My spend always seems to be more than most other FIRE bloggers - sometimes by a lot.
It makes me feel a little guilty even though I'm not sure it should. We live within our means and in an intentional way - words such as ethical, thoughtful, caring, value, environment and enjoyment are important to me. I'm far from perfect on these things, but my centre of gravity certainly leans towards these intentions.
I've made a list of some aspects of my current lifestyle. It's not everything, and I've deliberately left out my many faults so that the list didn't become too long!
Sally and I share a quite small but very nice apartment. It's 61 sqm / 650 sq ft.
My possessions are mostly the things I need, plus the relatively few things that I value. Even if I wanted lots of stuff (which I don't), where would I put it?
I'm a whizz with shopping lists, and big purchases are rarely made on impulse. However, I'm happy to spend a sizeable amount on something that offers good use and value. My favourite recent purchase is a stainless steel reusable coffee pod - bought for environmental reasons, but good on the pocket too.
I try not to create excessive waste, and get annoyed with the amount of packaging that comes with our groceries.
From the two weeks of keeping my what I do timesheet at the beginning of April, I found that 75% of my 9-5 daytime was spent cycling or skiing, doing my blog or reading other blogs, coffee with friends, French lessons and visiting family.
I started vegetarianism as a trial a little over a year ago and I'm still doing it.
I'm determined not to let early retirement make me lazy.
That list doesn't scream of extravagance and waste to me. But the facts are that my costs are still more than many others. It makes me wonder whether that matters and is there any point to my monthly cost post.
I decided it doesn't matter if my costs are different from others so long as I understand them, we can afford them, and they're in line with my ideas of a reasonably intentional lifestyle.
As to giving up on the monthly cost post, I remembered back to one of the reasons I started my blog which was when I was trying to estimate how much my own early retirement might cost. I found examples, but most didn't match my planned lifestyle. So I'm going to stick with these posts in case there is someone else who might find them useful. Even if it's just one person.
Eventually, after that long introduction, here are the costs for May. The big purchase was a new bike which unfortunately wasn't for me😫. In case you're new to my costs, they are the total for me and Sally, so a household of two.
Although I count myself as an ex-accountant, I still like numbers. Admitting that is almost as sad as the fact I kept an early retired timesheet back in April.
So this month I enjoyed a little extra number crunching to see what type of things we spend money on. I used seven categories centred around the essentials, the big ticket-items and the things I enjoy.
It shows around half the spend (the right side of the pie) is mostly on necessities while the other half goes on more discretionary items (the left side of the pie). I like that half our costs are on fun stuff - I wonder how that compares to other people?
I'm interested to see if the pie still looks the same at the end of the year. I suspect the sports and activities may be a smaller slice, but travel will increase - I've got some trips to book.
Some costs come along in lumps that aren't often repeated. For example, the biggest item in sports and activities is Sally's new bike but, to put it in perspective, the last bike she bought was nineteen years ago. It includes some camping gear too which also won't be a regular purchase.
Very tenuously linked to costs, but definitely linked to FIRE, is the lovely time we spent last week with our friends Mark, Olivia and their daughter, Charlotte. Catching up with friends is a big positive of being early retired. There's no calculating how many vacation days we have left and no work deadlines to worry about. We went for a day, but stayed longer because we were having fun. That flexibility wasn't so easy when I worked. We perhaps spent a little extra on the going out costs, but that's in the good spending category.
Targets
On the plus side, I'm about to book the flights for our travelling, and the duration has stretched to 9 or 10 weeks. The plan is a month in Costa Rica with Sally, followed by a month in Colombia with my daughter, and possibly a week or two in California which would be just me.
My French hasn't seen the same progress. Our lessons have finished and, without them, I find the days go by without any effort to practice. Lessons are expensive, but they seem to be what I need. I'm simply shocking at foreign languages so it feels like a very uphill battle. No comments about my bad English please🤣.
Running is still a bright red bad mark, although with an excuse. My knee hasn't been a 100% right since I twisted it skiing in February. It's improving and I'm sure I could run on it, but the doctor said no, so I'm listening for now and hoping for good news from yesterday's MRI.
As to a GoPro video, I have no excuses. Maybe June will be the month I eventually start on this target, although I suspect I've said similar before.
I might not have made much progress on my targets during May, but I still like the idea of the target tracker (thanks to Joe at Retireby40 for the idea). By keeping score, the targets stay in my mind and, with more than half the year still to go, there's still hope.