# Personal Spending Vlog (Single Male, London Ontario)



## Mattamatics (Feb 10, 2010)

Hello

Matt McKeever here

I've roughly tracked my spending since I was 25 (beginning in 2010, pretty sure that's also when I joined this forum). I originally tracked everything I spent for one year to develop idea of what my average consumption was and found that in an average month I spend about 1500-2500 and that overall I would need/want about 40K a year in passive income in order to reach financial independence. Then couple months a year I'd do a spot audit or financial checkup and track expenses for a couple months a year and compare it to my baseline.

I've recently started a YouTube channel where I'm documenting my experience as a real estate investor in London Ontario as well as my pursuit of financial independence. As part of that I've decided I'll do a monthly Vlog where I display what my expenses for every month are in 2017.

January's video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24TYwS2BRT0

The major take a way is that since 2010 my personal expenses have consistently remained around 2-3K a month. (Which is great as it shows that my current lifestyle is certainly maintainable for me). After adj for non monthly expenses (Ie expenses I pay once a year) my January expenses were $3,233. There is still a lot of potential for me to reduce my expenses through more conscious consumption (without impacting my lifestyle) and I'm hoping to start course correcting this year. 

In 2017 I'm hoping to reduce my vice spending ($280 in January), to do this in February, I'm going to restrict myself to only buying local craft beer - either directly at the brewery or if it's on tap at a local bar. This just aligns with my personal philosophy of trying to support cool local businesses where when you go to the business you actually meet/see the owner/operator etc. Also reducing my overall been consumption is likely just the healthy thing to do.

Also at some point I'm going to start couponing - no excuse for me to not - just sheer laziness on why I haven't started yet. 

Otherwise I'm considering downsizing and selling my principal residence and moving into a unit in one of my rental properties to reduce my personal overhead (and I'd prefer to live downtown). 

January 2017 Expenses
280.55 Alcohol/Beer (AKA Vices)
0.00 Books/Comics/BoardGames
139.30 Cable/Internet/Cell
0.00 Clothing
167.58 Eating Out
0.00 Entertainment
189.63 Food/Household
100.00 Gas
0.00 Gifts/Christmas
0.00 Home Improvement/Tools
808.24 Medical
153.18 Mortgage Interest
0.00 Nights Out/Dates (romantic)
200.00 Property Taxes
280.88 Stuff
200.00 Trips/Vacation
393.21 Utilities
316.67 Vehicle
0.00 Charity
3.90 Bank Fees
0.00 Unknown#3
0.00 
3,233.14 Monthly anticipated expenses 
38,797.64	Yearly Expenses	


Anyways, if you decide to checkout my video - I'd love to hear feedback from those willing to share it. The reason I decided to do a video - was in the hopes of grounding a lot of the theory I read when I initially became really interested in personal finances (back in 2010). I figured why not document the process so others have a template to follow (if they're interested in one).

Thanks.


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