I know it's the shortest month, but February seemed to go by very quickly, and I've now gone through our costs for the month. As in January, we spent a whole heap of money, but mainly because we had a week's ski holiday in France, a long weekend in a hotel while I did the Ras Al Khaimah half marathon, plus I paid for my flights to Prague and accommodation for the marathon that I'm doing there in May. Without these, our costs were less than the £3,000 that I want to achieve and, as these costs are not things that get repeated every month, I feel that there is hope that we can start to live within our means!
We now have two months of cost data. Although it's still not enough data to work out sensible average monthly costs, I have started to include an average column.
I'm glad to see that some of the high expenditure items of January have dropped significantly in February, such as electronics, clothes/shoes and sports shoes & equipment. I thought that this would happen, but it is still good to see that it did. The grocery bill has also reduced significantly which will partly be because we were on holiday or a short break for around 10 days of the month, but also because we shopped more at Carrefour, which is a lower cost supermarket compared to where we used to go. I included alcoholic drinks as a new category this month for purchases from the liquor store. This is because liquor is expensive in Dubai, and it is also an item that I want to keep track of.
In conclusion, February was still expensive, and we can't afford to spend this much each month. If we do, then I will have to go back to work! January had various set up costs (such as the new laptop purchase) as it was my first non-working month, February had the ski holiday, and both had some costs for overseas running events which I don't ordinarily do. I'm therefore hopeful that the average expenditure will start to drop, although I'm nervous that we have the summer holiday flights to book - it seems there is always something!