How I Controlled My Spending to Just $1,605 in August 2025—and Why You Should Care About Every Dollar You Drop

Ever wonder how much your spending habits reveal about your life’s blueprint? Tracking expenses isn’t just about crunching numbers — it’s a revealing narrative of priorities, flexibility, and the financial dance we all perform, sometimes gracefully and other times, well… less so. In this mid-month update, I peel back the curtain on my own spending — from the truly essential inflexible costs to the splurges that add color to daily life. If you thought budgeting was just about rigid limits, think again. By categorizing expenses into flexible vs. inflexible, finite vs. ongoing, and roles vs. responsibilities, I aim to provide insight into a lifestyle that’s single, seasoned, and mortgage-free. Curious how these layers stack up in real life? Let’s dive in and challenge the way you see your own financial footprint. LEARN MORE

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I decided to do a mid-month update so that the updates will not lag too far behind. I would usually do this when I remember, or when I have the time so they can have a three month lag.

You can review my past spending logs by going to the personal notes section of investment moats here in the future.

How I Group My Spending.

One of the reasons for publishing the spending is to show people just how spending should be. Some would wonder if it is consistent or erratic, high or low. If you are interested, you see it, and you form your own tale about it.

You will be able to tune in to a spending profile of someone who is single, older, a fully paid up home. If you spend more than this, then you can ponder why is that and what you think about it. If you spend less than this, then you can ponder why and what do you think about it.

I group my spending based around a few technical grouping:

Flexible or Inflexible: There are some spending that we can be more flexible with. The spending tends to fluctuate over time. There are some spending that is more inflexible. The impact of this is felt more if you are retrench from work, wish to take a hard pivot in your life or career, planning for financial security or future retirement. A more inflexible spending would require your planned income stream to be more conservative while you can take some more risk if you have flexibility in your spending.
Finite or Ongoing: There are some spending that will stop at some point but there are some spending that we don’t see it stopping objectively. Finite spending are insurance premiums, mortgage, allowance for kids, allowance for parents etc. Ongoing spending is a certain kind of transport spending.
Role or Responsibility: What am I currently? Am I a worker? A husband? Or a Son? Some of the spending are group this way so that we are able to see just how much we are spending on something. Some of these responsibility will go away. For example, you spend on some travels, clothes, pay income tax because you are a worker. But if you are planning for a non-working phase of life, would you wish to know how much that you spend today can be peeled away.

In a way, this works for me because I always have an eye from the Financial Independence planning perspective. You might not, and you have your own reasons.

I hope that your way of grouping have some sensibility to it and helps you in your own way.

This is the spending for the month of August. Illustrations can be found on my Instagram here.

Due to busy work, I could not find time for anything other than the usually reading. Thus, spending for August is kept rather low.

The Essential Inflexible Spend

I wrote about my essential inflexible spend here in this note: What kind of lifestyle would I need to buy for myself?

I group and track this set of rather inflexible spending to be reflective about how realistic is the numbers as part of the notes written above. The income stream from my Daedalus Income Portfolio is meant to pay for this spending as well.

The food spending is lower because of a few reasons:

Eating food left over from Providend events. There will usually be food left over from events so some of the interested staff will pack up and have them for the night. If not too many are interested, then usually that ends up in my stomach.
CDC Supermarket vouchers means the groceries bills are lower.

Conservancy fee was back to normal at $89 monthly. Overall, the essential inflexible spend is lower than the $850 monthly plan for Daedalus Income portfolio.

The Basic Inflexible Spending

The difference between the basic and the essential is that.. its less essential. You can probably think of something that you can at least be slightly more flexible… but actually not too flexible about that would make life more sane.

You want to renovate your place every 10 years or replace something right? You want to try and make life easier on an ongoing basis right? You want to take better care of your health right? Some of you will have strong opinions about some areas, more than others. To you the spending can be rather inflexible, but if you touch your heart, you know you can cut if the conditions are really bad.

If it fits those it ends up here.

This is also eventually what Daedalus Income Portfolio need to provide.

I describe this spending in this note: Aside from my most essential spending needs, I need $5,160 yearly for my basic needs. I would set aside $174,000 to provide income for it.

The switch to my water heater spoiled so I decided to buy some to repair myself. It was a scary experience.

I spent $177 for the initial consultation at Singapore General Hospital for my private hospital consultation. Given the kind of shield and rider that I have, most likely this will not get reimbursed.

The Flexible Spends

I would group most of my spending that are flexible into one big pot. Realistically, this is the spending that make life interesting.

Realistically, we can be more flexible with these spends as well.

I find this spending to be less important for long term retirement planning but you might hold a different opinion. I do think that if you wish to enjoy something, maybe you would also want to work for it. But there are some sub-accounts that allow me to tune in to them.

I decide to buy another Tribit StormBox Micro. This is a portable bluetooth speaker that cost me $67.55. I actually had one for about $55 bucks bought a year ago (which is still working).

I bought a Samsung 990 Evo Plus 2 TB NVME drive for $155.

I would seldom commit to buying a more premium NVME and decide to buy this for my new second hand Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 9 for Investment Moats.

In August, I have the privilege to have meals with the following people:

Eileen

The meals with them came up to a total of $34.

For the most part, I spent $159 on Peanut butter and Red Bean Shio Pan from Gokoku Japanese Bakery.

Basement 1 of Guoco Tower in Tanjong Pagar.

Spending Funded from Other Sources

These are spending that comes from sinking fund/saving groups that we capitalized.

This would be mainly for my real insurance protection needs. You can read more about them here: Cutting My F.I. Capital Needs for Insurance Premiums from $131,366 to $58,132 by Prepaying for It.

If I capitalized this spending, I take it out from my recurring spend. A few line items of my insurance are really finite. Term insurance is. My $50,000 Limited Whole Life is. My health insurance is in my inflexible essential spend above, which I have plan as part of my expenses even if I am not spending it today (so as to shore it up for the later years).

Spending on Work

I don’t have a lot of responsibilities like a lot of other people. Spending on work is a way to track those spending that is directly attributed to work. If I stop working this goes away.

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Kyith is the Owner and Sole Writer behind Investment Moats. Readers tune in to Investment Moats to learn and build stronger, firmer wealth foundations, how to have a Passive investment strategy, know more about investing in REITs and the nuts and bolts of Active Investing.

Readers also follow Kyith to learn how to plan well for Financial Security and Financial Independence.

Kyith worked as an IT operations engineer from 2004 to 2019. Currently, he works as a Senior Solutions Specialist in Insurance Start-up Havend. All opinions on Investment Moats are his own and does not represent the views of Providend.

You can view Kyith’s current portfolio here, which uses his Free Google Stock Portfolio Tracker.

His investment broker of choice is Interactive Brokers, which allows him to invest in securities from different exchanges all over the world, at very low commission rates, without custodian fees, near spot currency rates.

You can read more about Kyith here.