5 Years of Finances in Charts!

The days are long but the years are short. Can you believe it’s been 5 years since I started tracking my spending? That’s 60 months of records!

I compiled a series of graphs along with notes about events in my life during those 5 years to put the Personal into Personal Finance. It’s a fascinating look into how my lifestyle has changed as my financial status changed.

Where you see little asterixes * on the graph it marks where my net worth hit some key milestones. You can make a good guess at what they mean.

Total Spending vs Savings

It should be noted that sometimes work wasn’t my only source of income.

My savings rate was higher in the beginning despite my income being lower. I reason it’s because of the following mix of reasons:

1. It was the first time I earned enough in a place where I could save, and it was addicting to see my bank account increase every month. Back when my net worth was lower, every paycheck made a much bigger impact so I was highly motivated. In 2019, each month’s savings increased my net worth by 20-30%, compared to the 1%-2% it was in 2024.
2. Covid was going on for much of this time, with ongoing lockdowns and restrictions. You can see this in much of 2020, especially the earlier half when restrictions were at their heaviest. Spendings slowly crept up as restrictions were reduced and life returned to normal.
3. The school in Tianjin was very isolated, there literally was nothing to do around. On the upside, all utility costs were less than $20 for an entire year.
4. I lived on school-provided housing until July of 2023, so I had no furnishing or upkeep costs. Utilities were low still, I did not pay hydro and electricity was maybe $5/mt in the winter months and $10 in the summer.
5. I was busy working on my master’s until April 2023.
6. I reached CoastFI somewhere around the end of Covid-19.

Starting in 2023 you can see my spending increase and savings decrease. I moved to downtown Beijing, Zero Covid was over, I graduated, and the new school offered much better work-life balance. This was also the first time I lived outside of school and with that came a series of furnishing and upkeep costs. As my work-life balance increased I also felt less pressure to escape work as fast as possible. I became more willing to spend money on quality-of-life upgrades rather than only buying what’s strictly practical. When I first started this whole finance thing I was often working until 7:30pm, now I rarely finish later than 4:30pm.

Groceries vs. Takeaway

Two big life events reflected in this chart were

1. The period when Covid restrictions were heaviest I ordered takeout much less since I had time to stay home and cook more.
2. When my school moved us into a hotel due to teacher dorm renovations I didn’t have a kitchen and groceries consisted mostly of fruits with some beverages.

#2 has an interesting lasting effect on my cooking habits, in that I lost them. That lack of interest and an effort to eat less takeout led me to hire a cook for work-week lunches and dinners. She, the light of my life, comes for 3hrs on Mondays with whatever she’s using and makes about 4 dishes which I then portion out for the week. For those interested, her salary is $121cad/month plus about $200/month in groceries, now compare that with the average cost of just groceries alone in Toronto, $350.

The increased grocery spending is due to 1) I lost access to free school meals, 2) groceries are generally more expensive downtown. I also had easier access to pricier imported foreign foods like cheese, olives, etc. so I started eating more of those again. I made the conscious effort to have home meals more often rather than eating out with friends or ordering food to cut back on spending in that category and also just to reduce the amount of trash that results from ordering.

I ate a lot of lunches at the school canteen for the first couple of months, and it was good food and nice company. However, I wanted some quiet down time so started bringing food from home instead. Most of the time I work through lunch so I can both leave early and prepare better lesson materials. It’s perhaps not the best habit.

Living Expenses & Education

It’s funny to see the regular spikes of my tuition payments and yearly taxes. You can also see more frequent living expense payments after I moved out of school housing into my apartment. This was now downtown Beijing so utility costs were now about $15-25/month and furnishing the new place is an on-going process. My school pays for my housing so these costs do not include rent, for reference, it’s $2,200 for a 2-bedroom place in a central area of Beijing. In the area of School 1 it would have been $900 for something similar, quite a stark contrast. If I were to pay rent myself I would choose a place cheaper and further away, but it would be difficult to give up the 10min walking commute I currently have.

I started regular Mandarin and art lessons online once I settled into the new place so you see the steady small spikes of education costs. Some months were lower than others depending on the holiday schedules. Chinese is $20 for 50mins twice a week and art is about $40 for 12 online group lessons. I can imagine this category will stay fairly steady with the occasional lump sum payment for some number of classes. This category I truly feel my spending is perfectly aligned with my values, I’ve never felt more content.

Regarding Canadian taxes, I don’t get double taxed I just pay the difference to Canada. It enables me to have RRSP room since that’s calculated as a percentage of my reported income.

Leisure & Beauty

The large spikes in leisure spending are all around holiday travel. We have two multi-week holidays (Summer, Christmas), three 1-week holidays (Mid-Autumn, CNY, National Week) and two or three long weekends (New Years, Tomb Sweeping, Dragon Boat). Last year I opted for more stay-cations to save up for Portugal, Spain, and Turkey this summer.

In the beauty category, I put stuff like moisturisers, shampoos, facials, nails, haircuts, clothes, jewelry etc. After December 2021 you can see a steady increase in the Beauty spending category, and even bigger jumps after April 2023. The first date was when I reached my second big financial milestone, I felt a lot more financially secure and more open to spending on “frivolous” luxuries. The second date was when I completed my master’s and with it came a huge release of pressure. I had secured a new job at that point that promised better work-life balance and suddenly I have an extra 10 hours a week.

You can see in May I basically did everything possible under the sun and it slowly tapered off in the next couple of months. It’s slowly increased again and levelling out after this last school year as I figured out what I liked enough to continue with and what I don’t care too much about. I was also in the process of curating my wardrobe, getting rid of old things that no longer fit me or I simply don’t wear and replacing them with better quality items.

To be honest, I’m struggling to balance the mindset of I should save as much as possible vs. I have enough money I should spend it on a life I want to live. This last year I spent a lot on what I still think of as useless luxuries, not to say I didn’t enjoy them. I’m still working this one out, maybe once the novelty of these new experiences wears off it’ll steadily decrease and I’ll return to my 2021 savings rate.

Health & Surprises

The health category included all hospital fees, medication, and sometimes related activities like a workout class. Surprises are unpredictable one-offs like the grad dinner, or predictable but irregular stuff like gifts for friends, donations I make, emergency repairs etc. One reason the big orange spike is in the Surprises category despite it being a health issue was because I couldn’t have predicted that event. Maybe unreasonable, but this is my spreadsheet.

Health has been consistently low except for the braces payments. I expect once those are done I would still see the occasional spike for some chronic issues I have. It’s usually months of nothing followed by one big payment for several treatments. You can see the “surprises” pick up after the second financial milestone. My generosity in gifting others and making donations directly correlates with my sense of financial stability — I am able to be generous because I can afford to do so.

Subscriptions

The jump from the end of 2021 to the beginning of 2022 is mostly a result of me re-categorizing predictable yearly payments as monthly expenses instead. I like to see those costs spread out so I have a better idea of how much I should save up for them. The next two big jumps were for hiring a long-term housekeeper and chef. The housekeeper is paid ~ $200/month and comes twice a week for 2hrs each time. The chef comes once a week for 3 hours each time, ~$150/month. They both get a monthly salary, not hourly, and all statutory holidays plus the holidays when I’m gone haha. And a bonus of 1 month’s pay for Chinese New Year as is custom in Beijing for long-term hires.

If I were a songwriter I would write love ballads to my two ayi’s 阿姨 (ah-yii) for how much they improve my life. Cleaning, tidying, organizing maintenance, grocery shopping, cooking, washing up, refilling the water, changing the bedsheets, laundry, ironing oh my god I am so incredibly grateful to have them. If you can afford one wherever you are, stop waiting and do it. This is a luxurious quality-of-life upgrade I 100% have no regrets about.

Net Worth

If I didn’t label the timeline would you have correctly identified the Covid dip? It was so frightening at the time yet on this graph it barely stood out among other similar (or even bigger) dips.

You’ve seen this chart before, I’ve added in major world events and job + salary changes to see how it worked out. If you’re wondering why my net worth chart goes back further than my spendings it’s because I only started tracking spendings after a few months. And the earliest net worth numbers were best guesses as I did not keep records while I was in London.

For those in the FIRE sphere, a piece of frequently heard advice is to stick to a good plan (not a perfect one) and ignore the financial news. Looking at the bumps in this chart certainly reinforces the value of that advice. It’s not a smooth ride but it will go up if we hang on and don’t panic sell. Also have an emergency fund of 6-12 months of expenses to avoid making rushed decisions

Just out of curiosity, I plugged in my starting salary and ending salary into two inflation calculator and got a surprise:

Bank of Canada inflation calculator

Calculator that uses US CPI data.

On the surface, it looks very much like my salary has stayed the same, or in fact less than when I first started. However, there are a few hidden factors to take into consideration:

1. I had an additional class at the first school, so was working at 125% workload.
2. School 2 pays my rent, worth $2,200 that’s technically not part of my salary but is part of my compensation package.
3. Work-life balance has dramatically increased over the years.
4. School 1 and School 2 had CNY or pension payments whereas the Tianjin school did not.

There have been a few occasions where I took on some side hustles because I like extra $$$. I quit all of them last August. The things I wanted to do (drawing, learning Chinese, working out) required little money, but demanded the time and energy to do them. I felt that in pursuing money to make retirement closer I was always putting off these goals for one more year or one more milestone. I didn’t want to wait until I was actually retired to draw or learn Chinese, I’d rather do more now and take a slower ride to retirement. I feel that knowledge and skill, like investing, require time to compound and the younger I start the further I’ll be able to go, and the greater the depth of mastery. Not to say you cannot start new things no matter what age you are, just that I’ve delayed gratification for 8 years and I think that’s enough.

You’ve reached the end, congratulations!

If you have read this far, I am amazed and appreciate you taking the time to read my thoughts. I hope you got something out of it or it at least provided you some entertainment.

So much has changed for me in these 5 years and it was a worthwhile exercise to go back and reflect on it as part of writing this post. If you have time, you should make a little timeline of your life’s changes and see how much you have lived through, see if your plans from 5 years ago held up.

Keep safe out there and make sure to ignore the financial news!