Monthly Expense: 2021 February

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. 

Cheers

New Credit Card - Citi Cash Back+

Saw the following promotion and definitely not passing out on free cash; 

    "Apple AirPods Pro or $350 cash (Citibank credit cards)"

And of course the catch is that you have to be a new-to-bank customer. I had a student clear visa card with Citi ages ago where I canceled last December since student card has limited perks and I wanted a new-to-bank perk. Seeing that it hit SGD350 cash bonus, I jump on it immediately. 

Rationale

The Card that I picked is Citi Cash Back+ which is a no frill, no cap 1.6% cashback card. Initially, I wanted to go after the Citi Cash Back card which gives 8% cashback on groceries/petrol and 6% on dining. However, such good cards usually come with frills such as minimum monthly spend of SGD800 and also cap of cashback at SGD80. This is a little troublesome for me to keep track tbh, thus I went for the no frill. 

Current Cards

My main card is still UOB One card, but I've been spending >SGD1k - <SGD2k which makes me give up quite a bit of cashback since UOB One card is by tier. Now I am keeping track to make sure I spend only around SGD1k on my UOB One card and the rest to the no frills card. 

Consideration

Another factor I considered was my monthly expense.. I projected and plan to spend less this year, ideally charging only <SGD2k monthly is an easily achievable goal but stretching it to <SGD1.5k charges to card. I had a good start with my UOB One card at around < SGD1.2k for Jan.. so another SGD800 on top of my UOB One card of SGD1k easily sustainable at least for now. I can always come back and reapply the cash back card when I see increment of my expenses. 

Cashback Versus Miles

Seeing that I no longer talk about miles.. can see that I am currently in the cashback camp against the miles although I started out in the miles camp. I just see that accumulation of such miles a bit of tedious work.. but I still maintain my DBS Altitude card where I will probably charge large cost items to. Cashback tbh is a quicker relief especially on daily expense.. and also I do think that I am happy flying normal economy class so let's see how it goes eventually. 

Rewards

Of course I picked the cash, hard cold SGD350 by just charging SGD200 to the card (easy-peasy), will post an update once I get the card and get the bonus! I am happy with my cheap Xiaomi wireless earphones for SGD20.. and for expensive ones I still have my over-ear Sony noise-cancelling one. 

I plan to cancel my Standard Chartered card soon to return as a new-to-bank customer in the future as well. 

What's your take on rinsing the new-to-bank bonuses on your non-main cards? I feel that it is still free money, so why not leverage on it. On that note, HSBC has one of the worst service ever, they denied my application without proper reasoning despite my credit score being the highest. #highlynotrecommended. 

Monthly Expense: 2021 January

Finally my favorite day of the month! Where I compile my expenses and match them to the forecast and see how in-line I am. This month is a good month for expenses even though I restarted working in the office, I'm actually back to a low compared to the last 6 months. 

Expense 2021 ~Jan 

Special highlights for specific categories..

Food&Groceries

This low figure actually surprised me.. considering my food usually averages around ~SGD1k especially that I need to eat out for lunch working in the office. However, I can expect late next month for my expense in this category to shoot up a little considering that I've been subsidizing my grocery fees with the government-given vouchers.. been using SGD30~40 every weekend. I still have some left for probably the first two weeks of Feb and we can expect to see the expense start crawling up.

Transportation expense is non-negotiable.. however, I always give a little buffer in case I need to take Grab or cab.. 

The rest of the expenses stay pretty low.. starting the year good.. and I've actually shopped quite a fair bit so this year I don't really have much to splurge on.

Cheers~ And looking forward to a good Feb!