One of the perks of having some time to myself just as we enter the peak season for strawberry picking is that I have some time to sit down and look through our finances.
When we made the decision to come over here on a Working Holiday Visa for a year putting our career and life on hold for a year (for me at least - I'd like to think I was doing decently well at work), there were many who lauded the courage and free-spirit we had. However, I think one of the main reasons why we were able to embark on this potentially life-changing endeavour was having clear financial goals over the past few years and working towards those targets. And so just before we came over here to Australia, I created a spreadsheet to detail how we were spending our money and our budgets. I think this is mainly for ourselves to keep our finances in check - to not spend too irresponsibly but yet at the same time not being complete paupers about it like when we were students on exchange or 18 year old backpackers (another small reason is because analysising data like this somehow excites me!). In this post, I'll be sharing how we have gotten along financially this month. If you are looking at this as a form of research and an estimate for your own expense when you come over on WHV, bear in mind our context as a couple in our (very!) early 30s who have been working for a while and have certain reasonable expectations in terms of the kind of standard of living we wish to have here.
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| Tabs on our budgetting sheet |
I have separated the 'settling in' component from the actual july expenses as there is a slightly higher 'start-up' cost to be spent in the earlier days to settle in. This includes the big purchase of our car (Abby) and the financial charges that came with it to the smaller purchases like our room heater (omg, life saver). I will mainly be focusing on the Expense (July) tab.
We are currently staying at a private studio apartment (1BR+1Bath) short-term rental place with bills all covered about 10 minutes drive to Perth city centre which meant that rent is therefore going to be quite a bit higher than usual. Even then while 435 AUD busted our initial budget by a bit, we still thought we got quite a good deal as we really like the location and it is walking distance (5min drive) to the nearest town centre (for groceries) and petrol station. This is important as I go to work on an almost daily basis and I drive Abby. So the car would not be available until I end work (whatever time that might be). And so unless she drives me to work, she will have to make her own way around either by public transport (which is not great) or by walking. As a percentage of our total expenses, rent accounts for about 50% of it which is quite significant.
Also as your can see, groceries take up the next largest percentage. We usually shop at Woolworths (Woolies) and Coles as those are the 2 supermarkets that are everywhere and at our nearest locality. The interesting thing about Perth (perhaps Australia) is that supermarkets do not stock alcohol (or I haven't found 1 that does), much unlike Singapore. Which meant I cannot get my beer/stout/porter fix from the supermarkets. There are separate alcohol stores like Liquorland that we have to go to to buy such stuff. But I guess from a budgetting perspective it is easier to work with as well - since I have another personal expenses tab and beer does not come under the shared budget (she might kill me). As much as possible, we try to also spend at least A$30 for each trip to the supermarkets. This gives us a 4c off fuel docket which we can use at certain petrol stations. Each supermarket also has their respective rewards app where we can clock points and make redemptions (no where near enough points to redeem anything yet though). Woolies uses the Rewards app while Coles use the Flybuys app (Flybuys being a more accessible app as Kmart, Bunnings and some other smaller names is also tagged to the Flybuys app).
We have also once every 1.5 weeks or so shop at various Asian groceries to get certain vegs and spices that are not available at these supermarkets. Honestly, I find our groceries expenditure very acceptable, slightly below our initial estimates.
This month's expenses also included quite a large sum parked under 'Others' due to the change in windscreen needed for Abby, so I think August's expenses might come in slightly lower, fingers-crossed hopefully nothing else we need to fix or cost we incur).
One thing I find quite sad is that we have only spent $15 on attractions in July. Which meant we haven't really gone and explore the sights and the tourists attractions much yet. We have however, gone for some hikes in the surrounding national parks and gone to the beach a few times to watch sunset. Hopefully this will change moving forward. Perhaps not in August but after I'm done with the peak of work or when we go on our long roadtrip towards Melbourne.
Another thing about spending here is that Perth and its surroundings is very much a cashless society. Other than splashing the cash (literally) on Abby and at certain merchants at the Canningvale markets, for almost all our other expenses, we have been using our multi-currency debit Revolut card.
At this point I'm going to shamelessly plug for Revolut because I think it's one of the best thing every for overseas travel. It is similar in concept to Youtrip but Revolut gives you a fee-less ATM cash withdrawal of $350 a month (not much but you don't really need to withdraw money when you can just use it as a debit card, but it does give you that option if needed) It was actually introduced to me by an Indian friend of mine who lives in Germany. I met him while travelling in Iran in 2014. Met up and caught up with him again when I was in Germany in 2017 and when he came to Singapore in 2019. Anyway, he was using his Revolut card in Singapore and basically he was moving around without SGD. When he used his card to withdraw cash from an ATM to pass me some cash for something I had paid for, my mind was blown and I was convinced I needed to get it.
I've been using it ever since when I travel overseas - which is not much since then given COVID but I have used it in USA, China, Singapore (for transport for the rebates), Malaysia and now Australia. I basically top up my account with my SG credit card, convert the amount into AUD and use it. Really simple and easy. I will not go into the details as there are already many financial blogs out there that covers it but I find it super simple to use and it helps me track all my transactions at an instant + the details and stats the app provides for the different transactions are very much more than adequate for my (quite detailed) financial tracking.
It is really meant to be a mobile bank of sorts and so the app has all the features, the web version not so much. So if you are interested you can go download the app using my referral link:
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