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Let’s look at the explosion that was my 2015 spending. Overall I spent about $30,000 which isn’t too bad since I was living the high life in NYC for half the year, but improvements can still be made. Removing the cost of our luxurious Fiji vacation and the costs of our cross country move would bring my 2015 spending to $21,840.
I’ve removed these because these costs will not be repeated in the future for the following reasons:
- Luxury Vacations: Fiji was our last expensive vacation that we will fully pay for. My Mom and I have agreed to instead use travel hacking for fancy flights and focus on less expensive locations. In fact, after we booked our tickets I even found a way to get the same $3,500 First Class seats for free through travel hacking. Grr! If only I’d discovered it sooner. Oh well – you live and you learn.
- Stuff Filled Cross Country Move: I will not be bringing stuff from one location to the next anymore. In fact, we considered not bringing anything on this move, but the numbers didn’t check out. It would cost us a similar amount to replace everything and take a significant amount of my time when I’m already trying to settle into my new life and kick ass at my new job. Right before retirement I’m planning to sell all my furniture and just have clothes with a few small sentimental items stored at my Mom’s house. I’ll be a vagabond.
$21,840 is a pretty good number considering that 6 months of the year were spent in a ridiculous NYC apartment where I spent $15,700 on monthly bills (rent, utilities, transit to work and phone). The remaining $6,140 was spent in this way:
- $2,000: Eating Out – I had a ridiculous number of amazing experiences on that amount. I ate out every time I wanted to. I was really surprised with how little I spent compared to everything I ate
- $1,000: Alcohol – This is not bad for all the bar drinking I did in NYC (it’s what people do there) and restaurant drinks I had in Seattle, but still higher than I’d like
- $650 Groceries – guess I didn’t cook a lot 🙂
- $1340 Flights (outside of Fiji)
- $350: Other vacation spending (outside of Fiji)
- $300: Giving
- $500: Rainy Days including $118 for household goods for our apartment and $137 for personal spending ($100 of which was spent in October for my birthday present of purple hair)
Compared to 2014, in 2015 I spent about $500 less a month even though I still lived in the same apartment in NYC with a slightly higher rent. Nice work!
Looking back at all the places I visited, people I met and adventures I experienced I did so much in 2015 and spent a surprisingly small amount while feeling like I was living a lavish life. I feel like anything is possible.