Summary
Welcome to our annual spending post! Our total spend for the year of 2023 was £55,350. For context, this is for 2 adults plus a two-year-old, living in the Caribbean until August, then home again to the UK!
If you’ve been following our monthly spending posts, you’ll know the story. Living costs in Turks and Caicos were insane and our spending went through the roof. Since returning to the UK in late August, we’ve also spent a lot of money on rent initially, then kitting out our new home. We also bought a car on our return to the UK!
All in all, a very expensive year – but thankfully cheaper than last year!
We purchased our new home in November. We managed to buy the house outright, so this should have a significant impact on our living costs going forward. Here’s to a much cheaper 2024!!
See below for a more detailed breakdown of our 2023 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/misc category.
| Category | Amount |
|---|---|
| Housing | £24,796 |
| Food | £7,419 |
| Transport | £7,251 |
| Entertainment/misc | £15,884 |
| Total | £55,350 |
As you can see, most of the costs came during our months overseas, as well as the initial period setting back up in the UK!
And here’s a comparison with previous years:
Fingers crossed we should be on a downward trend, with much lower total spending in 2024!
Housing
Our housing costs for 2023 are ridiculously high again. This is mainly because of the rent in Turks and Caicos where we lived until the end of August. We were paying nearly $3,000 per month on rent, before any bills!
Now that we’re back in the UK, we’ve bought a house outright. This means our housing costs will be significantly lower in the future. We’re looking forward to seeing how low we can keep our spending here going forward!
Food
Our spending on food was also really high while we lived abroad. It’s much cheaper now we’re home so we’ll look to keep making savings here.
Transport
Our transport costs were actually low while abroad. Mr Way was cycling to work, and the island was really small so it wasn’t possible to do much mileage on the car!
Unfortunately, most of the cost has come since returning to the UK. Buying a car, even second hand, is really expensive. Add on insurance, fuel etc and the total soon racks up.
Mr Way’s new job is a ~30 minute commute away, so our transport costs will probably be higher than we’re used to. We do try to minimise our car usage elsewhere and walk and cycle as much as possible.
Entertainment/Misc
Our spending in this category was fairly high while living in the Caribbean. We didn’t scrimp on eating out etc because we wanted to make the most of our time there. We also had some great holidays!
We don’t regret any of it, but we’ll definitely be reducing our spending here, as with the other categories, as we settle back in to ‘normality’ in the UK.
That’s All for Now, Folks!
We’re pretty excited to see how low we can get our spending in 2024.
With a new baby on the way, I’m sure there will be additional costs along the way. But last time out, we really didn’t spend much so we should be able to achieve similar results this time around!
Fingers crossed we’re able to keep our spending low across the board and focus on padding out our FIRE funds, which haven’t made much progress over the last few years!
Our FIRE Fund targets remain at £375,000, or £15,000 annual spending each. While living costs have increased, we’re still confident we can be well within this target.
We hope 2024 brings you everything you hope for. Let us know how your annual spending looked and what you make of our new total!
If you want to see how our FIRE Funds are coming along, see our 2023 Financial Review. For a more personal take on how our 2022 went, Mr Way will also be posting a 2023 Personal Review, so keep an eye out for that too.