For the Merry Month of May

I've been sitting on these numbers since last week, just been a little lazy on looking at them. My predictions for expenditures for the next month were close for food and goods expenditures.

Expenditures:

Food - 28,988
Goods - 14,849
Transport - 2,390
Service - 35,750
Room - 20,317
Entertainment - 15,300

Figures:


Pie Chart

Historgram

Comments:

Food expenditures for the last month worked out to 935 yen/day which is on par with food consumption expectations. Translation, I'm spending about $11/day for my 3 basic meals, drinks and plenty of snacks plus occasional eating out for lunch.

Goods expenditures for this month was 14,849, which dropped significantly compared to the 35,467 yen spent last month. This correlates largely to one time expenditures of house hold items. The drop in expenditures were in line with the 20,000 yen drop in costs I was expecting from the previous month.

Transport of 2,390 was mainly due to bus fare locally and subway transportation while I was in Nagoya. I've lopped the cost of transportation of the ferry from Sendai to Nagoya under entertainment since the trip, was of course, for entertainment purposes.

Service expenditures at 35,750. The double whammy for this month... and no, I haven't been paying for "massages" :) I spent nearly 20,000 on a gym membership at the local work out facility... (very, very nice facilities) which included a 5,000 entrance fee and a 7,000 monthly fee (2 month paid at first). Sounds pricey but for a swimming pool, weight room (good equipment), a horde of good staff and spotters, a driving range on the roof (complete with clubs and $1 for 40 balls), a scuba diving pool (first lesson free), free yoga and aerobics classes and a squash court. Yeah, I thought it was a pretty good deal and a great excuse to stay in shape. Total weight loss since coming to Japan is approximately 8 pounds... about 3.6 kg ish (depending on when I decide to tank 1 liter of water which weighs 1 kg). I've also shelled out for this months cell phone plan and 10,000 yen for this year's health insurance. I'm expecting next month's service fees are going to drop by about 20,000 yen.

Room costs at 20,317. Lesson learned: DON'T use normal long distance calling in Japan. 2 hours of calling cost me 7,000 yen or about $77 bucks. Ouch and that totally jacked up my room expenses from the usual 12,000 yen ish amount. Nothing really much to report there.

Entertainment costs at 15,300. It means that I'm starting to have a little fun over here :) A few outings here and there and costs for ferry to Nagoya are included here.

Grand total damage done to the bank account: 117,594 yen. We're looking about $1,370 for the month. I blew an extra $500 for the month on services and entertainment. So it looks like last month's predictions that costs would stay constant were off.

In general, housing costs and food costs are probably the easiest to predict. I am expecting service costs to settle down over the next full months once I've determines all the services I'll be needing. Expenditures on Goods and entertainment can be a little unpredictable depending if I decide to make large purchases or plan on hitting a significant trip for the month.