FIRE Trial Expense Report — July 2026: A Malaysia Trip In A Dividend-Rich Month

June was a thin-but-green win where the biggest expense was mostly timing. July had us in Malaysia for a few days, and the spending still came in light. The quarterly dividends landed in the same month, and the surplus was the second biggest since January.

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). Each month, I set our real expenses against my alternative income and answer one question.

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

This month’s story – A few days in Malaysia with the parents, including two nights up in Genting Highlands, and the spending still landed light, while the quarterly dividends arrived just in time to hand us the second biggest surplus since January.

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

• Total expenses → $3,104
• Alternative income → $4,927
• Net surplus → $1,823

Jul 2026 Headline: A Malaysia Trip That Still Kept The Month Light

July had us in Malaysia for a few days with the parents, two of those nights up in Genting Highlands, and Travel came in at $671 against a $745 average. A family trip, and it still ran under the average for that category, the same geo-arbitrage approach that runs through this whole series, a proper holiday priced like a long weekend at home.

Total expenses for July were $2,141 against the 12-month average of $3,104. Nearly $960 under, and the second-lightest month of the year after March. A trip away, and the total still came in low, because everything else irregular stayed flat at the same time: no annual bills came due, Personal was almost empty, and the utilities came in low after a month with the meters barely moving at home.

The Rest is the bucket that carries the month’s swings, and this month it stayed low. That is the kind of month the trailing average is there to read.

Key takeaway about quiet months

A light month is one more data point, no different from a heavy one. What made July stand out was the dividend income arriving at the same time, and I’ll get to that.

Total Expenses: Where The Money Went

1. Regular Bills ($300)

This is the monthly fixed expenses, and July ran 27% under average.

Utilities, insurance, subscriptions, internet, telco: $300 (vs avg $412)

A light month, well under average, and the reason is utilities and town council fees. There was no Tuas Power bill this month due to U-Save rebates, and Town Council came in at only $35 (thanks, S&CC rebates). Being away for a few days with idle meters at home helped as well. Insurance across the three policies came to its usual ~$130, the subscriptions (Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, iCloud) ran their regular ~$69, StarHub fibre at $29, two telco plans at $16 in total, and my World Vision kid at $23.

Boring is the point here. A fixed, predictable floor is what makes the income comparison mean anything at all.

2. Living Costs ($918)

This is the monthly variable expenses, and July ran 19% over average. The one bucket that went up this month, with the uptrend sitting in food rather than transport.

Food & Home: $851 (vs avg $663)

This covers everything home-related for two people: groceries, home supplies, eating out, hawker meals, food delivery. Over average this month, and the main cause is a run of grocery trips rather than any single splurge. Plenty of NTUC FairPrice runs through the month, a $100 Food Panda credits top-up via HeyMax vouchers did some of the lifting, and a Cold Storage and Guardian run filled in the rest. A stretch of home-cooked stocking-up after the trip, which reads heavy in one month and evens out over the next.

Transport: $67 (vs avg $107)

Both of us work from home, so transport stays small. July ran 37% under average, and the Genting Highlands trip barely touched this line because the trip’s own rides sit in Travel, not here. What’s left is a handful of local Grab trips.

3. The Rest ($922)

This refers to my annual and irregular expenses. This is usually the swing category that decides whether a month is cheap or expensive, and this month it came in quiet. $922 against $1,923 on average, barely half, and the whole month’s lightness lives here. Six fixed sub-buckets sit in here every month:

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

A zero-dollar month in some of these categories only meant that no transactions happened this month. The laptop, the web hosting, the annual premiums are still being paid off inside the average, a twelfth at a time, whether or not a fresh bill lands.

Annual Expense: $0 (vs avg $125)

Nothing this month.

Personal: $13 (vs avg $256)

Nearly empty. A small $8 Decathlon running accessory and a tiny gaming charge, and that’s all. My hobbies are super affordable, huh? In my free time, I spend a lot of time gaming, reading and watching animation. The $256 average is old big-ticket buys (mostly the laptop) spread across the year, with nothing fresh joining them.

Family: $241 (vs avg $581)

Well under average. A meal out with the parents at Xiang Xiang Hunan, and I got them travel insurance for their own upcoming Thailand trip. When the folks need looking after, it is nice that we’re in a position to do it without checking the balance first, and this month that came to a modest sum.

Travel: $671 (vs avg $745)

The story of the month at category level, and still rather reasonable considering what we did. A few days in Malaysia with the parents, two nights of it up in Genting Highlands: the ETS train rides to KL, Grab transfers, crazy non-stop eating across the trip (claypot chicken, Japanese cuisine, a congee place, and even Burger & Lobster up in the cool), and the occasional indulgences such as Venchi gelato. Under average even with a full trip by utilising the same geo-arbitrage approach again, it allowed us to enjoy a holiday in the highlands priced like a few nice dinners back home.

Side Hustle: $0 (vs avg $216)

Nothing this month. Most of this bucket’s average is yearly billing (hosting, domains, the AI tools), so until a renewal lands the line stays quiet while the average keeps remembering what it costs across a year.

Miscellaneous: +$2 (vs avg $0)

A small $2 credit this month rather than a spend, from the buffer fund where I square up minor budgeting mismatches. A couple of reconciliation entries happened to land on the plus side. It trims the total by nothing worth noting, and next month it could go the other way.

Alternative Income: Where The Money Came From

Alternative income totalled $5,837 in July versus the 12-month average at $4,927.

This is the alternative income that made the month. July was a dividend-rich month, and the payouts came in well above the usual monthly figure. Syfe REIT+ pays out quarterly (check out my review here) and one of those payouts landed in July, which is a big part of why this month reads heavy. I stopped focusing on monthly income figures a while ago. What matters is the trailing average, and a single month above or below it is just payout timing. This month, the dividends happened to land generously.

Same holdings, same yield, the cash arriving in one of its heavier months. Nothing underneath changed. If you want to work out your own current passive income, try my passive income calculator.

Jul 2026 FIRE Status

July closed at a $3,696 surplus, the biggest since January and April, and more than double the trailing average. No surprise there, since it coincides with the quarterly Syfe REIT+ payout. Expenses and income both ran in our favour at once: a light expense month met a heavy dividend month.

The heavy-hitter this month was the Malaysia trip, and even a few days away left the total nearly $960 under the expense average, because the irregular bucket stayed quiet everywhere else. On the income end, the dividends did the rest. Two things that don’t usually line up happened to line up.

For my situation, this approach holds up. Yours will look different: different lifestyle, different income timing, different risk tolerance. The method is the same: track everything, watch the trailing 12-month average, stop reacting to single months. A surplus month and a shortfall month are both just data points feeding the same average.

Annual Tracker (2026)

Seven months in now. A fat green, a red, a quiet green, a family-heavy green, a hosting-bill green, a thin timing green, and now a light month paired with a dividend-rich one. Six of seven are positive, and the average across all seven sits comfortably in surplus. No single row tells you much on its own, which is why I watch the average instead of reacting to any one 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 in the months it does bill, for charging me for the privilege.

From where it stands now, August looks like a return to ordinary. No trips on the calendar, the utilities bill will catch up now that we’re home and the daily air-conditioning is back on, and with the quarterly payout behind us, the dividends will likely go quiet until the next one. After a month where expenses and income both broke our way at once, I’ll take an ordinary one and let the average do its slow work.

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 investment income and side hustles cover his expenses and travels. He shares what actually works (and what doesn’t) for Singaporeans building wealth. Learn more about Kevin here.