The month of December saw us staying largely in Manila Philippines. This location was shaping up to be a massive cost savings in our international travel FIRE budget. It really had everything going for it; extremely cheap lodging, transportation, and food. When we tallied the final numbers however, the savings were meager and the discomfort of where we lived was high.

While December was mostly Manila, it does include six days of Vietnam. I will call out how each expense category breaks down across those two locations. In a later post I will cover the expat cost of living for Manila, prorating the 26 days of expenses across a full month.

Income

Here is our income for the month. There is nothing unusual coming in this month like there sometimes is in other months.

Rental	$3,500.00
Investment	$3,803.13
Interest	$59.51
Total	$7,362.64

Spending

The following is our spending for the month. In the next section I’ll get into an analysis of why this was much higher than we expected and what went wrong.

Total: $7,162.64, Withdrawal Rate: 3.79%

Accommodation	$1,234.40	$759.15 manila airbnb (26 days), $344.67 vietnam airbnb (6 days), $130.58 manila hotel (one night)
Cigna Global Silver w/ US	$612.18	Sinking fund
Grocery Store / Food	$759.09	$635.23 groceries, $123.86 food not at home (restaurants, etc) in Vietnam. In Manila we tracked any food not at home as discretionary.
House Escrow (taxes 4091.68, insurance 1518, Rent Profit Tax 3115)	$867.22	Sinking fund
Discretionary	$755.27	$445.21 is restaurant / grab food
Transportation	$60.18	Grab rides
Storage Unit (10′ x 20′)	$232.00
Clothes	$100.00	Sinking fund
Life Insurance	$99.81
Vaccines	$91.58	Sinking fund
Phone (Google FI)	$52.29
Gifts	$60.00	Sinking fund
Sponsor Child & Giving	$253.39	Khan Academy donation and sponsored child
Auto escrow (non-owner)	$41.50	Sinking fund
Duolingo	$20.00	Sinking fund
eSIM	$20.00	Sinking fund
Virtual Mailbox	$11.00
Amazon Prime	$11.59	Sinking fund
Cloud Storage	$2.99
Prop Mgmt Monthly Fee	$350.00
Prop Mgmt Maintenance	$330.66	HOA fees
Flights	$764.24	From Vietnam to Chiang Mai
Kid Purchases	$36.33	This is their money, but it funnels through our account.
Vietnam eVisa, and immigration fastrack	$180.28
Failed USPS address change	$2.50	We tried to extend our USPS mail forwarding, but it required in-person verification.
haircuts	$22.17	AC and JC
Kids Invest	$78.00	This is money they earned but it funnels through our account
Protein/creatine	$113.96
Total Expenses	$7,162.64

Analysis

At the beginning of the month we were expecting our spending to be so low that it would be under 3%. Instead it turned out to be 3.79%. At nearly 4% that is almost as much as we can afford to spend in a month on our FIRE budget. The reason that is so depressing is because our stay in Manila was not good. We at least expected the sucky living conditions to be useful in that it could save us money to spend later, but that really wasn’t the case.

What lead to the costs increasing in Manila? It’s really just a few categories of expenses. Discretionary ran very high, mostly because we were grabbing food from restaurants or going to restaurants. This was a failure on our part in allowing ourselves to get beaten down by the conditions we were living in, and seeking out comfort and convenience.

Another inflated category was groceries. We were boxed into our condo by traffic and couldn’t easily get to a grocery store. Because of that we Grabbed most of our groceries. That ran costs up between increased item prices, delivery fees and tips. On top of that we couldn’t even get many of the items we ordered, so we ended up eating some makeshift meals. That probably also contributed to the Grab restaurant orders.

Accommodation also ran over unexpectedly. After we failed to get a Grab back to our condo from BGC, we realized how bad traffic was in our condo area. Because of this we made the decision to leave our condo a day early, on Christmas day when traffic was lighter. We got a hotel over by the airport which added to our costs.

If we look at this budget month as glass half full, we did stay under 4%. That means we had a sustainable plan. However, the savings were too small in my opinion given the living conditions.