The Result of Marrying an Engineer

In my earlier post I mentioned that last month both Shah and I have been tracking our monthly expenditure. So, yesterday while I was busy invigilating (on a Sunday and with an upset stomach to add to the misery), my hubby was busy preparing the expenditure analysis, or what he calls 'The Auditor General Report'.

The report consists of 8 pages containing 6 figures and 1 table as you can see above. Below are some excerpts from the report:

SUMMARY OF MAIN POINTS OF THIS AUDIT
This family is a middle class family consisting of a 30 year old Daddy, a 29 year old Mommy, and a 2 year old Baby.

For October 2009:
• This family only managed to record a saving of 17% of their total monthly income. This can be considered as low. Ideally, according to the Daddy’s target, the intended savings should be around 30% and this family will have to work towards achieving that target.

• The remaining 83% of expenditure are broken down into four main expense groups, which are:
     o Daily meals – Meals during working day, for example breakfast, lunch and drinks
     o Commitments – Monthly payments on cars, houses, bills etc.
     o Basic needs – food and other household stuff, health products
     o Entertainment – unnecessary things to keep this family happy

• FIGURE 1: Figure 1 shows the daily and cumulative expenditure in terms of the percentage of their total income. Three notable peaks can be seen in this figure.
        o The first peak, which is the highest of all three peaks, was when they pay all their
           monthly commitments, which is usually at the start of the month.
        o The second peak, around 17th October is when the Daddy celebrated his birthday.
        o The third peak corresponds to a weekend where they had separate luncheons with the
           extended families from both sides, and the couple had a date which included more
           shopping.
        o It is worth mentioning that smaller peaks are visible when weekends come, for example
           near 10th October ,17th October, and 24th October.

Finally he concluded the following:

o The Top 5 expenditures are:
      1. Shopping – Daddy: 17.27% - its not normal, but its Daddy’s birthday month
      2. Cars: 15.92% – Two cars, normal
      3. Eating out: 8.55% - NOT NORMAL
      4. Contribution to Parents: 7.75% – Normal
      5. Food stuff: 6% - Can be increased to reduce ‘Eating Out’.

His analysis is so detailed it's not a wonder that he is an engineer. And to top it all off he is so excited with his analysis to the extent that he was wondering if it can be published in a journal (that is the academician part of him). So if you want to hire this part time 'financial auditor', please get in touch with me.