In the previous post I wrote about my monthly expenses. This is the continuation of that post and I will be covering my annual expenses in 2024. While monthly expenses are those kind of expenses that occur more frequently, yearly expenses occur rarely, perhaps once every few years like house repairs or buying a new car etc. I will explain where we are spending the most and why. Remember that for all the expenses, whether monthly or annual, the money is coming out of my retirement corpus which consists of a bunch of debt and equity mutual funds. There are no other incomes or special savings for annual expenses.


Expenses in 2024

Our annual budget for 2024 was Rs. 3.6 lakhs. That budget has remained the same every year since 2020. However, starting this year, it will increase because I increase my annual budget every five years to compensate for inflation. Last year we spent about Rs. 3.2 lakhs on these annual expenses. Lets take a look at where we were spending the most.



Our major expense category this time was in house related expenses and there is a reason for it. In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned that we were getting our house painted. Since we were stupid enough to buy a big house, we had a huge bill for getting our house painted. Almost all of the Rs. 2.25L we spent in the “house expenses” belongs to painting just the exterior of the house.


Imagine how much more it would cost once we decide to paint the interiors. That will also come calling some time soon. That is the price you pay for being a consumerist. The more you own, the more they own you :).


Anyway, the next major expense was in the “electronics” category. Basically I bought a phone for my dad and an android tablet for my daughter. I know I am spoiling my kid with these electronics, but there is no way around it given that they have to live in the world of electronics and hence need the exposure to the technology that they are going to live in. We can’t all be amish now can we (not that I have anything against them)?


Rest of the other expenses are too small to even bother explaining. The “projects” expenses are mostly for my solar panel project and few for my surround sound system. The “kitchen” expenses are the usual water filter changes etc.


The negative number for entertainment expenses is because I sold my Pioneer AVR which got fried. I gave it for repair and the service person said it would cost a minimum of Rs. 14K to replace some parts and then only he would know if there is further damage and needs more repairs. I sold the Rs. 50K AVR for just Rs. 3K! Again, the cost of owning things :). Minimalism my friend, minimalism.


The repair person was pushing me to get it repaired because he says it will easily fetch Rs. 35K if I sell on Olx or something. I told him to take the risk, as well as the profit and make me an offer. Somehow, then suddenly his offer price is only Rs. 3K. Assuming Rs. 20K for repairs, he should have made a cool Rs. 15K profit right? Why couldn’t he share more of his profit? Well, that is the cost of risk.


Cumulative annual expenses

Annual expenses are a little different from monthly expenses in that I keep adding up all the expenses over the years since retirement. Any budget left over from the previous year will be carried over to the new year. I do this because some expenses happen only once every 10 years or so like buying a car. So the budget keeps getting accumulated until I buy the car. So here are my cumulative expenses until end of 2024.



Basically we have been over budget in the “house”, “vehicles”, and “miscellaneous” expenses. The house expense took me by surprise because while I planned for all the repairs and upkeep (including painting), I did not anticipate we will be over budget.


Vehicle expenses are alright because in 5 years we have spent around Rs. 6.4L. While we have a budget of Rs. 10L for 10 years, we may be under it because the next major expense in this department is a 2-wheeler which won’t be too expensive. So I am hoping the left over budget will be sufficient.


Finally, the miscellaneous expenses went overboard. Again a miscalculation on my part. These expenses include clothes, shoes, gifts or any other expense that does not fall into the above mentioned categories.


Budget for 2025

I increase my annual expenses only once in 5 years. The previous budget of Rs. 3.6L per annum was for the five year period between 2020 and 2024. It is now time to increase the budget. As usual, I go with a 6% inflation per year. So over the 5 years, the budget inflates to Rs. 4.8L.



I inflated the budget for pretty much all categories except for “other room”, “kitchen”, “living room” and “self improvement” expenses. I don’t anticipate we will be spending much in these categories. I mean, we already have all the things that we need in those rooms, so except for some minor repairs and upkeep, I don’t see any need to change anything in the next 5 years. Anyway there is a lot of left over budget from the last 5 years.


Coming to self improvement expenses, we did not spend much in that area. In the past we would sign up to some online classes or gym equipment or something. Now we are not finding any time (strangely enough) for our self improvement. Lets see if we can spend on something in the next 5 years.


Some categories got more inflation adjustments as compared to others. For example I increased “miscellaneous” budget by more than 6% inflation per year because it seems like we will be spending more in that category. Same for “electronics” category. Some other categories got lesser inflation.


We spent around Rs. 9.2L in total, including annual and monthly expenses from our retirement corpus in 2024. That pretty much sums it up.