How Much Did I Spend In 2025?

A delayed Happy New Year! I do these posts every year and it’s taking me longer and longer into the new year to get them out.

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
• 2024 – $42,648

 So how about 2025?  Will the trend toward ‘out of control baller’ continue?

 

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 2025:   

 

My total of $43,051 is only $403 higher than my total for 2024 for an increase of 0.9%.  So why the hell aren’t I spending more!?!?! 

Well I did spend more and the devil is in the details.  Most of the totals in the chart above are identical or relatively close to my 2024 totals except one big one – health insurance.  My health insurance premium dropped from $6129 in 2024 to $3214 in 2025 for a decrease of almost $3000. 

I was part-time the last 8 years of my federal career so during that time I had to pay extra to keep my federal health plan.  But I fully retired with full benefits in spring of 2025 (the crowd goes wild!).  When my pension kicked in the government went back to covering their full share of my heath insurance which is about 75%.

So even though my total spending number is only a tad higher than 2024, that $3k I saved on health insurance was spent on fun.  Mainly McDonalds, Oreos, cigarettes, and vaping supplies. 

Haha, kidding of course…. regular readers know that if that were true then my brain would have likely been hijacked by aliens or something. 

Either way I still spent less than I earned in 2025…

 

 

Break It Down Now Hammer…

As usual my 3 biggest expenses were housing, health insurance, and food.  My grocery bill went up over a thousand dollars, averaging $683 a month – that’s for one dude.  And I’m skinny, haha.  I’ve now thrown out any and all attempts at being frugal or saving money on food.  I want the best and most healthy food and I don’t care what it costs. 

Every year the clear effects I feel and see from what I put in my body cannot be denied.  Sure if Aldi has the same brand of an item as Trader Joes and sells it cheaper I’ll try to wait to get it at Aldi.  But when it comes to anything else I want pure and natural ingredients, organic, and non-processed, and I’ll pay whatever to get it. 

I usually break down some things in that big “other” category which is all the spending that falls outside of the ones detailed in the chart above it.  The biggest single item was probably a $970 bill to get a hole in my exhaust fixed on my Outback.  Friggin cars, they’re so expensive. 

I did a big trip out west to the mountains and despite wanting to camp most of the time I actually stayed in hotels quite a bit.  It was just so hot in so many places that camping would have been miserable.  I can’t sleep when it’s above 70 degrees or so and since I was climbing every day and had to perform physically I needed sleep. 

I didn’t skimp on hotels either, something I would usually do in the past (Super 8, Motel 6 hello).  This time I stayed at nicer Hampton Inns and Best Westerns.  I’m getting much better at just not caring since I have the money, but I’d be lying if the frugal person in me still doesn’t sometimes freak out at a $180 hotel stay when I could get one across the street for $85.  I’m making progress 🙂 

I also bought a new Samsung Galaxy tablet as my old one from 2010 still works but with only Android 4.2 I can’t update most apps.  So I’m now using the old tablet as an extra monitor for my laptop with a cool program called spacedesk.  Check it out, it’s a great way to extend the life of a device that still has a working display and wifi connection but that otherwise is too geriatric to be of other uses. 

Lastly I significantly upped my charitable giving’s this past year and hope to keep increasing that amount in the future.

 

My Brain Is Plastic Too..

Credit cards are plastic and I’m getting better at using them with wild abandon.  Ok, that might be a slight exaggeration, but I’m getting better at spending and it’s great to see that my brain is still plastic too and learning new ways of thinking about money, value, and security. 

I’m now 99.9999999999999% sure I’ll never run out of money, and most of those extra 9’s were just added recently.  On the flip side I still want to avoid just exuberant spending on extra stuff, especially stuff I don’t really need.  I want to make most of my spending on experiences and charity.  The world has enough plastic shit filling up landfills, and yes we’re all guilty but we can check our behaviors.  

Lastly as regular readers know (all six of them!) I have a graphic design business that earned me $14,114 in 2025.  So by creating and selling art I covered about 33% of my total expenses for the year.  I encourage everyone to find a creative endeavor and pursue it.  My blog buddy Joe made $900 selling pottery last year and he was brand new at it! 

Let’s get more human creations out there to combat all the AI crap – I’m on team human.  And if you read this far thanks a bunch!