Annual Spending Review - 2020

Well, 2020 is almost over.  Here's where all the money went, in what turned out to be a very unusual year for our spending patterns :-

click on the graphic for a larger image

See previous reviews for the 'Rules', e.g. the 2019 review ...

As usual, the graphic shows the highest spending categories for 2020 in descending order from the left, with the equivalent 2019 and 2018 percentages alongside.

Despite being away for seven out of the first eleven weeks of this year, 'Holidays & Travel' spending was very much lower than usual because these winter trips had mostly been paid for in late 2019.   

And there were no long weekends away in the summer, and neither did we travel to the Mediterranean for our usual three weeks in September.   In fact, since our return from lockdown in Tenerife in March, and straight into the first UK lockdown, we haven't spent a single night away from home in over nine months.

At the time of writing, we haven't committed any cash in 2020 on future travel plans for next year.   We're very keen to get away to the sun again as soon as it's practical, but the rules and requirements are changing too often at present so we'd rather wait until it's more certain that an aircraft would actually leave the tarmac and we're not likely to be quarantined when we arrive somewhere ...

Spending in 'Restaurants & Bars' is also well down in 2020.  We've only been out for Sunday lunch a handful of times this year.

I also didn't manage a single round of golf this year.   Even the 'Gambling' category spend is lower than 2019 due to several months of suspended horse-race meetings.

With so many other spending opportunities curtailed, we embarked on a few more garden landscaping jobs, and also the major project of building a conservatory.    These works are all described in posts from earlier in the year.

The conservatory costs are categorised under 'House Maintenance', making it the second highest spend in 2020.  'Tools' spending is also much higher this year - I bought a lot of new tools to help with the conservatory build.

But despite these major projects, in October I could see that the annual 'spend' would be well down on that of 2019, so I made a significant ISA contribution to lift the total to the same value as last year.

Therefore, 'Savings & Investments' turned out to be the highest spending category in 2020, but this was certainly not the intention at the start of the year.  I'd have much preferred to spend the money on travelling.

Looking ahead, there's still too much uncertainty surrounding travel restrictions due to the Covid-19 virus, so we've no idea what 2021 will bring.   Maybe the infection rate around the world will drop rapidly during the first few months of the year, and we'll also get vaccinated, but as a last resort I've another major household project in mind if we're again forced to spend more time at home ...