Summary
Welcome to our annual spending post! Our total spend for the year of 2024 was £30,740. For context, this is for 2 adults plus a three/four-year-old and a newborn as of July, living in the UK!
If you’ve been following our monthly spending posts, you’ll know the story. We’ve managed to stick to our frugal instincts in many areas, but are also quite disappointed not to have managed a lower total spend. Especially considering we’re now living mortgage free.
This is mostly down to the increased living costs in the UK since we moved away, combined with costs of setting up a home from scratch. We’ve also consciously made some decisions to increase spending on buying quality items.
See below for a more detailed breakdown of our 2024 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 | £8,496 |
| Food | £6,882 |
| Transport | £3,605 |
| Entertainment/misc | £11,757 |
| Total | £30,740 |
Housing
Aside from standard bills and a roof repair, housing costs are quite straightforward this year.
We bought our house outright when we returned to the UK in 2023, so costs are fairly low in this area for us.
Food
Our 2024 spending on food is significantly reduced from the previous years. The costs in our Caribbean country were ridiculous, so it’s a relief to return home!
We could probably reduce this further but have consciously decided to increase costs to improve the quality of produce we consume.
We signed up for Riverford fruit & veg box deliveries and have been delighted with the quality so far. If you want to give it a try, we can each get £15 off on this link!
Transport
Another category without much of significance this year. We would love the fuel costs to be lower, but Mr Way’s job has been a 30 minute commute away.
Having been made redundant at the end of this year, this will unfortunately increase even further to over an hour!! Thankfully office presence is only required a couple of days a week, and there are good public transport options. The plan is to cycle/train commute as often as possible to reduce driving time.
Entertainment/Misc
This is a high total this year. We’ve had a lot of expense in setting up our lives back in the UK.
We sold most of our belongings to move abroad and only travelled with a small number of suitcases. It takes quite a lot to furnish a house! We also only had warm weather clothes, so needed to add lots of warm gear for the huge change of climate!
As mentioned in the intro, we also consciously decided to buy quality gear as we re-group. This is in the hope that it lasts longer and generally improves our quality of life.
We’re also frustrated to have to add dental plans to our recurring costs. We’ve been unable to find an NHS dentist since our return to the UK so gave in and started paying monthly.
We’ve booked a couple of holidays through 2024 but nothing ridiculous. This also isn’t something we would aim to reduce. If anything we would like to actively increase our spending on travel/holidays in the future.
A totally unnecessary expense this year was an electronic drum kit for Mr Way. This would have been an easy one to avoid, but hey, it’s great fun!!
That’s All for Now, Folks!
We’re looking forward to new challenges in 2025.
Mr Way starts a new job in January. It’s far from ideal, with a large commute to contend with. For more detail on this, see Mr Way’s upcoming Review post.
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 2025 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 upcoming 2024 Financial Review. For a more personal take on how our 2024 went, Mr Way will also be posting a 2024 Personal Review, so keep an eye out for that.