With 2020 now finally over, we had the chance to sit down and analyze what we spent on in 2020.

Earlier in 2019, we also did an analysis of what we spent on. In 2019, we spent a total of $96,284.92, and majority of it was due to one off expenditure as well as for asset building. We also noted that it is on the high side and we projected that we will be aiming to cut the expenditure down to the S$60,000 range in 2020.

Here’s what we spend on in 2020:

Expenses	Total	Monthly Average	%	yoy change
Meals	$4,348.18	$362.35	6.27%	-10.55%
Transportation (mrt)	$167.00	$13.92	0.24%	-78.99%
Entertainment	$870.49	$72.54	1.26%	-31.91%
Groceries / Home	$2,927.11	$243.93	4.22%	-70.53%
Shopping / Cloths	$816.02	$68.00	1.18%	-46.50%
Phone Bill	$512.20	$42.68	0.74%	-25.47%
Insurance	$3,295.58	$274.63	4.75%	21.14%
Mum	$2,216.67	$184.72	3.20%	-13.90%
Income Tax	$2,165.13	$180.43	3.12%	52.93%
Hair Cut	$226.36	$18.86	0.33%	-29.96%
Digital Subs	$91.68	$7.64	0.13%	-71.63%
Malaysia Property #1	$19,817.73	$1,651.48	28.59%	93.87%
Malaysia Property #2	$2,017.99	$168.17	2.91%	54.17%
Singapore Mortgage	$13,360.33	$1,113.36	19.28%	-17.03%
Travel	$1,858.61	$154.88	2.68%	-27.83%
CPF / EPF	$7,000.00	$583.33	10.10%	-12.50%
Others	$7,622.39	$635.20	11.00%	-45.46%
Total	$69,313.47	$5,776.12	100.00%	-28.01%

Looking back at Mr Budget’s expenditure, the highest expenditure is the payment for his Malaysia property #1, which was completed this year. Bulk of the expenses is from the renovation cost incurred to ensure that the condo can be rented out. This forms almost 30% of his total 2020 expenditure.

The cost for his Malaysia property #2 also increased as the mortgage payment increased along with the construction progress.

The second highest expenditure is his mortgage payment in Singapore which is about 19.28% of his total expenditure. However, this category is actually lower than 2019 as we paid for our renovation in 2019.

Other categories which increased in expenditure includes our insurance payment and our income tax, which increased by over 50%. I think this year our income tax will increase even more, and we really do need to look into optimizing our income tax.

Of course, while these expenditure increase, all of our other expenditures actually dropped. We spent less on food and groceries (because we dined in more), less on shopping and entertainment, less on travel as well as less in other miscellaneous expenditure.

Overall, our total expenditure this year dropped by 28% from $96,284.92 last year to S$69,313.47.

Asset Building Expenditure Makes Up 61% Of Our Total Expenditure

The amount is still very high, translating to about S$5776.12 per month. However, similar to last year, majority of these expenditure are one off expenditure and are channelled into asset building.

These are the expenses paid in 2020 for asset building:

Expenses	Total	%
Malaysia Property #1 (rented out now)	$19,817.73	28.59%
Malaysia Property #2 (TOP in 2022)	$2,017.99	2.91%
Singapore Mortgage (current condo)	$13,360.33	19.28%
CPF / EPF	$7,000.00	10.10%
Total	$42,196.05	60.88%

Expenditure for our properties made up a whopping 61% of our total expenditure, translating to $42,196.05! Actually this is quite high. The S$21,000 spent on our 2 Malaysia properties are actually opportunity cost for us since we could have used that amount for investment. Hopefully this will reward us in the future.

Removing this, the rest of the expenditure is at S$25,258.81, a very manageable sum.

Looking back, we are quite happy with the total expenditure we made in 2020, and we have managed to cut down on a lot of the expenses.

Moving forward in 2021, we expect the Malaysia property #1 to mostly covered by our rental income, while we wait for property #2 to be completed. That should stabilize our Malaysia property related expenditure and in 3 – 5 years time, we hope our expenditure to stabilize around S$30,000 annually. Of course, that may change when our kids arrive.

With these data points, Mr Budget looks forward to comparing them with my 2021 expenses to see if there will be any improvements.

I foresee that our expenses will roughly stabilize at the S$60,000 annual expenses mark.

For those of you who have not been tracking your cashflow, Mrs Budget and I really encourage you to start doing that. Once you get into a monthly habit of collating your expenses, you will continue to do that to find your spending patterns and with that, you are able to better optimise your personal finance and make data driven decisions. 

You can also compare our expenditure with yours and have a good idea on where you stand as a reference point. Both Mrs Budget and I are normal middle class Singaporean, and we cook half of the time at home, and the other half of the time we either dapao in or we grabfood. We dont really have any hobbies other than exercising and watching netflix. 🙂

Happy tracking! 

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