Annual Spending – 2022

On January 4, 2023February 14, 2023 By A Way to LessIn Finances, FIRE, Monthly Spending2 Comments

Summary

Welcome to our 2022 annual spending post! Our total spend for the year was £69,738. For context, this is for 2 adults plus a two-year-old, living in the Caribbean since March!

If you’ve been following our monthly spending posts, you’ll know how this goes. Since we moved to the Caribbean in March, our spending has been quite ridiculous! We always knew our costs would increase, but spending nearly £70k just seems crazy to us. It’s nearly 3x our spending when we lived in the UK!

Hopefully in 2023 we can reduce this number, as the main setting up costs (buying a car etc) are now out of the way.

Regardless, we’re comfortable with all of the decisions we’ve made. We bought a sensible small car to reduce our runnings costs, we’re always savvy with the food shopping and we don’t eat or drink out as much as most people.

We’ve also spent quite a lot on holidays/travel, but this will continue. The aim is to explore the Caribbean/wider area while we’re here, so we fully accept the extra spending in that department! For more detail on that, see Mr Way’s Annual Review Post.

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2022 Financial Review

On January 3, 2023February 14, 2023 By A Way to LessIn Caribbean Adventure, Finances, FIRELeave a comment

Here it is! Our financial review for 2022. Below, we’ll detail how we each got on this year, including progress towards our FIRE goals.

If you want to see a more personal review of 2022, see this post by Mr Way.

Mr Way

As we’ve mentioned elsewhere, moving to the Caribbean has come with some significant moving costs. We’ve also ramped up our spending since we want to make the most of our time here. Because of this, we haven’t actually added to our FIRE funds since moving.

We did add a large lump sum in March, from the proceeds of our UK house sale.

As 2023 arrives, we do have a bit of a stash starting to appear in our Caribbean account, so we’ll look to put some money into our savings shortly.

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2022 Personal Review – Mr Way

On January 2, 2023February 14, 2023 By Mr WayIn Caribbean Adventure, Finances, FIRE, Frugality, Mental Health, Minimalism, Travel4 Comments

It’s time for my 2022 Personal Review – what a year it has been!

First and foremost, Happy New Year to you all! Hopefully 2023 brings you health, happiness and prosperity.

My 2021 review promised that the blog would become a priority for us again. Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened yet, due to the chaos of setting up our new lives in the Caribbean! Fingers crossed 2023 sees us finally find the time.

Leaving It All Behind

The start of 2022 saw us unravelling the lives we had built in the UK. I had lived in the same place for nearly 14 years. We owned our home and had lots of commitments, both personal and professional. We also had lots of belongings!

Selling our house was a huge undertaking, but a very interesting process to go through for the first time. Alongside selling the property itself, we also got rid of most of our belongings. As someone who had been wanting to live a more minimalist life, having to fit everything you own into suitcases is quite a strong motivation to get on with it!

We didn’t quite manage to achieve the goal, because we’ve left a lot of sentimental belongings at parents’ houses. Nevertheless, the process has been very freeing and is something we’ll try hard not to go back on without good reason.

As well as the physical ‘stuff’, we also had a lot of loose ends to tie up. I was the Chairman of my local tennis club, which was upsetting to leave behind. However, I hadn’t been able to play for a while due to a long-term injury, which made the decision easier in the end.

I was at the point where I really hated my old job so going into 2022, I was VERY happy to be leaving that aspect of my old life behind.

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Monthly Spending – December 2022

On January 1, 2023January 1, 2023 By A Way to LessIn Caribbean Adventure, Finances, FIRE, Monthly SpendingLeave a comment

Summary

Welcome to our December spending post! Our total spend for the month was £5,185 or $6,324.

December saw us visit New York for a week to get our wintery Christmas fix. We hadn’t been to New York before so we did a lot of the ‘touristy’ activities, meaning a lot of expense! We also ate out a lot so the costs quickly added up. It was all very much worth it though, we loved it!

Over the Christmas break we’ve also been planning our next trip, which will be to Antigua in April! We paid for the flights in December so that has added a large sum to this month’s spending!

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