Sunday, October 26, 2008

Financial Matters

Considering the current state of the world economy, I thought it might be appropriate to dedicate this week’s blog entry to financial matters, particularly an examination of our monthly outlays. Following is a list of our expenses:

Rent $ 150 (Yes, we know we’re pretty lucky in this regard)
Electricity $ 32
Telephone $ 73
Internet $ 42
Satellite TV $ 24
Water $ 10
Gasoline $ 450 (at about $5.20 per gallon!)
Groceries $ 400

Because we live in the tropics, we don’t pay anything to heat our house, and the gas we use for our stove is a minimal expense. We don’t currently have any insurance costs, mostly because we haven’t figured out yet how exactly we should handle this. For now, we have a private doctor who charges $40.00 per visit, but emergency medical insurance will probably need to be factored in eventually. We don’t have Lucas in daycare anymore (a $2,000 a month savings!), but when we do have a babysitter, it costs about $2.00 per hour.

So, overall, our expenditures here are considerably less than they were in the U.S. (with the exception of gasoline). This is a good thing, especially considering we’re currently UNEMPLOYED. Having been in the travel and restaurant industries in the States (can you say non~recession proof industries?), we’re pretty sure we would have eventually been UNEMPLOYED there, too. This makes spending down our savings a bit more palatable. At least we’re spending it slower here than we would be there. Wait, we didn’t have any savings there…

2 comments:

Jeanette Irwin said...

Hey Kate! Your posts are great - I've been having a lot of fun reading them. Wish you'd left out the part about the spiders a few posts ago, though. *Shiver*.

Anonymous said...

I love your blog. It is very well written and entertaining!I am in your mother's Spanish class and she too has a quick intelligence.
We will be spending the month of February in San Jose visting family, with the hope that the will have ended!