Day 1947: 1 September 2026
Holy shit did I overspend this month!
I had been drinking too much fancy coffee instead of sticking with the humble Kopi. And it shows in my expenses.
Spending for August 2026
| Category | Amount ($) | Average ($) | Change ($) |
|---|---|---|---|
| travel | 3,097 | 1,339 | +1,758 |
| — airfare | 1,073 | 678 | +395 |
| — hotel | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| — misc | 2,023 | 661 | +1,362 |
| shopping & entertainment | 2,877 | 3,404 | -526 |
| — online shopping | 55 | 515 | -461 |
| — general shopping | 2,382 | 1,641 | +741 |
| — entertainment | 182 | 489 | -307 |
| — appliances & gadgets | 259 | 715 | -456 |
| — apparels | 0 | 44 | -44 |
| housing | 2,800 | 3,333 | -533 |
| — mortgage | 2,800 | 2,800 | 0 |
| — home maintenance | 0 | 533 | -533 |
| bills | 2,760 | 1,526 | +1,234 |
| — gym | 100 | 187 | -87 |
| — utilities | 0 | 50 | -50 |
| — insurance | 2,242 | 930 | +1,312 |
| — phone & internet | 16 | 46 | -30 |
| — helper | 401 | 313 | +88 |
| others | 2,716 | 829 | +1,888 |
| — others | 2,716 | 829 | +1,888 |
| — unknown | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| food | 1,977 | 1,552 | +424 |
| — restaurants | 891 | 582 | +309 |
| — cafes & snacks | 276 | 264 | +12 |
| — hawker | 104 | 162 | -58 |
| — groceries | 705 | 544 | +161 |
| family support | 1,136 | 2,082 | -946 |
| discretionary | 1,000 | 1,000 | 0 |
| transportation | 220 | 525 | -305 |
| — car | 102 | 411 | -310 |
| — public transport | 118 | 114 | +5 |
| health & wellness | 103 | 172 | -69 |
| — dental | 0 | 104 | -104 |
| — medical | 103 | 54 | +50 |
| — personal services | 0 | 15 | -15 |
| total spending | 18,686 | 15,761 | +2,925 |
Remarks
Travel — My family went on a trip to Malaysia while I found myself in another country for a couple of reasons.
General Shopping — Credit card bills from the previous month. I’ll clean this up and categorise this properly from the next report onwards.
Insurance — My wife’s and my hospitalisation plans were both due for payment this month. Since I pay this annually, the average of this category should be the more accurate number.
Discretionary — The idea was that we would each have a personal stash of $500 in a different account to spend as we like. But with my usual lack of discipline, I’ve just been using the shared accounts/cards instead of touching the discretionary stash. That defeats the purpose of it.
Even by my own spendthrift standards, I spent waaay tooooo much this month. At this rate, I’m signing off my life to a lifetime of corporate drudgery which is something I’d rather not do.
I’m going to take an axe to this in September. It’s gonna be a kopi-only month.
Monte Carlo Simulation
I fed this and my past few months expenditure into my very own Monte Carlo simulator (more on this in a later post) and got a rather grim outlook on my early retirement journey.
Simulating an expenditure of $12,960.90 per month and a mortgage of $2,800 per month...
Your spending has a 0.8% chance of success.Yup. 0.8% chance that my investment portfolio would be able to carry me to the end. But hey, it’s more than zero!
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