Our Family’s Annual Spend for 2022

This post outlines our family’s annual spend for 2022. This is for a family of 3 in Cork, Ireland.

For longer time followers, I know it’s been a while 🙂 – I will be posting some big life updates soon so stay tuned. In the meantime, see below the details of our spending from last year.

Total spend in 2022 came to:

€34,907

This is just over 3,100€ less than last year which is under my predicted 36k!

Not included in this figure are investments (5k). Also excluded is the tax refund we got from last year’s overpayments (2.7k) and any other income offsets.

Expense tracking and reporting in this article is done using my own excel tracker template.

Overall spend

Here is a summary of the main categories with spend over 400€.

And all main spend categories summarised by annual and average monthly spend.

Food

Food remained our biggest expense in 2022 (10.1k), making up 30% of our annual expenses. This is up 46€/month on average compared to last year.

Our grocery category (8.3k) includes everything you’d buy at the grocery store so can include alcohol, toiletries, cleaning products, the odd centre aisle item like small tools, toys for our son etc.

Grocery spend went up by 300€ compared to last year but take-away spend was 200€ less than last year so we did a bit better cooking at home.

Restaurant spend was our biggest increase by almost 800€ as we were in Canada for 2 months and treated friends/family to meals as we were staying with them.

So even given the rate of inflation this year on food, we don’t seem to be seeing that much of an increase in our grocery bill, this is likely due to an increased effort to eat less meat.

If we convert the full annual food spend of 10.1k into cost per person per week (assuming 2 adults and 1 toddler (I’ll average at 2.75), it comes to 71€/week/person (up 4€/week/person from last year).

Monthly bills

Monthly bills came to a little over 7.2k or 20% of our annual spend. The vast majority of our monthly bills was our mortgage (55% or 3,963€). The rest were made up of Gas, Mobiles, Electricity, Internet, Refuse, Life Insurance (for me only to cover our mortgage). Gas was 300€ more this year due to rate increases. Electricity was 63€ less than last year due to the government credit. Combining the two brings our utility costs up by 238€ from last year. The remaining costs were fairly similar to last year.

Entertainment

Entertainment made up 11% of our annual spend. We spent 140€ more on entertainment this year totalling 3,603€ but sub-categories have shifted. Last year the biggest spend was sporting events which was overtaken this year by video games (double from last year). Alcohol also doubled from last year, some of which was because we could have people over again. The alcohol spend is only those bought directly at an off-license, the remainder is included in our grocery spend. Gadget spend was a bit higher as we treated ourselves to a Nintendo Switch this year. Remaining categories include nights out, sporting events, apps/patreon memberships, netflix, sightseeing (passes to Blarney Castle and Gardens), books, movies, and board games.

Vacation

Travel costs made up 10% of our annual spend coming in at 3,547€. Last year we spent 1 week in Portugal and 2 months in Canada. The one week in Portugal came to 1,482€ – 300€ for flights, 560€ for accommodation, 438€ for food/drink and 96€ for transport (trains and ubers). The only costs included in this category for the Canada trip was the flights coming in at 1,865€. As we were visiting family we didn’t have accommodation costs and food/drink costs were included in our main food/drink category. The other cost included in the accommodation line in this category was our annual membership for homeexchange (149€) which allowed us to host a student for 3 weeks and gather enough guest points to cover our accommodation in Paris this Fall for the Rugby World Cup.

Transportation

Transportation made up 8% of our annual spend coming in at 2,799€. This is 433€ less than last year mainly due to the fact that I paid motor tax for 2 cars last year before we got our “new” car. Petrol was about the same at 1,334€ and car insurance was higher at 728€ as we had a break-in and had to pay an additional 300€ as a deductible to get it fixed. Remaining categories include maintenance (313€), motor tax (180€), taxis (96€), tolls (70€), parking (53€) and public transport (25€).

Home

Home costs came in at 1,892€ (6% of annual spend). Sub-categories include home insurance (393€), accessories (378€ – we got some new bedding and a security camera), maintenance (354€), garden stuff (341€), local property tax (241€ – the additional top up from updates to valuation was paid in 2023), TV license and small appliance costs (spare part for our coffee machine).

Personal

Personal spend came out to 1,477€ and includes things like clothing (both Mr. MH and I needed a wardrobe refresh which we did in Canada), accessories (travel bag, backpack, earrings, shoes and a travel mug), vape and toiletries.

Medical

Medical costs came in at 1,449€. The biggest expense last year was therapy at 656€ (more on that to follow in the life update post but thankfully I am doing MUCH better), supplies (356€) includes things like multi-vitamins, probiotics and other non-prescription stuff bought at a pharmacy, Mr. MH’s glucose sensors ran out while in Canada and we had to pay out of pocket (221€), GP visits (200€), prescriptions (172€) and dentist (50€). Health insurance is a minus because we switched to monthly payments for 2023 instead of paying the full year up-front and we got a refund mid-year due to reduced services resulting from COVID.

Other

The remaining categories had a spend of 1k or less and include things like:

Gifts/charity came out to just over 1k. This was for birthdays and Christmas and charity giving.

Blog costs came in at 842€ for insurance, website and subscription costs.

Kid stuff came in at 321€ including clothing, accessories, toys, books and other supplies. We get most of our clothes from my sister-in-law (thank you!).

Misc includes postage and lottery tickets (238€).

Weddings/Special Occasions (168€) was for accommodation and food/drink for family events.

Goals for next year

I’m actually fairly happy with last year’s expenses and would be happy to aim for the same amount again this year. That said, we have some big changes coming up this year which will hopefully reduce our cost of living even further, potentially by another 8k bringing our annual spend down to 27k/year. Stay tuned for more on that!