I'm pretty organised this month, only the 1st of December and I've finished my November costs already. I'm going to award myself a gold star!
I feel it's going to be a short post today. Those who follow my blog may know that I like running and cycling. Well, last night I think I got to sleep around 00h30 and my alarm went off at 04h00 to head out for my Friday morning long run. So, on just 3½ sleep I did a 32km (20 mile) run - boy, do I need to take a nap, hence it's going to be a short post.
And there isn't too much of note in the November costs. I guess the standout items are:
Quite a big spend on gifts as we bought birthday presents for my daughter Rebecca, son Sam and also Sally's sister. I've also bought most of the Christmas presents for my family in the UK - online shopping works great when you have to buy for family in a different country.
I got a refund on the unused portion of the car insurance following the sale of my car. Selling the car was a good idea because I don't think we are missing it too much.
The cat was sick so we've had £481 ($594) in vets bills. A few more visits still required, but hopefully he's nearly better.
I bought some wine, beer and spirits for Christmas and the New Year. This is a dangerous thing to do in November as there is a risk that it disappears sooner than expected and we have to buy it again. Let's hope not, for both my wallet and my head!
The normal table showing the monthly costs for November, the total for the 11 months of the year so far, and also the monthly average cost is below.
For the month, we're well under our budget, although for the monthly average for the year so far we're over budget. As I've said before, it's not a disaster as we live in an expensive city (we're leaving next July) and we've priced checked various items such as groceries and going out costs and know that the same items cost much less in Europe or North America, which is where we expect our forever home to be.
I also don't expect to have much in the way of costs for overseas running events in the years ahead, this year has been exceptional in that regard (they've be zero in previous years). And we can manage our holiday costs down as well if that's what we want to do - I have been surprised at how much we've spent on holidays.
And although it's personal to me, our property rentals generate enough passive income to cover all of our costs without even touching our index funds/ETFs, so I can be pretty relaxed about that. It's been a while since I looked through the income side of things, so maybe that can be a post in the next few weeks.
Well, that's it, short and sweet. I'm off to have that nap 💤