October Expenses – $922.46 Plus Weight Loss Update

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for October.

Household	$32.59
Rent	$305.03
Entertainment	$113.43
Transportation	$0
Food	$185.78
Travel	$195.72
Phone	$15.19
Health	$74.72
Total	$922.46

My October Expenses were quite low due to the low-cost of living her in Chiang Mai and the absence of any large expenses.

My household expense was for paper towels, toilet paper, laundry detergent, utilities and similar expenses. I also spent almost $10 on a fan which inflated this expense category a bit. I bought the fan when I was sick and had a fever. Turning the AC down gave me the chills. Directing the fan towards my face allowed my head to cool down without making the rest of my body cold. Even though I will have to leave the fan behind, it was worth the expenditure to feel better when I was so sick. I’m pretty sure they undercharged me for utilities. Assuming they correct that error this month when I check out my household expenses for this month will be quite a bit higher.

Rent was for my apartment in Chiang Mai. The total was a tiny bit smaller than last month due to a slightly better exchange rate when I paid October’s rent.

Entertainment was a little high, but better than last month.  Since I have a lot of time to kill I ended up spending a bit going to the movies. My girlfriend was only able to visit me one weekend in October. If she had been able to visit me more often I would have spent a lot more in this category. We plan to spend quite a bit of time together this month before I have to return to the U.S. so I expect my entertainment expense will be higher this month.

Transportation was $0 for the month. I put local transportation in the travel category and didn’t have any other transportation expenses. This category will be higher this month since I will do a fair amount of driving once I return to the U.S. this month.

Food consisted of $31.98 spent on groceries and $153.80 spent on fast food/restaurants. This was a bit higher than the previous month. After the first couple days of the month I decided to not worry about food cost at all and see how much I ended up spending. I ate out 30 of the 31 days in the month and sometimes ate out twice in a day. The only day I didn’t eat out was when I was sick from possible food poisoning and had no appetite. I think I’ll spend a little less on food this month.

Travel was for local transportation, a visa extension, and two airline tickets to Bangkok. I bought a one-way ticket to Bangkok for myself since that is where I’ll be flying from to return home. I bought a round trip ticket for my girlfriend so she can visit me in Bangkok before I leave. I was able to get 3 free nights at the Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel using points. It looks like a pretty nice place. I think my girlfriend and I will have a good time there.

Phone was about $15.19 for local Thai phone service. It was about a $1 cheaper than last month for some reason. This month I will be resuming my Project Fi phone service which will result in a slight increase in this expense.

Health included $22.73 for a doctor visit, $10.85 for my monthly fitness center membership, and the rest was for medicine. I don’t think I will have a doctor visit or need to refill any of my medicine this month so this expense should go down.

This month’s expenses were pretty low and I didn’t really make any special effort to keep them low. That is one advantage to living in Chiang Mai, expenses are naturally low here. I’d have to make a special effort to spend a lot here.

Weight Loss

At the end of August I posted a goal of losing 30 pounds in the next three months. I weighed 224.8 on September 1st. On October 31st I weighed in at 208.8 pounds for a weight loss of 16 pounds in 2 months. This means I am 4 pounds behind where I should be to be on track to meet my goal. I’ll need to step things up a bit to hit my goal.

I’m not too worried about not meeting my goal of losing 30 pounds in 3 months. To lose weight I have been doing intermittent fasting. For me, this means eating all of my food in an 8 hour window. My eating window is usually around 11am-7pm. My last meal of the day is usually finished before 6pm resulting in my 8 hour window being shrunk to a 7 hour window. I don’t worry too much about what I eat. I just keep my eating restricted to the window.  I find it easy to keep my eating restricted to the 8 hour window.

For exercise I do a HIIT workout on the treadmill every morning. The entire workout only takes 15 minutes which makes it incredibly easy to workout every day. I only missed 4 workout last month. I missed 2 workouts due to being sick and another 2 when my girlfriend was visiting and I wanted to spend more time with her.

Since both the intermittent fasting and HIIT workout are so easy to do I should not have any problems continuing to do both when I return to the U.S. Thus, I’m not too worried about whether I hit my weight loss goal since I know I have established habits that will eventually get me to that goal and beyond.

Next month I’ll let you know if I reached the goal.