Tag: frugal

One Week of Food Spending in Kuala Lumpur

After reading Ringgit Oh Ringgit’s post on Personal Finance Blog Ideas, I have decided to update on my food spending for the week! (It is also fortunate that I kept the receipts this time around.) Here goes, my meals for the week and how much they cost, and some pictures.

Where do you shop for groceries?

Living a car-free life in Kuala Lumpur means I have extremely limited choices of grocers around me, i.e. I can’t go to the wet market, or head to the cheaper ones. I make do with what I have. There are two grocers around me and the nearest one would be Village Grocer. While people associate Village Grocer with high prices, I think their fresh (vegetables etc.) prices are fair, and they are as fresh as the name. For meat, prices are on the higher end, and fortunately or not, I am mostly a vegetarian.

How do you plan your grocery shopping?

To give you some ideas about how I plan my grocery shopping for the week, there are several considerations.

  1. Price – The first section I check out is always the ‘Reduced Price’ section. I will check out what is available and plan my meals around it. I will also check out what products are on offer and purchase those.
  2. Longevity of the ingredients – I take stock of what I bought and prioritize cooking those that wouldn’t last long.
  3. Rough recipes in mind – Sometimes, I head to the grocers with particular recipes in mind. Maybe it is palak paneer, dumplings, cake, etc.
Photo by Matheus Cenali on Pexels.com

How is your eating habit like?

Honestly, I used to eat a lot more when I was weight lifting. I can’t go to a workout hungry, hence I wasn’t able to practice intermittent fasting for a while. Recently, due to the closure of gyms as a result of the MCO, I am mostly doing yoga and low intensity workouts.

My ingestion period is between 12pm to 6pm, and in the morning I have only black (instant) coffee. There are of course times I break the fast past 6pm (life is hard especially if you love food shows), but I will try to limit the snacking to low calorie stuff like seaweed.

So, show us the meal plan!

Honestly, I am really proud of some of the pictures. Check out my instagram for more!

The Detailed List:

The total cost for the week come to be: RM 122.50.

As you can see, there are a lot of repeats in the list. Most of the time, I would just cook for one round and have the food for a few days. You can also see that I eat a mostly vegetarian diet. There is very little meat in my diet.

I also took the chance to assess my eating habit. I think you will be able to tell I have a sweet tooth (demonstrated by the highlights). My packaged food consumption is limited and I would like to keep it that way. I only ordered delivery once, good job to myself! You can see how the delivery blows the budget out of proportion.

RM122.50 for a week’s of food spending in Kuala Lumpur. Is it surprising? Some of my (frugal) friends in UK/USA can keep their monthly food budget to be around £100 / $125. I am spending about the same amount as them in absolute currency terms (~ RM500), but the percentage of food to income is a lot larger. While people talk about how cheap food in Malaysia is, on a relative scale, it is actually rather expensive. While food costs about the same in developed countries in absolute terms, people make a lot more.

Should I cut my budget for food further?

I do think I can trim my food cost further if I do it ERE style and eat lentils all week, but for now, I would be happy if I can keep this spending level.

I am also sharing the calculations and recipes below.

Expand to see!

  1. Nescafe Gold – RM21/packet from Shopee, one pack typically lasts about 3 months. I drink it daily. 
  2. Cream Spinach and Scrambled Eggs – 3x eggs (RM 1.30), 50g of Brazilian Spinach (RM 0.90), Cream (RM1.50)
  3. Banh Bo – 7x Eggs (RM 3.00), 400ml of Coconut Milk (RM 4.20, 1l of coconut milk is RM10.90), 320g Tapioca Flour (RM 0.40), 80g Rice Flour (RM 0.30), 300g Sugar (RM 0.90), Pandan Leaves (RM 0.40)
  4. Steamed Butter Kaya Bread – 2x of Gardenia Bread (RM 0.50), Kaya (RM 0.15), Butter (RM 0.15)
  5. Baked Bell Pepper and Cucumber – Bell Pepper (RM 2.20), Cucumber (RM 4.00)
  6. Chicken Sandwich – 2x Gardenia Bread (RM 0.50), 1x Cheddar Cheese (RM 0.80), 2x Chicken Slices (RM 1.00), 2x Butterhead lettuce (RM 0.30)
  7. Tuna Sandwich – 2x Gardenia Bread (RM 0.50), Tuna Mayonaise (RM 6.50)
  8. Dole Whip Smoothie (Vegan) – 1x Pineapple Pack (RM 3.90), Coconut Milk, 1x Cavendish Banana (RM 1.00)
  9. Carrot Smoothie – 4x carrots (RM1.10), Greek Yogurt (RM 0.80), Coconut Milk (RM 2.20)

$500 of Underwear

This is the holy grail jacket. I’m never going to need to buy one again.

A friend

Yeah, but it’ll last longer.

Me, justifying why I need a really expensive bag to my girlfriend

I just realized I own $500 of underwear…

Another friend

Being frugal means you generally buy cheap stuff, but sometimes you go off and do a cost-benefit analysis on something more expensive and figure you’re willing to pay a premium for quality, comfort, and/or life-expectancy. A good example is high quality underwear. Once you catch a whiff of the experience of wearing any of the Internet’s favorite premium briefs, you might find it hard to go back to the cheap-o multi-packs Mom used to buy you from Walmart and Bob’s Discount Clothing.

Here’s an example (inspired by true events):

Let’s say you want to own 10 pairs of briefs, and compare the costs of cheap-o briefs with those of Premium Brand A. Using example prices from the table below, you calculate that the premium you will pay is $120. You find this cost-benefit reasonable, and you’re able to justify it further by amortizing the cost across the 5-10 years that you expect briefs to last, so you go ahead and decide to buy a set of premium briefs.

Cheap-oPremium Brand A
Price per pair$3$15
Price for 10 pairs$30$150

This was a reasonable, controlled, and intentional use of your money. You looked at the costs, amortized them over time, thought about quality and comfort, and made a well thought out decision to purchase premium undies. Huzzah! You now don’t have to make decisions about underwear for the next 5-10 years.

A few months later, you catch a whiff of some internet talk about a new premium brand. Premium Brand B. Curious, you Google “Premium Brand A” vs. “Premium Brand B”. Just curious, you say to yourself. You find that the Internet has decided Premium Brand B is better than Premium Brand A. Ah well, you say to yourself. You were just curious, anyway. You’ve got underwear already. You don’t need to upgrade. But I wonder how they feel. So, you decide to order just one. Just curious, you again say to yourself. You’re not going to overhaul your underwear setup, you just want to give these new ones a try.

A week later, Premium Brand B briefs arrive at your door. You give them a try and compare. Lo and behold, the internet was wrong: Premium Brand B unquestionably is not better than your good ole’ Premium Brand A. You spent an extra $15 on this experiment, but you can always use an extra, you suppose.

Two years later, a popular media site posts a huge comparison of 15 different premium briefs. Your trusty Premium Brand A does well, but Premium Brand C comes out on top. Like you did with Premium Brand B, you buy one, just to try. And voila, this time, the internet was right: Premium Brand C clearly is better than your good ole’ Premium Brand A.

At this point, you’re now in a small bind. You have a set of Premium Brand A briefs that was supposed to be your go-to for the next decade. You don’t really need an upgrade, and maybe you can easily shrug off Premium Brand C. On the other hand, maybe you think about living with Premium Brand A for 10 years, knowing all the while that there was something better. Maybe that nags you for a while. So, you do it. You wait for a decent sale, and you upgrade your set. Another $150. But at least now you won’t live for 10 years thinking what could’ve been.

So where are you now? $150 for your initial set of Premium Brand A briefs. $15 to try Premium Brand B. Another $150 to upgrade your set to Premium Brand C. You now have $315 of underwear.

It’s not hard for this sort of thing to repeat itself. It’s too easy to ditch the 5-10 year plan again, for yet another holy grail pair of underpants that eventually comes into the fray. And if you’re not careful, you may reach a point where you one day wake up and say “I just realized I own $500 of underwear.”