Preamble: This year, my money mindset shifted significantly from one of scarcity to one of abundance. Even when I was off work, we had money coming in, largely from a tax rebate, but it helped to shift my mindset that we probably need a lot less than we think. At the same time, most of the FIRE bloggers I follow who have been FI for a while, have more money than they retired with, some have more than they will ever spend in their lifetime while others are actively trying to spend more and be less frugal. Having read this, in combination with the fact that our portfolio has reached a point where no matter what approach we decide to take, we will reach full financial independence within the next 4-12 years, I thought, let’s try to enjoy the journey more, spend what we want when we want (without spending more than I earn), and see what that comes out as.

Turns out, a lot more than I anticipated!

Total spend in 2024 came to:

CAD$86,600 or €58,400

While this is $7.6k (€5.1k) less than last year, it’s $23k (€15k) more than I had estimated I’d spend in last year‘s post. The increase was largely due to our second trip to Ireland/Madeira within the same 12-month period. 2023 was higher because we moved continents but we had expected that to be very much an anomaly.

This is the benefit of doing expenses. It gives you a chance to look back and see how it sits with you and highlights areas that you could try to do better in.

Not included in this figure are taxes related to income.

Overall Spend

Here is a summary of the main categories by annual and average monthly spend in both Euro and Canadian Dollar.

EURO

CAD

Food

Food costs are 16% or 3,100$ (€2k) higher than last year.

I changed how I categorised food slightly this year, in that I combined the food/drink sub-category from travel into the main food category as I wanted to more easily see total food spend. This is partially also because we don’t really take vacations anymore and when we travel I’m still working so it’s more of an everyday spend rather than vacation spend. Even accounting for this change, we spent $3k (€2k) more on the grocery category than last year.

Our grocery category came to $18k (€12k) and includes everything you’d buy at the grocery store including alcohol, toiletries, cleaning products and the odd non-food items like small tools, toys, clothes etc. Though I do try to separate those into categories as best I can.

Grocery spend was about 3k (€2k) more than last year and we spent 1k (670€) more on restaurants, mainly because we ate in a restaurant almost every night while we were in Madeira. On the upside we spent 400$ (270€) less on take-aways.

We’re not sure what the main source of the increase in groceries is. It’s likely a combination of more food bought while travelling, more food being bought at more expensive shops due to quality and convenience issues, food being more expensive in general and eating fewer vegetarian meals.

We were doing most of our weekly shop at Walmart (generally cheaper and if you order online and have the honey app in your browser you can often find coupons that give you 15-20$ off each order) but the quality of the fruit and veg was getting progressively worse, despite us or maybe because of us, selecting organic as much as possible. It’s also a 35 minute drive compared to a 25 minute drive to the more expensive shop. The food in Canada is far less fresh (and less tasty) than Ireland, due to the distance it has to travel and has far fewer regulations than the EU on what can go into and onto the food. Due to longer term health concerns we started getting more from a more expensive shop as they had a greater selection of organic and local fresh food. After all, what good is being financially independent if you are in poor health!

Although we’re eating more meat than previous years (more out of habit than intentionality), we still do try to eat as little red meat as possible, which helps on cost (and is better for health and the environment). We typically buy non-hormone grass-fed chicken breasts in bulk and split them up and freeze them and swap beef mince for pork or turkey mince as well as steak for pork steaks etc.

All that said, I think we’re going to make a better effort to bring these costs down this year. We’ll try to build in some big batch slow cooker meals that we can freeze including more veggie options and try to balance out what we get at the cheaper and more expensive shops.

Another consideration in terms of cost is that the cash back reward credit card that we have gives 4% cash back on groceries, however, Walmart doesn’t get categorised as groceries as you can buy so many other types of things there. So while shopping online with the honey app gave us 15-20$ off per week at Walmart, we were only getting 1% cash back on the credit card. The more expensive shops (IGA/Independent) do count towards the 4%. So if we spend $12k (€8k), we’d get 480$ (324€) cashback compared to 120$ (81€) for the same spend at Walmart. But when you include the honey app discounts, those could equate to 60$ (41€)/month or 720$ (486€) for the year, meaning Walmart could be 300-400$ (200-270€) less/year on rewards/coupons alone.

If we convert the full annual food spend of $20k (€13k) into cost per person per week – assuming 2 adults and 1 small fella (I’ll average at 2.75), it comes to 140$ (95€)/week/person or 384$(260€)/week for the family.

Monthly Bills

Monthly bills were 4k (€2.7k) more than last year, largely due to a full year of paying rent – last year we had a small mortgage for half of the year. Electricity was about 500$ (338€) less than last year (when you combine gas and electricity) – we now heat with electricity and Quebec has cheaper electricity. Internet was 60$ (41€) less. Mobile was 60$ more.

Travel

Travel was $6.7k (€4.5k) more than last year at a whopping 17,751$ (11,974€) and last year’s amount included $2.7k (€1.8k) of food that has moved to the grocery category this year. This difference is because of how our travel fell in the calendar year. We were in Ireland/Portugal in Feb-Apr 2024 (2.5 months) and then again from Dec ’24-Feb ’25 (1.5 months). The costs for the 24/25 trip were largely spent up front in 2024, so this cost largely represents 4 months of travel in Europe, averaging 4,437$ (3k€)/month just on flights/accommodation and transport while travelling. Having seen this amount, we are turned off of travel now for the next 12 months!

The biggest cost was accommodation at $10k (€6.7k). Breakdown below:

The next biggest cost was the flights for the 3 of us at 3,950$(2,665€). 220$ (148€) for the one-way tickets from Faro-Cork in Feb 24, 3k (2k€) was for the return Ottawa-Toronto-Dublin flight and 580$ (391€) for the return flight from Dublin to Madeira.

Transport was the third largest at 2.5k (1.7k€). We rented a car while we were in Ireland for the whole duration. In the past we would have relied on public transport and friends and family to ferry us around but now that we have a kid, more luggage and are staying for much longer periods, we feel this expense is worth it. It enabled us to see more of friends and family too as everyone is so spread out now. The car rental for the first trip was 1,558$ (1k€) so about 51$ (34€)/day. We used our Canadian credit card to book this which includes car rental insurance as a benefit to reduce the cost, though it was tricky enough to get them to accept this which I wrote about here. Another 300$ (200€) was spent on Ubers and public transport in Portugal and 400$ (270€) went towards the car rental for the second trip, the rest of which will be covered in the 2025 spend post.

Home

We spent 4,500$ (€3k) less on the Home category than last year as last year we had to replenish a lot of electronics that we had to leave behind in Ireland. We spent a total of 5,377$ (€3.6k) in the Home category in 2024. This included things like: furniture (dining table, bed frame, wardrobes), garden stuff (hub tub supplies, lawn mower, pressure washer, umbrella), accessories (lamps, teacups, ikea stuff), renter’s insurance, maintenance stuff and purchase costs (planning permission application).

Transportation

Transport costs were 600$ (€405) less than last year at 4.3k$ (€2.9k) for the year.

Petrol was 200$ (135€) less than last year at 1.7k$ (€1.1k), this is with a newer hybrid car and driving further distances than we did in Ireland as we are more rural. Car insurance was more as we didn’t have the offset of the refund from our Irish policy at 1.5k (€1k) for the year. Car repairs and maintenance was lower at 700$(473€) for the year as we didn’t have to buy winter tires this year. Most of that cost was because we had to put out for a new windshield, we drive along a lot of dirt roads and stones get spit up and crack the glass. We’ve already had to get 2 more chips on that new windshield fixed 6 months later.

Medical

Medical costs were 2k (€1.3k) lower than last year at 3.7k (€2.5k). We didn’t have to pay for health insurance as returning residents and didn’t have doctor/assessment costs like last year. I did pay more for therapy in 2024 ($1.7k or €1.1k) and prescription costs were higher ($1.3k or 880€) as not all diabetic supplies are covered. We also had nominal dentist and optician costs.

Entertainment

Entertainment was pretty much the same as last year with variances of $100-300 (€68-200) between different sub-categories. Biggest spends being alcohol (789$ or 533€), video games (743$ or 500€) and spa visits (591$ or 399€).

Other

The remaining categories were largely between 1,000$ (670€) and 2,000$ (€1.3k) each.

Work expenses being the highest at $4k (€2.7k). Includes things like indemnity insurance, some office furniture and a new phone.

Special occasions came in at $1.9k (€1.2k) for a family wedding including clothes, gift, accomodation etc.

Giving includes mostly Christmas and birthday gifts and some charity donations at $1.6k (€1k)

Kids stuff came in at $1.4k (950€) including 400$ (270€) on toys (lego, board games and swing), 370$ (250€) on clothes, 190$ (130€) on school stuff, 100$ (68€) on activities and smaller amounts on books and medical.

Another $1.2k (800€) was spent on personal stuff like clothing, toiletries, haircuts and accessories.

1k (680€) was stuff I couldn’t categorise as I couldn’t remember what it was for.

Blog costs came in at 600$ (400€) for domain and subscriptions to run the website.

Health costs include things like classes and exercise equipment (300$ or 200€).

Bank charges came in at 418$ (282€) to the good as we got 787$ (532€) cash back from our credit card which offset the other monthly and annual bank and credit card fees.

Goals for this year

As I’m writing this at the end of June 2025, we are already halfway through the year. I started writing this post back in March when I had first done up our 2024 expenses and it was a bit of a wake-up call. If we continued at that level of spending, our time to FI would be pushed out by a few years.

Since March, we have signed a contract of purchase on a house (more on that to follow), and have been trying to keep our spending in check to try and put as much against the downpayment as possible. So far, our average spend for the first half of the year is 4,800$ (3,000€)/month at current exchange rates. If we can keep that rate going, adding in 8k for travel, that should bring us in around the 66,000$ (€42k) mark for the year. Will see how we do.