I have always been a keeper of receipts I don’t know why but I always think I’ll need them one day. I didn’t keep most of them from the past year on purpose, I just kept putting them away. It has been a whole year since we made the move across the world to AUSTRALIA!

I’t still seems surreal when I say it. I spotted my big paper bag full of receipts and had the idea to calculate how much I’d actually spent on myself whilst setting up a new life down under. Just a disclaimer I had 24 years’ worth of belongings in the UK and arrived in oz with 2 suitcases to my name. It still traumatises me when I think about it but it’s what needed to be done at the time, and at the end of the day things are just that THINGS they don’t mean anything when you really think about it. As long as I had my family, I was good!

I opened up a Microsoft spreadsheet dug in the bag of receipts and pulled out a handful. I’d say it took me a good 20-30 minutes to input them all. STOP reading now and comment below how much you think I spent…. 

The majority of the items were:

• Clothes
• Bags
• Shoes
• Accessories
• House goods
• Toiletries 
• Some electrical goods

The total I spent on material possessions in 2021 was $16,713 plus probably a fair bit more for the receipts I didn’t keep.

This might be a lot to people or maybe very little to others but to me that’s a lot of money. Of course I did need some of the things to start my new life down under, but did I really need all of it? No definitely not I probably didn’t need half of it if I’m being completely honest. If I didn’t buy half of it, I could have saved $8,350. I am setting myself a goal to save this amount in 2022. Cut my spending in half – I have everything I need and more. That’s $700 a month I have to save – I know it’s possible if I don’t buy anything unnecessary. 

I have created a spreadsheet to log all of my spending’s every month starting in January. Let’s do this!

My receipts from the past year!