Well, I have officially been here two months and it has taken just as long to feel like I have found “my groove” not only in my day-to-day life, but in my spending, as well. I still feel #poor, but not nearly as much as before. And I have since remedied that #homeless situation. Life, in general, seems to be on an upswing and now that I have more of a balance, I wanted to share my spending habits so you can see how life does get better, and if you decide to move to Madrid (or anywhere, really), you will see that while you are never as rich as you were when you lived at The International Bank of Mom and Dad, you also won’t be sharing a cardboard box with the man that inevitably lives on your corner. Or maybe you will, but I won’t so…you’re on your own.
Background about each week:
Week One: Paid for my phone bill, coffees, clothes, a couple meals out, and my hair straightening (130 Euro)
Week Two: Paid for a couple nights out, coffee, groceries, some “Chino” things
Week Three: Went shopping once, bought groceries, paid for round trip ticket to Belgium (106 Euro) and for the hostel (45 Euro)-will be taking this trip in December. Without these things, I only spent 63 this week.
Week four: Bought groceries, paid rent, bought a few coffees and went out to eat twice. Also started Spanish class and paid for that.
As you can see, I spent significantly less in my second month in Spain. This total included a (planned) trip to Belgium (160 Euro), rent (380 Euro), and my hair (130 Euro). 2/3 of these things are wants, not needs, and are not monthly expenses. Plus, my income this month was greater than my spending, so…win/ win?
Here is a breakdown of my spending my category:
So-as you can see- once again, my monthly and categorized budgets don’t match up. They are off by about 200 Euro, but that’s okay. Like last month, I am happy just to be keeping track of my spending, even if it’s not exact.
Let’s see…what can I say about my spending habits? I spend entirely too much money on rent…I think I might move in with the homeless community that resides in my neighborhood and nip that whole rent thing in the bud. Other than that, my grocery bill is much higher than I thought it was. I thought I was spending about 100 Euro on food each month, but it’s closer to 200. That seems like a lot of food for one person? I will need to start limiting the weekly food expenditure to 25 Euro. In the U.S, I wasn’t much of a “shopping” person, but I have somehow adopted a nasty shopping habit here. I mean, it’s not awful….but it’s safe to say I have basically purchased an entirely new wardrobe.
As for the uncategorized, that includes a gift I bought as well as the price of gettin’ my hair did. Won’t be happening again for another few months.
Goals for next month:
- Spend under 1,000 Euro
- Spend under 125 Euro on groceries
- Spend less on clothes
- Earn more money than I spend
I earn 1,000 Euro/ month at school (working 16 hours/ week) and an additional 450-500/ month teaching private lessons. This is a separate post for another day, but, ideally, I would like to be able to pay for food and rent through lessons and save my 1,000 for fun money- travel, partying, shopping, etc. Right now, I still feel like I am crawling out of the deep hole that was the first month of throwing money out the window, but I will slowly get there.
Cheers to spending less!
