The Web Dev Budget Experiment (Part 1/3)

When I started out as a web developer back in 2008, many people questioned my career choice. They thought I should have continued being IT Support, but perhaps in a larger environment. Get more exposure. Climb the corporate ladder. Rake in the big bucks in a nice office.

They were both right and wrong.

They were right in the sense that web developers don't earn a lot unless they're working for an obscenely rich company or they're further up the pecking order, such as management. And they were wrong in the sense that web development isn't a viable career choice due to its lower earning power.

How well you do is not simply about how much you get paid each month - it's also about how you spend that money. There's no point in earning 10k per month if your lifestyle demands that you spend 12. Wealth isn't absolute - it's relative. The important thing is for expenses to be significantly less than income.

Stop being broke.

No-brainer, right?

This is common sense. Why am I even telling you this? Because an astounding number of people, in the search for the almighty dollar, forget this important point. The more they earn, the more they spend. Back to square one. Economists call it "lifestyle inflation". I call it "utter foolishness".

But now I'm curious. How much is enough? Someone told me a person needs 800SGD a month to live in Singapore. That number seemed unreasonably low. Someone else told me 2,000SGD a month was the minimum. That seemed even more ridiculous, considering the fact that plenty of people don't earn that much.

And then someone claimed it was impossible to survive on 1,000SGD a month. This got me wondering. Impossible, or just difficult? And this prompted my next experiment - how to survive on 1,000SGD a month, or less.

My Demographic

- late 30s
- unmarried, no kids
- living on my own, paying off the mortgage on a 30-year house loan.
- aging parents living nearby
- no car
- smoker
- 1,000SGD is about 30% of my monthly disposable income.

The Web Dev Budget Experiment Begins

June 2016 was the month I chose to monitor my expenses. Only my personal everyday expenses. As mentioned earlier, 1,000SGD is about 30% of my monthly disposable income. The rest covers the mortgage and paying my parents to leave me alone. Just kidding... I think.

When the financial month starts...

My payday is always on the 1st of the month. I've worked for many different companies, and they all had different paydays. For my own convenience, I maintain an account from which I pay myself every 1st day of the month. This ensures that my personal payday remains the same come hell or high water. Whatever company I'm working for at the moment, will deposit my salary into that account when it needs to.

Waypoints

For better control, I work with waypoints. On a certain day of the month, my remaining balance is supposed to be at that level. If it's not, I readjust spending.

Day 1: 1,000SGD
Day 10:  700SGD
Day 20: 400SGD
Day 25: 200SGD

The Scrooge App

To keep track of my expenses, I used an app I wrote a year back. You can find the web tutorial here.

Try my app!

Next

A day-to-day accounting.