above, I started my night on the town with some dinner at John’s. John was resting in his recliner when I arrived and is in recovery mode from a fall that injured his leg and separated his shoulder. Get well soon!
After Hideaway, I wandered back up the highway with no clear destination in mind. But then I figured it would be nice to see Jen for a cuddle in her new location at Bar Barretto.
When I departed Bar Barretto a couple of drinks later, I had it in mind to visit my new Whiskey Girl favorite, Kim. But as I passed by The Annex bar, I saw several Hashers seated at one of the outside tables, and so I joined them. Turns out, they were in the midst of a bar crawl, and when they were ready to move on, I went with them. Next stop: Wet Spot.
This is where I dropped some coin on lady drinks and chocolate. It was getting near my bedtime, but as a matter of pride, I didn’t want to be the first to bail. Jim called it a night shortly thereafter, and I wasn’t far behind.
And for any of you who were hoping for a jealous Filipina post, here you go:
So, I’ll be busting the budget with the Sunday Hideaway feeding later this evening, and then we’ll see what happens after that. My landlord messaged me today that she will be starting the house repairs tomorrow and sent me this photo of my future home:
Back with more tomorrow.
If the rooftop of the new place has the room for it, I’d set up my grill up there.
You’re saying you spend more than $5000 a month? Yikes. Eating out, drinking, and lady drinks are the most likely culprits, with “charity” not far behind. Good luck figuring out where to cut back. Most obvious, to me, is eating out: cook your own meals, and you’ll save a good chunk of money. I’d say cut the drinking by half, too, but I doubt you’re willing to do that. Any way to cut back on the lady drinks?
I use Moneydance for monthly spend. It is not a true budget program, more of an expense tracker, but basically works as the same thing.
I used to use YNAB, which is really good, but they have gone to a subscription model (which I detest), so I switched over to “Moneydance”. Paid once, no ads, no data scraping, etc.
I’m using a spending tracker app called MyMoney. It was highly rated in the app store and seems to meet my needs so far. It’s free, too. I’ll check out Moneydance if I need to make a change.
Yes, I’m definitely considering setting up my grill on the rooftop. The only issue is having to climb up and down the those steps. I want to have a nipa hut built up there. Once that happens, I’d cook and eat on the roof. I’d like to spend a lot of my at home time up there.
Well, it’s only day 2 of the tracking, but yeah, I spent too much in the bars this weekend for sure. Maybe that was an aberration, but this is why I need to get a handle on where the money goes. I’ve been acting irresponsibly for too long. Once I have a month’s worth of data, I’ll be better able to tell where I need to cut back.