Summary
Welcome to our annual spending post! Our total spend for the year of 2021 was £26,466. For context, this is for 2 adults plus a baby and includes our wedding!
If you’ve been following our monthly spending posts, you’ll know how this goes. Throughout 2021 we managed to keep our spending pretty low considering we got married in July!
We’re really happy with the total as it’s only just over our £2,000 per month target. With the wedding thrown in there as well as an additional family member since July 2020, we’re really happy.
It was always our aim to spend minimal amounts on Baby Way in the first few years, and so far we have achieved this.
See below for a more detailed breakdown of our 2021 spending.
We break our main expenses down into broad categories starting with the big 3; housing, food and transport. Everything else falls into the entertainment category.
| Category | Amount |
|---|---|
| Housing | £12,279 |
| Food | £4,398 |
| Transport | £1,575 |
| Entertainment/misc | £8,214 |
| Total | £26,466 |
Housing
Our annual spending on housing is as expected. There were no major shocks so it has been consistent around the £1,000 per month mark.
Food
With an average of £367 per month on supermarket spending, we eat really well. We could probably reduce this a little if we really wanted, but we enjoy our food too much to cut significantly!
The ‘food’ category contains everything we spend in the supermarket, so it has some toiletries etc thrown in.
We always do our main shop at Aldi, with any extras we couldn’t find coming from Tesco.
Transport
Our transport costs have increased a bit this year, with restrictions being lifted gradually. We still manage to keep this category fairly low compared to our peers, with Mr Way walking to work and generally using our car as little as possible.
Entertainment/Misc
This year was a strange one. It started off with a lot of wedding costs in this category. Towards the end of 2021 we also added some large costs related to our Caribbean move.
That’s All for Now, Folks!
Our living costs are going to look very different in 2022. We’re aiming to move at the end of February and our rent alone will be around $2,500 per month.
However, we’re still hoping we can save and invest some money towards our FIRE goals.
In reality, our FIRE goals are based on annual spending of £15,000 each, so we’re well under that. We’re happy with this approach, as it means we will have more to spend on holidays etc once we FIRE! It’s still our aim to retire in the UK, or somewhere with similarly low expenses. Because of this, the increase in living costs next year doesn’t need to impact our FIRE goals.
We hope 2021 brings you everything you hope for. Let us know how your annual spending looked and if you can beat ours!
If you want to see how our FIRE Funds are coming along, see our 2021 Financial Review. For a more personal take on how our 2021 went, see Mr Way’s 2021 Personal Review.
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