Summary 

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!

Summary 

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.  

Summary 

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! 

Summary 

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! 

Summary 

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! 

Summary 

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!  

Summary 

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.  

Summary 

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!! 

Summary 

Welcome to our April spending post! Our total spend for the month was £10,415 or $12,811. 

Our first full month of living in the Caribbean! 

The budget was totally blown this month because of our large up-front rent payment. Luckily this is on an interest free loan, but we still wanted to include it now to give an honest account of our set-up costs. As you can see on the chart below, this totally dwarfs the previous 12 months! We obviously knew this was coming with moving to a new, high cost of living country – but it’s still painful to look at! 

We’re slowly getting to grips with the higher cost of living, as well as using $ for everything! Hopefully once the first few months are out of the way we can settle into a ‘steadier’ spending pattern.  

Next month will be another large total because we’ll be buying a car! Thankfully it’s on an interest free loan again which is a huge help. Anyway, back to our April spending.