June is the final month of our international gap year, and we spent the entire month (actually 28 days) in Barcelona Spain. This international travel FIRE budget breakdown will finalize the full financial details of this year, and reveal how we did overall at maintaining our target 4% withdrawal rate. Up to this month we were running a tad over 4%, so we needed a good month here to pull it in.
I’ll walk through the income, expenses, analysis of our spending, and then get into the final calculation of our overall withdrawal rate.
Income
Total Income: $7,388.38
This is our typical income plus one small extra – a quarterly dividend check.
| Rental Gross | $3,500.00 |
| Investment Withdrawal | $3,803.13 |
| Interest | $58.52 |
| Dividend | $26.73 |
Expenses
Total Expenses: $7,789.83 Withdrawal Rate: 4.42%
| Accommodation | $3,291.47 | |
| Cigna Global Silver w/ US | $558.42 | Sinking fund |
| Grocery Store | $1,081.70 | We were way over the projection of $616.50. |
| House Escrow | $811.97 | Sinking fund for property taxes, landlord insurance, and rent profit taxes |
| Discretionary | $398.00 | This is the projected amount, but we actually spent $607.06 total. The difference is covered by our side discretionary fund which still has some money in it. |
| Transportation | $52.91 | This is the taxi to the airport, and we didn’t use any other transportation besides our feet. |
| Storage Unit (10′ x 20′) | $246.00 | |
| Clothes | $100.00 | Sinking fund |
| Life Insurance | $99.81 | |
| Vaccines | $91.58 | Sinking fund |
| Phone (Google FI) | $77.25 | This started to creep upward because toward the end of the month our eSIMs expired and we switched to FI data. |
| Gifts | $60.00 | Sinking fund |
| Giving | $43.00 | We gave more than this but I didn’t track it. We left a pile of Euros where a guy in a wheelchair parks outside of the Aldi asking for money. |
| Auto escrow (non-owner auto insurance) | $41.50 | Sinking fund |
| Duolingo | $20.00 | Sinking fund |
| E-Sim (Airalo) | $20.00 | Sinking fund |
| Virtual Mailbox (PostScanMail) | $15.00 | |
| Amazon Prime | $11.59 | Sinking fund |
| Cloud Storage | $2.99 | |
| Prop Mgmt Monthly Fee | $350.00 | |
| Prop Mgmt Maintenance | $104.58 | HOA fees |
| Kid Purchases | $27.06 | This is the kids money but it funnels through our account |
| Kids Invest | $75.00 | This is the kids money but it funnels through our account |
| Credit card annual fees | $190.00 | |
| Claude AI | $20.00 | This is going to be an ongoing budget expense. After using a paid AI I don’t think I can go back. It’s also vital for what I’m doing on yesalittle.com. |
Analysis
The accommodation number struck me as so high that I couldn’t initially comprehend how our withdrawal rate even stayed in the 4’s. The reason that’s possible is only because we had no flights to pay for this month. Our Airbnb was fully awesome, a great place in a great neighborhood of Barcelona. With more advanced planning and willingness to stay in a less prime location, we could have saved enough money here to duck under 4%.
Grocery store costs were still high this month. In the May budget analysis I speculated that with the new Aldi opening up, we would get our grocery costs under control and move closer to projections. That didn’t happen, and it really brought our costs down very little at all. The ~$100 we spent on Nespresso coffee capsules is included in that cost and didn’t help the matter.
The other uncommon expense was our credit card annual fees. Our two travel cards each have a $95 annual fee. I hate the fee but it’s worth it. On the Chase Sapphire Preferred card for example, we get a $100 hotel rebate each year. It lands automatically on our statement the first time we pay for a hotel room with the card.
Ultimately, the original target withdrawal rate for this month was 4.02% and we failed to hit that.
Final Withdrawal Rate
Now for the singular piece of data that’s been building all year. With the June withdrawal rate now known, I can calculate the withdrawal rate across the whole year.
Below you will see that there are two withdrawal percentages given for each month. The “raw” rate is based on our full spending, and the official number is based on the actual hit to our investments. The reason there are two numbers rather than a single number is because of the use of our side discretionary fund to cover some of the spending.
That side fund is money we saved separate from our investments over the course of years, for use on anything we choose. Our trip to Guam in the months of October and November was mostly paid for with this discretionary fund. Guam was a vacation and really a bucket list destination. We would have never included it as part of a financially sustainable gap year had we not saved for it.
Outside of Guam, we sometimes chose to upgrade certain aspects of the year with the remaining money. This includes things like tourist activities, an occasional upgrade in accommodation, or food splurges. We would not have included these upgrades and extras if this fund did not exist.
For more detail on raw vs official, click into any given month to see the breakdown of where the discretionary side fund was used.
| Raw | Official | |
| July | 4.24% | 4.24% |
| August | 3.50% | 3.50% |
| September | 5.92% | 5.92% |
| October | 8.13% | 2.07% |
| November | 11.21% | 4.00% |
| December | 3.79% | 3.79% |
| January | 5.51% | 3.80% |
| February | 7.20% | 4.77% |
| March | 7.40% | 4.79% |
| April | 3.10% | 3.10% |
| May | 6.20% | 4.50% |
| June | 4.90% | 4.42% |
| Average | 5.93% | 4.08% |
Withdrawal Rate Analysis
This shows that in real terms of what came out of our investments, we were at 4.08%. When you consider we circumnavigated the earth, traveled 35K miles, and spent time in 11 different countries, I feel like this a near perfect result.
Additionally, we still had leftover money in the side discretionary fund where we could have forced this down to 4%. I didn’t have interest in doing that; it just changes a number on a spreadsheet. This is all ultimately our money, and whether it’s over here in discretionary or over there in investments doesn’t make a different. The discretionary fund has now been liquidated with the remaining funds put toward our car purchase. That in turn preserves investment money since we then don’t have to pull that amount from taxable investments for the car.
The reality of this year and the financial lessons that can be taken away are found somewhere in your interpretation of the space between the raw and the official. The way I see this year, and the financial outcome, is that it really could not have gone better.
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