How much do you spend a month?
0 voters
This thread is intended as a compliment to the ‘what’s the AVG wage these days’ thread in the ‘teaching in Taiwan’ forum.
So, let us know if you have any idea how much you spend and on what or whom you spend it on!
About 30K to 40K on food and booze.
30 to 40K, also. But on all expenses, including rent, electricity, gas, cable, ADSL, water, telephone and cel, baby food, food, the odd book or magazine, booze and entertainment…
Better man than I. If I were to count up my total expenses for the month then I would have to say I’m up around 55K with fair savings. It could be better though. My curse happens to be those blasted bars.
I keep an account of the red & the black, yet to access it, I have to sublimate enough to revolve around to another plane, to meet my alter-ego, who keeps the books.
He’s usually far too cranky to fess up, and the asshat never answers his phone!
Pogue Mahone!
So basically I have no idea. Breathe it in, breathe it out. Being married, with children does not help much either. There’s always some expenditure to be dished out on past, present or future endeavors.
BTW Bizzy - gas, ADSL, water and cellphone (pay as you go cards keep you honest) are cheap as chips down here. Electricity can be a killer in the summer time if you’re a AC whore.
I spend about 12k after rent. All the rest goes on those darned student loans which will be paid before the end of the year. Huzzah!
[quote=“TheGingerMan”]I keep an account of the red & the black, yet to access it, I have to sublimate enough to revolve around to another plane, to meet my alter-ego, who keeps the books.
He’s usually far too cranky to fess up, and the asshat never answers his phone!
Pogue Mahone!
So basically I have no idea. Breathe it in, breathe it out. Being married, with children does not help much either. There’s always some expenditure to be dished out on past, present or future endeavors.[/quote]
Que?
From your response it seems the poll’s missing a category or two:
‘expenditure beyond reality’
‘the wife only knows’
Fair do’s! But I imagine you must have a basic idea of the ‘ins and outs’ (even if it is only a kind of fiction!?) We still want to know how you swing it!
It’s also missing 20-30,000.
And what’s with the category of 20-60,000?
It overlaps the others.
Is that 20 supposed to be a 40? Or 50?
I too used to be able to live on a very modest budget back when I was single and teaching here. But the cost for a family in Taipei $130-150k a month.
Guesstimate Monthly Expenses
Mortgage 45k
Car 8k (parking, gas, fines!)
Scooter 1k
2 phones 7k
1 kids Kindy 18k
1 kids p.t. English class and extra cirr. prg. 11k
Home phone/adsl 2k
Electricity/Water/Gas guess 2-3k
Home Food Bill 5k
Hubby misc expenses 10k
Wife misc expenses 10K
Add a family vacation, say just in Asia once a year for 4, 100K+
I think our expenses are certainly much more than 80k a month plus there’s the looming annual family sojourn to the east coast of Canada which usually runs over 300k.
I don’t drink, smoke, or do much of anything. Thank God for bit torrent.
[quote=“Josefus”]
It’s also missing 20-30,000.
And what’s with the category of 20-60,000?
It overlaps the others.
Is that 20 supposed to be a 40? Or 50?[/quote]
Well spotted. Apologies!
If you’re missing a category, just make a post!
We break it into different costs to be paid via bills (must be paid that month)
Utilities
Phone bills
Mobile phone bill
Credit Cards (in our home different credit cards have different uses/pay for different things – my wife says its for the points?!)
Then there are fixed costs
Mortgage
Insurance
ADSL
Parking fees
Kindergarden
What I did was create a flat excel file for all expenses and tabbed it into different sheets.
In the personal spending sheet I have an entry in rows for each day of the month. Then in columns I have expenses including for fruit, breakfast, lunch, MRT, bus, taxi, beer, dinner, coffee fruit and miscellaneous. Miscellaneous can be for things like buying a hot dog in the 711, parking fines, or green tea at the tea shop. I always enter a comment for the miscellaneous items to keep track of what these were on a particular day. New fields can be added as needed
I have total for each month, total for the year, rolling average cost per day, rolling average cost per item per day. This updates each time you enter a value. Not that complicated but I set myself a target for each month and try to keep within budget. Looking back at spending a half a year ago, you’d be surprised how much money you just burn or waste - on taxis instead of MRT or bus, on beer on coffee!
I think it is good and useful to keep track of ALL the money you spend. It shows where the money goes and would be very useful if you needed to do some tightening of the belt at a later date. You would know where you could cut and how it would impact you
Total cost for us per month is about NTD100K
I also created tracking matrices within different sheets for weight, blood pressure, excerise time per week. More can be added as need be. Measuring things forces you to get things done. So I have learnt in the field of quality. Besides I like measuring and analysising things
Another sheet is where I keep all my things/tasks to do, wish lists, deadlines etc. MS Outlook or MS Project just does not do it for me
This living expenditure costs have me baffled. As TNT suggests, I try to keep tract of where the money goes per day, per week, and per month. It still eludes me where it all goes.
When I was a humble student on a 15 thousand NT scholarship, I managed. Of course, our most luxurious item was to celebrate payday by going to My Home Steak and stuffing ourselves. By the end of the month all money was spent.
When I had my first salary here, it was around 35 thousand. I traveled, I was eating out. Still managed to save quite a bit, and started buying furniture and stuff.
Now I make a bit more, and I spend it all. I barely save, I use public transportation, I don’t go out that much, and the only travelling I do is going home once every two years. Whom do I have to blame, only myself.
Basic items are not that much: rent, transportation, communication (phone and Internet). Food gets tricky, especially if you want Western luxuries, like sour cream. Try figuring out how much a typical Western style breakfast costs. Fine bread at 70-80 NTs a pop accumulates, and not only around your waist.
And I have a weak will, I fall into temptations all the time. A cute bag, an interesting book, you get the picture. And don’t get me started about COSTCO. the way things are going, they’ll name an aisle after me.
Geez, those kid things are expensive, aren’t they? and you can’t even send the little buggers out to work until they’re at least 13 or so.
Yeah but is cheaper to have two 6 year olds or one 12 year old. My thinking they get more expensive as they get older. And nowadays they would be more resistance to working for pocket money when their friends don’t need to and are instead spoilt
12K on rent
26K on the car payments/gas/parking/maintenance
I try to budget my daily expenditures(bills, shopping, food, etc.) to 1K a day and it mostly works, but then something often pops up (Christmas/holidays/anniversary/gf’s birthday/etc.) and all of a sudden 95K is just barely getting me by. It’s depressing, really. On the bright side, at least I’m having fun with my life… it would be nice to have the piece of mind of some savings though.
Family of 3…Well over 100k per month.
Are you speaking from experience! I sure hope not!!!
Are you speaking from experience! I sure hope not!!![/quote]
Nay