Investing October 5, 2025 0 Comments

How I Maintained Powerhouse Productivity and Growth with Just $1,807 in September 2025—The Spending Secrets Most Entrepreneurs Overlook

Ever wonder what it really looks like to manage personal spending when you’re single, living in a fully paid-up home, and eyeing financial independence? Well, I’ve decided to pull back the curtain and share my monthly spending breakdown starting 2025. Why now? The blog traffic’s dipped, so it feels like the perfect moment to get real and open up without the usual fanfare. You see, tracking and grouping my expenses isn’t just about numbers — it’s about creating a map of financial freedom. By categorizing spending into flexible vs. inflexible, finite vs. ongoing, and viewing them through the lens of life roles, I give myself a clear picture of where the money flows — and what can be trimmed when the time calls for tough choices. Curious to see where a steady, thrifty spend lands and maybe spot a few surprises along the way? Let’s dive into September’s numbers and the stories they tell — including the saga of a hair clipper that survived a toilet plunge! LEARN MORE

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I would periodically update everyone my personal spending. This is something that I decide to start in 2025 since this blog is less visited compared to last time that I felt comfortable to share.

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 September. Illustrations can be found on my Instagram here.

My spending in September is higher but not really by a lot. You would notice that there are different kind of spending and what happens is that they usually work out into a fixed amount over time.

I will break how I spend in the subsequent sections.

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:

I eat usually 1-2 meals a day and I home prep my food. So the amount you see in Essential food & groceries is the costs such as meal, fruit and vegetable costs, seasoning costs.
CDC Supermarket vouchers means the groceries bills are lower.

Utilities, Conservancy and Essential replacement this month is made up of my Zero1 mobile plan which I used as home broadband, Giga mobile plan and Sengkang Town Council conservancy fee. I paid no utilities this month because my utilities spending is low and there are still excess government U-save that set against this.

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 also 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.

I want to share something stupid.

The other home maintenance includes the purchase of this Kemei hair clipper for $27. I bought this to replace the SAME hair clipper which was perfectly functioning. That hair clipper must have been with me for 3 years (bought for $34 if I am right).

I would usually clip my own hair in the toilet. I think it must have been a split second loss of attention and I dropped the whole hair clipper into the toilet bowl.

And the freaking hair clipper was still vibrating in the water.

I don’t know what to do but I reach in and took the vibrating hair clipper out from the water.

It was still vibrating!

I decided to switch it off tried to dry it. Didn’t put in rice (because I don’t have rice) which is what will really suck out the water. Anyway, it stopped working 4 days later.

But since male humans need to cut hair, I need to replacement it.

I toyed with buying some more sophisticated shaver but after watching some review of these shavers more than hair clipper, I decided to buy this back.

I spent $710.89 for the rest of my private-route colonoscopy test at Singapore General Hospital. It is low so the shield plan didn’t got activated and I don’t have a rider that covers this. You can read about my colonoscopy experience here.

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 bought a Philips Egg Machine ($34) for the office because I notice a few people bringing one egg to the office and it might be more convenient if we have something that can prepare easily. But it has to work. We are still fine tuning what we learn about the egg machine but initial signs are positive.

I bought a third-party battery to replace my uncle’s Asus laptop ($45). The battery was bloated and it affected the touchpad. Battery link here. I am not sure how well it is working but I don’t ask money back from my uncle.

I paid some bái jīn (白金) to a colleague whose relative passed away ($50)

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

Jialing
Daniel
Matthias
Zhihan and Alvin

The meals with them came up to a total of $65

My colleagues, client advisers Zhihan and Alvin left Providend on the 24/25 September respectively.

This month’s treat for colleagues at Providend:

The Test Kitchen: $81
Tous Les Jours: $47
Munchi pancakes: $5
Peanut and red bean Shiopans from Gokoku: $162

I discovered this obscure bakery call Baker’s Bench at Bukit Pasoh. I took a look, smell the shit then decide to by the CHICKIE BREKKIE SOURDOUGH BURGER (house chicken patty, omelette, vegan aioli) {its at the bottom most left egg burger} and BACON, LETTUCE, FRIED EGG, HONEY MUSTARD CIABATTA {bottom section, second food section, deep inside}.

Total damage: $87.

I discovered this Char Siew Bao from Thow Yen Foodstuff on Shopee. We tried one time and some of them like it. My colleagues Choon Siong and Ferris hail from Malaysia and the char siew bao there is much better. If it lives up to their standards, then that means something. So when I bulk order (because Kyith eats enough on weekends), I buy some for them ($10)

I also bought a Fifine 1440p FHD PC Webcam for a colleague. Really not sure about the quality but going with fifine should be safe enough. Damage: $27.

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.