FIRE Trial Expense Report — April 2026: Family Took The Spotlight This Month

March was the boring baseline I’d been waiting for. April swung the other way, and the reason was family.

For those new here, my wife and I are your average Singaporean couple living in an HDB flat in Singapore. Our monthly mortgage is fully paid through CPF, so housing doesn’t show up in these numbers. I’ve been tracking every dollar we spend since 2013 using You Need A Budget (YNAB). This series looks at our real monthly expenses, compares them against my alternative income, and answers one question.

Can we sustain our lifestyle without a full-time salary?

This month’s story? Family needs came into the spotlight, the income side had its best regular month of the year, and the total expense figure barely flinched.

Average monthly numbers for April 2026, on a trailing 12-month basis

• Total expenses → $3,289
• Alternative income → $5,026
• Net surplus → $1,736

Apr 2026 Headline: Family Took The Spotlight

People spend on family in different ways. Some travel with their parents. Some buy things for them. Some quietly help with the bills. April was the month we did a bit of each, and the Family bucket came in at $1,175 against a $738 average. That’s 59% over, the largest anomaly of the month.

Here’s the counterweight. Total expenses for April were $3,379 against the 12-month average of $3,289. A $90 difference. The loudest family month of the series so far moved the total by under 3%, because the rest of the month went quiet at the same time. Bills ran light on timing, the Personal bucket was nearly empty, and transport stayed low.

Key takeaway about family months

Spending on people you love, in whatever shape it takes, is plannable. The trailing average had already made room for it.

Total Expenses: Where The Money Went

1. Regular Bills ($275)

Utilities, insurance, subscriptions, internet, telco: $275 (vs avg $475)

The lightest bills month of the series, 42% under average, and all of it is timing. No Town Council bills in April, no Tuas Power bill either. They’ll be back next month. Insurance across the three policies came to its usual ~$130, the subscriptions (Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, iCloud) ran their regular ~$69, StarHub fibre at $44, telco at ~$10, and my World Vision kid in Vietnam at $23.

2. Living Costs ($720)

This is the monthly variable stuff, and April ran 11% under average. For a month whose theme was spending more, the everyday baseline behaved itself. Ironically, I know of folks whose monthly car-ownership expenses are double what I spend here for two people.

Food & Home: $647 (vs avg $685)

This covers everything home-related for two people: groceries, home supplies, eating out, hawker meals, food delivery. A normal at-home month, a touch under average. Two meals a day (due to 18/6 intermittent fasting) is doing quiet work in this number. Fewer meals, fewer receipts. The bigger entries were ordinary ones, a Paradise Hotpot buffet lunch at $48 and a Grab Food + Food Panda streak early in the month.

Transport: $73 (vs avg $124)

Both of us can work from home, so transport usually means private hire rides when we head out. April ran 41% under average, and Grab didn’t show up at all this month after appearing 11 times over the prior half year. A couple of the rides we did take were tied to the family trip, and those sit with the trip instead.

3. The Rest ($2,384)

If the monthly total ever surprises you, the explanation is almost always in this bucket. $2,384 this month against $2,005 on average, and Family does most of the lifting. Six fixed sub-buckets sit in here every month:

• Annual Expenses
• Personal
• Family
• Travel
• Side Hustle
• Miscellaneous

Annual Expense: $50 (vs avg $134)

A quiet month here. A Hada Labo skincare restock at $25 and minor household fixes (T5 light, E27 smart bulb). Dental visits, air-con servicing and the other annuals stayed in their monthly slices.

Personal: $20 (vs avg $272)

Nearly empty. A baseball cap, a headband, and a Steam game. The $272 average is mostly old purchases on their instalment walk, with no fresh spending joining them this month.

Family: $1,175 (vs avg $738)

The story of the month, told at bucket level on purpose. Family needs came into the spotlight in April, in a few shapes at once: helping the parents with household needs, covering small practical items like their travel insurance for the trip, and the spending that comes with doing things together. I won’t itemise this bucket. The shape matters more than the lines, and the shape is simple. When family needs show up, we’re in a position to say yes. That’s one of the quieter things this whole FIRE structure buys.

Travel: $795 (vs avg $725)

Our upcoming Genting trip with the folks tagging along. Two rooms for two nights at $493 plus return ETS train tickets since they wanted to try the new train rides that depart from JB. Around $800 (so far) for a short getaway for four, and the ETS ride itself is half the fun. Since we have all the time in the world, taking the train to Kuala Lumpur means the trip is cheap and comfortable. In a way, this is the same geo-arbitrage thread from the Thailand months, just closer to home this time.

Side Hustle: $345 (vs avg $130)

The other over-average line, and a self-aware one. Running side hustles costs money in annual lumps: hosting, domains, the AI tools. The average smooths those lumps. This month happened to add a fresh one, a Pro Claude annual plan. I pay for both our subscriptions at $300/year each, though this renewal billed $287 after proration from my old monthly plan.

Miscellaneous: $0 (vs avg $6)

Three tiny reconciliation entries that nearly cancelled out. It’s the buffer fund, where I square up minor budgeting mismatches. Housekeeping stuff, nothing more.

Alternative Income: Where The Money Came From

Alternative income totalled $7,758 in April versus the 12-month average at $5,026.

Apr 2026 FIRE Status

April closed at a $4,379 surplus. A spotlight family month on the expense side met a dividend cluster on the income side, and the result is the fattest green number since January.

Annual Tracker (2026)

Four rows in, and the table is becoming the argument. A fat surplus, a red month, a quiet green one, and now a family-heavy month that still finished comfortably positive. No single row is representative. Average them and the picture settles into the positive, which is roughly where the trailing 12-month figure already sits. That’s the whole argument for tracking over time instead of judging any single month.

Behind The Numbers

If you’re interested in how I track all of this, I’ve been using You Need A Budget (YNAB) since 2013. It’s the source of every number in this post. I also wrote about how it all started with a simple zero-based budget if you’re curious about the philosophy behind it.

My downloaded YNAB data syncs with a dashboard I built, with 1-click buttons that generate these monthly reports. It takes the hassle out of checking and matching the data. Now all I have to do is write the post. All thanks to AI for helping me build a suite of personal finance tools, and, going by the Side Hustle bucket, for billing me for the privilege.

May 2026 should be steadier. A JB sea-view retreat is already ticketed from back in March, there are no festive events on the calendar, and the income side returns to its in-between months. After a spotlight month, I’m fine with the next one being unremarkable.

See you next month!

A quick note on the numbers. Figures in the writing are rounded to whole dollars for easy reading, while the tables keep the exact cents. Each bucket's 12-month average is rounded on its own, so once in a while the rounded parts sum to a cent off the total. It's a rounding quirk, not a missing dollar.

Kevin

Kevin started Turtle Investor after hitting rock bottom at negative $25,755 net worth. Today, his monthly alternative income pays for all his daily expenses. He shares what actually works (and what doesn’t) for Singaporeans building wealth. Learn more about Kevin here.