What I Spent In 2024

Happy 2025!  The years keep going faster and here I am again doing a tally of my spending.  I did my first spending post for the year 2020 and it was almost entirely done out of curiosity due to covid.  But once I ran the numbers I’ve now been addicted to comparing year to year.  I’ve never had a budget and achieved financial independence almost a decade ago, but I think knowing these numbers will help me project into the future.

If you don’t want to go back and check my other spending posts, here are my numbers:

• 2020 – $34,763
• 2021 – $36,478
• 2022 – $38,683
• 2023 – $39,283

 So how about 2024?

 

The Books

Virtually all my spending goes on two credit cards so calculating my total isn’t very hard.  The two cards do categorize things differently and being that I buy some food items from Amazon which do not get put in a “grocery” category on the card report this did take a bit of work. 

I keep my spending reports concise.  Here’s my main categories of spending and the damage for 2024:

 

My total of $42,648 is $3,365 higher than my total for 2023 for an increase of 8.6%.  Average inflation in 2024 according to BLS was only 2.9%, so I blew the roof off the sucka. 

I’m officially a big spender now.

Ha, yeah, joking of course.  I live in the Washington D.C. Metro area and most folks around me spend more in 3 months than I do all year, and they have waaaay less money than I do. 

When compared to the average household spending in America in 2024 I’m a bit high but pretty close.  The average household spent $77,280 in 2024, but that’s for 2.5 people which is the number used by the Census Bureau for official stats.  I’m single. 

So while my $42,648 is well over half of the average household spend, I get penalized for the full mortgage to myself as well as household maintenance bills etc, where those expenses get statistically distributed between 2.5 people in the data.  In reality my spending is likely very close to average as a person. 

I’m just average, nothing special, haha.

 

Breakin’ It Down

As in the past few years my 3 biggest expenses were housing, health insurance, and food.  All three of those went up a good deal but my food bill went up a whopping 21%.  I think we’ve all seen the price jumps in groceries.

My house continues to increase in value so my mortgage (or more accurately escrow) continues to go up.  Yes that’s solely because of property taxes but I do not separate taxes out in my spending because I don’t typically file until April thus I don’t have that number.

My internet and cell phone fees were the same as last year, but my gas expenses went up quite a bit.  I took a lot of road trips in 2024, and went up to Baltimore a lot more to see family.  2024 will be the first year in a long while where I drove more miles than I biked.  

In the chart above there’s a big “other” category that totaled $6482.  I put miscellaneous expenses and one time special things in that bucket since I do not care to take the time to do a microscopic breakdown of everything I spent.  I just don’t have the desire or time to do that and I’m pretty sure no one wants to see a chart with a bajillion categories. 

What’s in “Other”? 

This year the biggest item was medical expenses related to a mountain bike injury I sustained.  My insurance covered most of it, but the total was big so having to pay out of pocket for copays and miscellaneous things added up.

Car maintenance was about $800 in 2024, I just needed new rear brakes, a battery, and an oil change.  Bicycle maintenance was probably a few hundred and even though I was off the bike for a while with injuries I still managed to ride over 5200 miles, almost exactly 100 a week on average.

Other things in that potpourri category are my Amazon Prime subscription, my annual pass to the National Parks, my membership fee for the American Alpine club, vitamin supplements, and my charity donations. 

Oh and there’s fun spending…  

 

Fun Spending

The FIRE community has gone hog-wild on preaching about and glorifying spending in the past few years.  It’s mostly been based on the very successful Die With Zero (<–affiliate link) book.  I enjoyed the book for the most part but have a few issues with it.  I’ll put that aside.   

Fun spending is unnecessary spending.  It’s on things we want but in no way need.  Although I’d argue that many of the toys I buy for outdoor sports are very necessary for me to maintain my fitness and thus my health and sanity, so there’s a healthy debate to be had.  Speaking of those toys… 

In 2024 some of my bigger purchases were a new car camping tent, a new GPS running watch, and an inflatable SUP (my third, don’t ask).  I also bought a lot of smaller items for camping trips as well as some new/replacement rock climbing gear for older and worn out items.

I also spent a lot more time fishing which included having to get seven fishing licenses for 5 different states (salt and freshwater).  I probably slept in a tent over 45 nights at various campgrounds, and those fees add up too.  Some campgrounds now charge over $30 for a tent spot, ridiculous!

In sum I had a pretty big year for “fun spending” but don’t regret it a bit.  Hey when stocks go up more than 20% it’s pretty easy to not worry about blowing some dough.  

 

I’m Still Ridiculously Frugal Compared To My Peers

As mentioned, I live in the Washington D.C. metro area which is one of the most expensive in America.  While folks in cheaper COL areas like the deep south or Midwest might consider $42k for one dude a lot of money, it’s really not that much for a high COL area. 

Most of my neighbors who upgraded their vehicles in 2024 spent more than $50k on a vehicle alone, because they’re playing the keep up with the you know who game.  My Outback is now over 10 years old and not even at midlife as far as I see it.     

Lastly I have a graphic design business that earned me $15,082 in 2024.  So by creating and selling art – aka doing work that I love – I covered 35% of my total expenses. 

Not too shabby.