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!!
Welcome to our August spending post! Our total spend for the month was £5,987 or $7,425.
It’s all change this month! During August we moved back to the UK, meaning from next month we can finally stop having split currencies in the spending posts!
We’ll provide a full update soon, but we’re currently temporarily renting an apartment while purchasing a property in England.
Mr Way will be working part time, as will Mrs Way, with the little one (now 3 years old!) making the most of the free childcare hours.
There’s lots to catch up on, but we’ll leave the summary there for the sake of this post and get straight to the spending.
The biggest item this month was a car purchase in the UK! We sold our car in the Caribbean, so we’ve reduced the cost by the sale amount.
We’ve been living in the Caribbean for over a year now. Time flies! We wanted to provide a summary of our first year of Turks and Caicos living costs. This includes all setup costs like a new car, housing deposits etc.
Our first year abroad also included a couple of expensive trips away which don’t help the total here! We really wanted to make the most of our time here because we aren’t certain how long this adventure will last.
We break our main expenses down into broad categories starting with the big 3; housing, food and transport. Everything else falls into the entertainment/misc category.
Category
Amount (£)
Amount ($)
Notes
Housing
£36,178
$43,414
See below
Food
£8,739
$10,487
See below
Transport
£14,348
$17,217
See below
Entertainment/misc
£17,573
$21,087
See below
Total ($)
$92,205
Total (£)
£76,838
Housing
Our housing costs have rocketed due to the cost of living in Turks and Caicos. Our rent here is more than our entire living costs were in the UK!
When we moved, there were very few options available for long term rental. Most landlords in Turks and Caicos have gone to short term rentals to maximise profits.
We ended up in a very nice place, but it really hurt us financially. We’re spending $2,850 per month for a 2 bedroom, before any bills.
Luckily we keep our bills very low by refusing to use the air conditioning! This gets much harder in the sweaty summer months…..
We could have gone for somewhere cheaper for rent, but we would have probably ended up needing a second car, so the costs would have distributed elsewhere. It also feels incredibly safe where we are and we can walk to one of the best beaches in the world!
Food
Our food costs have also increased significantly due to our new location. With everything being imported, costs are 2-3x what we’re used to, which is typical of the cost of living generally in Turks and Caicos. We still try to be as savvy as possible though!
The ‘food’ category contains everything we spend in the supermarket, so it has some toiletries etc thrown in.
We always go to a ‘local/bulk’ supermarket to try and keep costs down, with anything else being bought at the bigger supermarket.
Transport
Our transport spending has been significantly distorted by the cost of purchasing a new car after moving to Turks and Caicos. We did sell our car in the UK, with the new Caribbean vehicle only costing slightly more, so it’s not as bad as it seems.
We wanted to include this in the total spending for the year because it’s an essential for getting set up in a new country. Especially one with no public transport!
Aside from that, we actually keep our costs quite low. Mr Way cycles to work almost every day and we walk as much as possible. This is very unheard of on the island and we get lots of strange looks!
This is one of our biggest gripes about living here. Nothing has been planned logically, so most places are not walkable and in fact many areas don’t even have a footpath.
It’s unfortunate to see such a beautiful place not being planned properly for pedestrian use – unfortunately car usage here is very high and most vehicles are huge American trucks! Don’t get me started on the driving – most people are on their phone every time they drive and drink-driving is worryingly common!
Entertainment/Misc
This category has been inflated by a big trip to New York in December, as well as lots of general sightseeing, activities and eating out in our new country. All well worth it!
We also had a trip to Antigua, which was very expensive.
All in all, a very fun and very expensive year.
That’s All for Now, Folks!
In theory, the living costs would settle down somewhat after the initial year in Turks and Caicos. Big purchases like the car are out of the way, and we’ve started to settle into more of a routine here.
Unfortunately, we’re about to flip that on it’s head!
We’re moving country again this summer for Mr Way’s job.
We’ll still be in the Caribbean but will now be exploring a new country. We’re hoping we will be able to find somewhere cheaper to live, so that will be a significant help on the accommodation expenses.
However, Mrs Way won’t be working as she was unable to find a job. This means we lose her income which will have a significant impact on our overall financial picture. If we spend the same as we have this year, we’ll be in trouble! Time to go back to our frugal ways and see how low we can push our living costs for the coming year.
Savings
This year, despite our huge spending total, we’ve still managed to contribute some funds to our FIRE Fund. This totals approximately $30k and is possible due to both of us working. As mentioned above, this won’t be the case soon, so we’ll have to see how the coming year progresses.
Even if we can’t contribute to our FIRE Funds in the next 12 months, we’re still keen to go on this new journey and explore a new country within the Caribbean. We’re enjoying the adventure as a family and that’s what it’s all about for us.
Our FIRE Fund targets remain at £375,000, or £15,000 annual spending each. While this seems low compared to our current costs, it’s still our aim to retire in the UK, or somewhere with similarly low expenses.
We’ll continue to post our spending every month, and we also do a more in-depth review of our spending at the end of the calendar year.
Welcome to our July spending post! Our total spend for the month was £4,042 or $5,115.
Time for a big announcement. We’re leaving the Caribbean!
We were supposed to be moving country for Mr Way’s job, but this has fallen through and we will now be returning to the UK. This is equal parts relief and disappointment for us. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed our time here, but we weren’t willing to move again for a company who weren’t treating us well.
Because of this, we have a few differences in our spending this month. We paid our last rent instalment because the last month was paid for on moving in. We’ve also increased our spending in a few areas as we look to make the most of the last few weeks here. Anyway, on to the spending!
Welcome to our June spending post! Our total spend for the month was £4,483 or $5,379.
This was one of our best months since our move to the Caribbean. We had no large expenses and generally kept our spending to a minimum. In theory we should be pleased, but the fact our minimum spending is over $5k is still quite shocking to us!!
Welcome to our May spending post! Our total spend for the month was £4,972 or $5,968.
All in all, this was a fairly typical month for us. We had a few large car expenses, with the insurance and tax being due. Otherwise, everything went fairly smoothly!
Welcome to our April spending post! Our total spend for the month was £6,602 or $7,922.
A two week holiday to Antigua has really destroyed our spending this month!
We had already paid for the flights and half of the villa, but this month added the extra half of the villa as well as all of our eating out/activities while away.
Fingers crossed we can get back to normal in the coming months, we certainly won’t be going on another holiday for a while so that should help!
Welcome to our March spending post! Our total spend for the month was £4,528 or $5,433.
Another steady month as our spending hovers around the $5k mark. Unfortunately, we expect April to be a different story, as we’re heading to Antigua for 2 weeks!
We’ve had major issues with our website recently, hence the delay in posting. Unfortunately, our Bluehost subscription failed to auto-renew, which they didn’t inform us of. This led to our site being deleted and all data lost! After many emails, they finally managed to restore everything, so fingers crossed we’re back to normal. We were really worried for a while that we had lost 4 years’ worth of blogging!
Welcome to our February spending post! Our total spend for the month was £4,156 or $4,988.
We finally made it below $5,000! We’ve had the target in mind for a while now, but the last couple of months have included expenses for a future holiday. Now that’s out the way, we finally managed to get the total below target! It doesn’t feel like a huge achievement, because we used to spend so much less. But actually, $5k in such a HCOL place is quite impressive!
