Finance Review: March 2023

I’ve applied to graduate and fingers crossed everything goes smoothly!

It’s weird to think that next month I won’t have readings waiting for me after work or assignments I must complete over the weekend. I’m going to have to get a real personality outside of girl-who-is-doing-her-masters, now taking suggestions.

With the news that I’ve been hearing, I hope you are doing well, dear reader. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog and I hope it’s at least entertaining if not also informative. I am immensely grateful to be where I am and I am not taking things for granted.

Spendings Report: $2,477

Over the next year or so my closet will get a quality upgrade. The items I found myself loving will get replaced with higher-quality versions as they wear out and I’ll be donating clothes that I no longer wear. In Beijing, every season or so will be a clothing swap event so I’ve set aside a nice little pile for the next one, just a random mix along with some household stuff I’m not using either.

For these charts, I’ve also come to realize they are a few percentages off because I have never bothered to update my salary since last year. Nothing I’m fussed about as it’s the general trend that matters but I’ve updated them for future posts.

I was thinking about one nice graduation gift to myself and I have decided I’m just going to go for a lovely dinner with friends and put the rest into getting the ridiculously expensive plane tickets back to Canada for the summer. Gah! It hurts to think even the cheapest ticket now is at least 2x of the prices pre-covid.

Net Worth Update: meeting my 5yr goal!

4.5 years ago, I wrote a document titled “5 Year Plan” and one of the items was a specific net worth target which I will have met in 24hrs (’tis the day before Pay Day)!

I am very content with the progress I’ve made in the last 5 years, not every goal was met but the document was frankly more of a wish-list rather than a strict schedule anyways. I’ve made good headway on every goal, completed about 60% of them, and the other 40% will be added to the next iteration of the 5 Year Plan woohoo! The top one is to become fluent in reading and speaking Mandarin.

Since I started working in China I’ve slowly and steadily improved my Chinese through just casual conversation and using it as much as opportunity allows. I am excited to see the progress I’d make when I am able to dedicate a few hours to it a week starting next month. It’s been really rewarding re-learning my mother tongue and being able to read and speak to the locals here, do you know how many web novels I have access to in Chinese?? A huge amount!

We’re off-topic now so I will end it here. Thanks for reading until the end, take care and I’ll see you next month 🙂