Budgeting for living abroad

top_drawer_2

Hello

I'm going abroad for another year shortly and after a unsuccessful year of budgeting for my first year, want to be more prepared for the second.

I've set up a excel spreadsheet to enter overall monthly totals and a more long term view, but find that I need a day-to-day record to work out where my money goes.

Draft Budget

Basic living costs

Rent - Free accommodation - will need to give £150 deposit after 1st pay check - one off cost
Health check - one off cost - £51
Visa transfer - one off cost - £30
Gas - £10
Electric - £20
Water - £15

Entertainment - £50 (monthly)
Shopping - £200 (monthly)
Top up shopping - £15 (weekly)
Eating out - £10
Bike - one off cost £30-50

Internet - £15-20 (monthly)
VPN cost - £30 (for the year)
Netflix - (£9.99) (monthly)
Spotify - £9.99 (monthly)

Mobile phone - £20 - 25

Travel £500 (yearly)

Local travel - £10-20 (fortnight)

Gym - free I believe - provided by employer

Education costs - £50 (month - 6 weeks) - my "future" investment

Books - £20 a month - intend to reduce using BookBub but I love my books that are a little more challenging than the things that tend to come up.

Personal care + treats - £20 (monthly)

Wow written down, it all starts to make sense why I never seem to have much money.

Any tips particularly from others who have live(d) abroad - this is for China.

Earnings around £816 per month

Dobbibill

The first thing that jumps out for me is that this looks confusing. You have weekly, monthly and annual bills all just listed. No wonder you are getting in a pickle.

Try calculating the majority of payments monthly. For example, 'top up shopping' is £15 weekly. So take this and multiply it by 52 then divide by 12 to give you an average monthly figure.

One off payments can all be added up to give you a target, maybe aim for this to be in a savings account.

I don't know if you have created your own spreadsheet but I found this link useful, plenty of different spreadsheets to suit. http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/budgets.html

HTH

top_drawer_2

You're right it is confusing!

I actually created my own spreadsheet which I'm hoping to insert a automatic currency convertor into to make things a little easier.

I'll report back - it's much harder than I realised : S

KayTM

As Dobbibill suggested, convert them all into estimated monthly costs.

Then do a cash flow projection.

Start with your opening balance, add all the income you expect for each month, deduct the expected monthly expenditure, and make a closing balance for each month - which then becomes the opening balance for the following month. Do this for the whole year ahead if you can.

You might be spending more than you need to on books - me too! You could try Scribd.com. You can get a month's free trial and after that pay about a fiver a month for loads of books, fiction and non-fiction on all kinds of subjects. I love Scribd and tell everyone about it, even though I have no relationship with them. I'm just a fan.

Also if you'd you'd like to talk to others in your own situation, you could sign up for any of the expat sites which have forums, eg BritishExpat.com. There are loads of them and more cropping up every day, plus groups on FaceBook...

Finally, make sure your health cover is adequate, whether you or your employer will be paying for it. You never know when accident or illness might strike and if you're not properly covered, you could end up in dire straits.

I paid a lot of money over the years for my overseas health insurance, and sometimes wondered why. Then something bad happened to me, and I was rushed to hospital. It was the best hospital you could imagine with international standards, luxury rooms with a guest bed, fridge, TV, WiFi, everything you could ever want. The cost for my little stay was in excess of £10k. No problem. My insurance paid for it. Take care, if you end up in a lower grade hospital, it might not be so good.

Good luck and enjoy your overseas posting.

top_drawer_2

Thank you!

I'm not sure about doing a projection a year ahead as I really don't know for sure what my costs are going to be ... I'm just guessing based on my time in South Korea / living in the UK.

I love my books; I tend to spend a lot of time alone as it is so the costs of alone time activities do mount : ( I can see why I have so little money now yet seem(ed) to be on good money, at least in South Korea. I currently own a Nook Simple Touch but I'm looking into a HD one as an investment so that I can get a wider range of books on BookBub and also use scribd (easily).

I'm also going to look into alternatives for Spotify and Netflix.

You're right about health insurance : ) it's not worth scrimping on.

This is my revised spreadsheet:

Dobbibill

Have you seen this spreadsheet It allows to you see a projected balance at the end of each month, even for a full year, which you can see on one page. [If you would prefer that, rather than on multiple tabs]

KayTM

I'm wondering if you're going to teach English as a second language. The salary suggests this to me. In which case, it's likely that there are other western expats doing the same thing there for your employer. Why not ask your employer for the email address or one (or more) of your future colleagues and ask them to give you a rough idea of what they need to spend each month?

Of course, you could try this even if you're not going to teach. It's just that foreign language teachers and other low paid folks tend to hang out together and do the same sort of things, eg where they eat, shop, etc. These are likely to be different from the higher salaried execs with entirely different budgets and requirements.

My guess is that if you eat like the locals, then you can have a good and varied diet. The minute you add imported goods, eg from Britain or Australia, etc, the cost will rocket upwards.

Another thing to think about is what you'll do with your post (snail mail). Do you have friends/family who'll deal with this for you? Would you prefer to be independent and have a UK mail box?

There's also banking and credit cards to think about. Plus maintaining your credit rating. (We fell foul of this when we discovered on our return that we had a low credit score simply because we had never borrowed anything for more than a decade.)

Anyway, this posting is already long enough...

KayTM

Another thought...

Is there a British Council where you're going? They usually have a library which you could join and borrow books and films etc. This might help to reduce your costs.

Also, there might be some informal "libraries" around. If not, then you can create one! Ask all your colleagues to donate two films and two books to get it started and you might find the whole thing snowballs. This used to be a great way to do things before eBooks were heard of, but you never know, some people might have some printed ones. People who are returning home or moving on are usually happy to leave such stuff behind.

Gers

Dobbibill wrote: »

Have you seen this spreadsheet It allows to you see a projected balance at the end of each month, even for a full year, which you can see on one page. [If you would prefer that, rather than on multiple tabs]

Great spreadsheet - thanks for posting it.

Just watch, when I deleted a whole category (the first one) the final formulas wouldn't work. I know how to sort it out though this is just a warning for those who maybe don't.

I may still use this.

Dobbibill

Gers wrote: »

Great spreadsheet - thanks for posting it.

There's lots of others in the link above too.

http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/budgets.html

I can't take all the credit, it was someone else posted them on here and I loved them so thought I would share

danandjens_worldtravels

Join your local UK library before you go, I can borrow 5 ebooks at once, which I download to my Kobo. My membership is set at 14 day borrowing, but I'm fairly sure it can be reduced so you get more books. Once you're a member you can just use passord and membership number, no need to actually be in the UK to use it.

And do you need Netflix? BBC and ITV will both work with a VPN, lots on there.