Another month, another tracking.. 1/6 there to annual budget report. Exciting to fill up my tracker up tbh.. hope I'm not the only weird one.
Expense 2021 ~Feb
This month was marginally higher than Jan 2021 despite a shorter month.
While food/groceries fell lower; main contribution was due to Birthday month, so I am paying less for food this month and also shorter month. However, I can see my groceries fee coming up much higher compared to Jan.. mainly due to the fact that I've used up my groceries voucher (was diligently portioning them out). We can expect this category to rise sharply next month due to higher food and groceries costs.. reckon close to SGD1,000.
The rest under Basic remains relatively stable for now, and I also don't foresee any bump coming up for the coming months.
The excess also maintains relatively stable less the entertainment as I had some nights out drinking which explains the higher cost here.
On another note, I've paid to get premium features on my tracking app using money I earned from Google Rewards. I just want to pay back to the service that I've used for more than 4 years. Support what you like before they go under.
Thought of compiling some birthday perks for the month as it is mine this month.. and hopefully will help you uncover some gem that you might have missed.
On second note.. it is quite sad for people to have birthday in February, the shortest month of the year.. meaning you get at least 1~3 days less to enjoy such perks.
Anyway, jumping ahead.. I've split these to a few categories so feel free to jump if the category doesn't interest you.
Personal/Finance
Tiger Broker (Gold Member) - 5 general commission-free trades within 30 days (birthday perks are the same across Silver/Gold/Ace, you just have to graduate from "Uncertified" trader)
Food
Paradise Group (Gourmet Rewards) - 2x rebate throughout the month, meaning a whooping 20% on the subtotal spent
Genki Sushi (Genki Club) - Birthday 20% off nett spend
Shopping
Shopee (Gold Member) - SGD5 voucher on min. SGD10 spending (I think Gold Tier is the only tier with this voucher)
Uniqlo (App Member) - in-store SGD5 off on a min. SGD60 purchase.
BHG (Member) - 20% Birthday Voucher (off regular price items) to redeem at the customer's service counter
Don Don Donki (Bronze Member) - SGD5 off on next purchase (no min. and only during birthday month)
Honestly there aren't much other noteworthy ones such as small promo from qoo10 etc.
As I always say; every cent saved, is every cent that can be compounded.
Google has been rolling out with amazing apps that enable you to earn some money, as I’ve covered in my expense post, I bought a new android phone to replace my 3 year old iPhone 7.
Today, I’d love to share a good app that help you earn a little money that can be used on Google play-store. To be honest, I am not sure if iPhone can use this but if iPhone users can use GooglePay, they should also be able to install this as well.
This app will allow you to take some very short survey (less than 1 minute) to earn a few cents which you can use in Google play-store or as money.
I’ve used this to buy “Battle Pass” in Genshin Impact as well as paid for premium for some of my Apps. In actual fact, these are money that I won’t use if not for this but this enable me to indulge in a bit of more fun without spending money.
Hack
If you really plan to capitalize on this; highest return, is from selecting that you’ve dropped by any location in the survey, and mentioned that you paid via credit card (doesn’t matter if you purchase in store or ordered online).
Wrap-up
While I’ve used my android phone since I bought it on 9/9, monthly bonuses I’ve gotten from the app is around $8 which is still good for free money.
Today is actually my favorite day of the year (not my birthday, not any day) but it is not due to being NYE but actually it is the last day of the year.
In Feb 2016, I began my journey to track all my expenses and I’ve been really diligent in doing it, I am proud to say my tracking has minimal error (definitely less than ETF’s tracking, lol). I’ve also progressed slightly as a human, cutting corners on some of the tracking to make my own life easier;
track top-up to Grab wallet as “Food Expense”, save effort on tracking Grab as a separate wallet (inclusive of YouTrip/Revolut/etc)
put aside a small wallet for hawker food where I “top-up” physical cash
no longer count the small cashback/promo on my expense, I just look at it as bonus money in my “Expenditure” bank account
Disclaimer: I don’t track my expenses to limit myself but for me to know where my money is going to, and from there I can forecast a budget for the upcoming year.
Budgeting Excel
In addition to easing my tracking, I also lessen the categories to make life easier thus the above categories. As it is still my first post, I will go through the rationale of my grouping. Basic (Food/Groceries, Transport, House/Personal), I view these as the basic need to my life. While I put the excess (Travel/Entertain, Shopping/Misc) as something that is more controllable. Lastly, I don’t really include Insurance and Mortgage (pardon the typo) into my basic expenses mainly due to I view these as future asset/needs, and by no means have any control in them as well.
Basic (Food/Groceries, Transport, House/Personal)
As you can see that my food/groceries expenses are pretty high, as my current enjoyment in life is mainly in eating (my goal is to go to any restaurant and not care the price tag while ordering), so I’ll allocate high budget to this category; taking into consideration of inflation and increasing standard of living, I accounted for a slight increment.Transport is one of the best performer in the budget but it was due to 3 months worth of Circuit Breaker (Singapore locked down) that I am able to WFH thus transport expense is less than SGD20 in these 3 months; while I budgeted for this year with the thought that I can still buy student concession fare till August, thus I’d keep the same budget for next year and see how it goes. Lastly, on house/personal, it ranges from the monthly contribution I put at home along with personal therapy, medical and etc. However, start of the year was harsh.. as my kitten required some excess vet support which caused it to go over budget (no regret there, hope you’re having fun at the rainbow bridge my lovely kitten) as well as some household goods breaking down; going forward I reckon chances of such one-off expenditure will not incur (touch wood) thus the lower budget.
While I budgeted quite a fair bit of travel, I only managed to visit Johore Bahru (JB) once due to the Covid19 pandemic but I plan to set aside similar budget for next year, hoping that travel might resume in 2021Q3. On another note, my shopping expense has overshot the budget (2 years straight) but this year was mainly due to a one-off purchase of my new phone at SGD1k which I expect to last me for a minimum of 3 years (based on my iPhone 7 lifespan). Honestly I feel that the budget is slightly higher than what I really need, but I’d love to buy things from sales (especially work shirt, etc).
Expense Wrap-Up
This year, surprisingly I am in the green (thanks to Covid19), however I still plan to set aside a higher budget; not to restraint myself too much and I also got a pay bump from job hop. Ultimately, my goal is total less “mortgage&insurance” can factor less than a certain percentage of my basic take-home pay (currently in 40~50% range, not revealing because it will be easy to reverse engineer my gross); goal will be eventually hitting less than 25% of my take home through both way of earning more money and spending less.
“Don’t let what you earn dictates how much you spend” -Me
Tracking App
I understand there’s many apps out there that will help with your tracking including app from Seedly, Gpay (allows you to track all expenses that is paid via card etc), banking apps and etc. Personally I use Monny, I like the flexibility and ease of usage of the app. Few note-worthy points are; allow you to create multiple accounts (for different accounts such as investment/spending/travel expenditure), create of categories, and recurring expenses. You can find the app in the following link – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.greamer.monny.android
Disclaimer: I am not sponsored to share the app, nor I will get any referral fees from this.
And Happy New Year to everyone, hopefully 2021 will be a better year to achieve all of our goals!
