The beginning of March was the tail end of our tough stay in Sri Lanka before moving on to South Africa. The majority of spending in our March international travel FIRE budget is comprised of South Africa costs. In the upcoming expat cost of living series post on South Africa, I will extract the South Africa numbers in isolation. The Sri Lanka numbers have already been detailed in that series.

This month was expensive and the budget numbers were high. That was not due to South Africa cost of living though. In the analysis I’ll walk through the extra expenses that we incurred this month.

Income

This is a rare month in the budget series where our income has something different going on. There are two line items that aren’t typically present, those being the NN dividend and Chase Travel Delay Claim.

The NN dividend is a quarterly dividend from individual stock I own from the last company I worked for. The Chase Travel Delay Claim is from a claim I submitted for the travel delay we experienced when our Air Seychelles flight to South Africa was delayed. We had to stay in Seychelles for one night due to that, and another night in Johannesburg. I submitted for reimbursement of our meals, lodging, etc. The claim is still pending, and will make for a great look at how robust the travel insurance provided by our Chase Sapphire Preferred card is.

Total Income: $8,108.21

Expenses

There are a lot of extra factors in play with our expenses for March. We had $718.84 worth of travel delay costs spread across different categories. Flights account for about $3k in spending, after booking our final stays and flights through the remainder of the gap year. If you cut away those costs a reasonable budget begins to emerge, and the high expenses and withdrawal rate aren’t a cause for concern.

Total Expenses: $11,344.00 Withdrawal Rate: 7.4%

Analysis

The headline numbers of total expenses ($11,344.00) and withdrawal rate (7.4%) are high. The biggest factor by far was flight related costs, which we absorb in whatever month we purchase them. This month happened to have our final two flight purchases for the year, going to Spain and going back to the US.

Other major contributors were restaurant spending, discretionary (i.e. fun) spending, and transportation (rental car) costs. Those were all intentional atypical expenses that don’t actually impact our withdrawal rate due to where we pulled the money for them. We covered these expenses with side non-investment discretionary money. If you have read previous budget analysis such as the October and November budgets, this fund was mentioned previously, and it still has money available.

After using the side fund for our rental car, restaurant spending, discretionary, and giving, our withdrawal rate ends up at 4.79%. That’s right where we need it to finish the year averaging a 4% withdrawal rate.