Welcome to our January spending post! Our total spend for the month was £5,216 or $6,259.
As we’ve mentioned before, the goal is to get our spending below $5,000 as often as possible. We paid for our holiday accommodation this month, but otherwise haven’t done too badly!
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – January 2023 “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.
Continue reading “Annual Spending – 2022”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!
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – December 2022 “Welcome to our November spending post! Our total spend for the month was £5,185 or $6,324.
Throughout November we had 2 sets of visitors, so we spent quite a lot on eating out and doing trips etc! Everything is really expensive here, so it very quickly adds up.
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – November 2022 “Welcome to our October spending post! Our total spend for the month was £5,594 or $6,433.
We’re generally expecting to be closer to $5,000 in a ‘typical’ month, so this was a bit above our expectations. This is mostly due to booking flights for our New York trip, as well as extra expenses with visitors in town!
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – October 2022”Welcome to our September spending post! Our total spend for the month was £5,455 or $6,273.
We’re generally expecting to be closer to $5,000 in a ‘typical’ month, so this was a bit above our expectations. This is mostly due to booking a trip to New York!
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – September 2022 “Welcome to our August spending post! Our total spend for the month was £4,383 or $5,259.
With our UK visit over, August was about settling back into our new routine in the Caribbean. Spending wise, we had a fairly consistent month and would be happy if we could stick around this level for the next few months!
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – August 2022 “Welcome to our July spending post! Our total spend for the month was £5,042 or $6,049.
Our July spending was quite high across the board. This is because we spent most of the month back in the UK! Mr Way was back for 2 weeks, with Mrs Way and Baby Way staying for 4. It was great to see family and friends and experience some of the hottest UK weather ever!
With everything being so expensive in the Caribbean, we took the opportunity to fill our suitcases with cheaper clothes, food, toys etc. It made July very expensive, but will save us a fortune over the next few months!
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – July 2022 “Welcome to our June spending post! Our total spend for the month was £3,601 or $4,321.
Our June spending was much lower than the previous two months. We’re finally settling into life in the Caribbean and most of the large start-up costs are now out of the way.
It’s still significantly higher than our living costs in the UK, but we would be very happy if we could consistently spend under $4,500.
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – June 2022 “Welcome to our May spending post! Our total spend for the month was £14,948 or $18,835.
Once again, our spending has been massively impacted by large set-up costs. This month we bought a car for $11,000. We also had the associated costs to pay – insurance, license transfers from UK to local, as well as vehicle registration etc.
As we mentioned last month with our up-front rent payments, we are lucky to have been offered an interest free loan for the car, from Mr Way’s company. We now owe the company nearly $20,000 which is quite scary, but it’s interest free and was a huge, huge help with finding our feet in such an expensive country.
We also made 1.5 rent payments this month, so that will also decrease going forward!
Thankfully we managed to reduce our spending on food this month. We really enjoy trying to create cheap but interesting meals so this is an easy win for us. Even despite our frugal tendencies, the cost of living here has us shocked every time we pay for something!
We also had family visiting during May. While great to see them and spend time together, it did have a large impact on our spending! We spent much more than average eating out, as well as on activities like kayaking and boat trips. It was all very much worth it though!!
Continue reading “Monthly Spending – May 2022”