Expenses - June 2019

For the last few months (since June), I stopped blogging about our expenses because there were just too many things ongoing - our house was doing renovation with a few hiccups, CZM deciding to do a semi-retirement (it ended after 1 month. lol.), I was looking out externally and went for a few interviews (decided to stay on now - shall blog about this another time), visited and returned from Canada/USA (yet to blog about this too) and planning for our RTW (Singapore - Mexico - Peru - Bolivia - Brazil - Switzerland - Singapore) which is happening next month.

Anyway, I should not be procrastinating too much before the year ends and finally took some time and tabulated the expenses for the last few months as well as our annual expenses. You will soon understand why we barely buy/invest this year.

Current Profile: 29 years couple who got married last year but are still staying separately with our own parents while waiting for the renovation of our BTO to be completed.

Our total expenses were $14,035.27! The breakdown would be as follows:

KPO Expense Fund (our common fund): $9,129.03

KPO: $2,421.26

CZM: $2,484.98

House

House will be our biggest expenses for the next few months. We made the first 10% downpayment for our renovation and you can read more about it here - Renovation Cost for Our New House.

We have started paying for our mortgage/housing loan. The loan amount is about $380k, amortized across 25 years will mean we need to pay $861 each. We are paying this using our CPF OA. Why are we not using cash? Long story short, we are generating higher returns with our cash. You can read about our strategy here - Chiong Housing Loan or Take It Slow?

Vacation

Vacation is still one of our biggest expenses. Most of it would be for the upcoming Canada vacation. The increase in other subcategories is because we went to KL for a few days and I just got reminded that CZM owes me another travel post. lol.

Parents
$1,360 - This is the total amount we are giving to our parents as allowance.

Darling/CZM
$484.51 - 3 x Lancome Advanced Génifique Serum bought from Duty Free (forgot the size)

$200 - CZM signed up for some massage/facial thingy.

$64.04 - Watson

Food
$473.98 - Our combined food expenses are still on the low side because we are still staying with our parents and I usually skip lunch.

Treat
$339.95 - Treated family, friends and colleagues to food/drinks. I can't really remember what's the special occasion but I had a Chope reservation at New Ubin. Guess that's where the majority went to.

Credit Card
$241.57 - Paid annual fee for Citi Premier Miles to get 10k miles and some processing fees for the transfer of miles.

Insurance
$189.00 - This is a fixed monthly cost for the basic coverage - $1 million term life ($71), Early Cancer Care - 150k ($64) and hospitalization ($53).

Transportation
$110.28 - Our EZ Link/Account-Based Ticketing (ABT) for the month. Read about this Samsung Pay x SimplyGo x Visa Hack if you are a Samsung mobile phone user.

$56.4 - Cab

Gift
$138.00 - Wedding red packet for a colleague at JB Pekin Restoran (北京楼).

$2.90 - CZM bought something for a friend.

Mobile
$98.33 - First month of my mobile plan (pro-rated + 1 month in advance) M1 Corporate Individual Scheme (CORI), mySim70.

Entertainment
$20 - CZM and I went to watch a movie.

Summary
January 2019 - $11,712.06
February 2019 - $7,301.63
March 2019 - $6,954.84
April 2019 - $5,236.49 ($30,027.34 including the next 5% downpayment)
May 2019 - $4,860.15
June 2019 - $14,035.27

Our total expenses for 2019: $‭50,100.44‬
Average expenses per month for 2019: $‭8,350.07

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Advance Inspection - Residential Inspection

Hello everyone! After a long hiatus, I am finally here blogging! I am sure KPO will be very pleased (and will stop nagging). In KPO's previous post - Renovation Cost for Our New House, he talked about how we ended up choosing ID over contractor as we are not familiar with the renovation and would prefer to leave it to the SMEs ("Subject Matter Expert") to deal with it. However, do we 100% have faith in them? Probably not, given all the horror reno stories which you see/hear from your friends/online. We also personally encountered one ID company who almost "ate up" our deposit without performing any work. We went to CASE and were also mentally prepared to go to Small Claims Tribunal to get back our deposit. Long story short, we managed to get our deposit back but lost faith in this industry due to the many black sheeps.

As such, we were absolutely amazed when we learnt that there is such a thing/service - defect inspection. Being an ex-auditor, I know how important it is to have someone neutral and professional to inspect the books and records of a company (otherwise the firm will have no incentive to ensure correct reporting right?). Similarly, the defect inspection company acts as a neutral third party who helps to inspect home and properties.

We compared a few different defect inspection companies (there aren't many in the market) and have shortlisted both Advance Inspection and Absolute Inspection as they are the bigger market players and hence more reputable. Eventually, we chose Advance Inspection as they are more budget friendly. Most people will ask why engage a defect inspection company instead of checking on your own? Well, yes you definitely can do it on your own, but we decided not to take matters on our own hands and leave it to the experts. After all, it is only a small cost as compared to the price of the house (typically range from $200 for 480 sqft two-room unit to $1,000 for a 2,000 sqft home).

We first engaged Advance Inspection for the Residential Inspections upon our HDB key collection (before reno starts). This is important as they will help to check for any defects by the developer and ensure that rectification works are done before the start of renovation to avoid future disputes with ID/Contractor. There are three inspections in total:

• 1st Inspection: Identifying defective works & report submission for client / developer
• 2nd Inspection: Joint inspection appointment with client & developer on defective works
• 3rd Inspection: Conducting of a final inspection on developer rectification works 

We thought the first inspection will be really fast as they are the experts. It will just be the typical checking of hollow tiles, electricity etc. However, we were wrong. The inspector assigned took more than 4 hours. He checked every nook and cranny, from tiles to electricity, from painting to bathroom water flow. At the end of the 1st inspection, this is how our house looked like.

Blue tapes/defects everywhere! The box up tape means chipped tiles.

 We received a 4 page report on the defects on that night. How efficient!

The second inspection was more of a breeze. The inspector went through with the developer/BSC on the defective works and left it to them to correct. We noted that the workers from BSC have the tendency of removing the blue stickers after rectification is done, so a suggestion was to remind them NOT to remove after rectifying the defects, or only perform rectification when you are around. Another thing that we noted is that the workers did not rectify all the flaws. Some of the flaws we find it really small and decided to let it go. Besides, we have the 3rd inspection, so the inspector from Advance Inspection can help to point out if there are any major issue no rectified. 

On the 3rd inspection, there wasn't any major issue noted. The inspector added a few more stickers, mainly due to uneven walls or paint. As this is the final round of check by them, we arranged another time with BSC to ensure that the workers complete all remaining rectification. 

Given KPO's kiam pok nature, had we regretted engaging Advance Inspection? Absolutely not. We could not have imagined climbing high and low to identify defects, bearing in mind that there was absolutely no fans/air con installed in our unit at that time.

I will leave to the next post to share our experience on the post renovation defects check. Till then.

If you would like to engage Advance Inspection too, do use our referral/promo code - AISG0730. You will be able to get $30 discount and we will get $30 for the referral :) Simply contact them either through mobile/WhatsApp (8748 0988) or email (info@advanceinspection.sg) and quote the code.

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Renovation Cost for Our New House

After about 4/5 months of renovation, we decided to move in on the last week of October before the final phase of the renovation was completed (touching up). We told the ID (interior designer) at the start that we are in no rush because we did not want to rush him/the renovation and compromise on the quality. Wrong move man, the ID really took his own sweet time and there were still a few major screw up -.-

We decided to look for an ID for our renovation instead of taking things into our own hands and go the contractors route because we felt that we lack the knowledge and time to handle it ourselves. Hence, we started looking for ID even before collecting the key to our BTO HDB back in March 2019. We approached > 10 different ID companies (most were "recommended" by Renopedia, HomeRenoGuru and Qanvast while a few were from friends/relatives recommendation as well as what we saw on social media).

We sort of already knew the design we wanted (e.g. hacking one room to make the living room bigger, platform bed, etc.) but the quotations we received from them varies greatly! It ranges from $50k to $90k! We shortlisted down to 2 IDs, they were not the cheapest and definitely not the most expensive with quotations around $60k - 1 of them was recommended by a relative and he seems like a pretty honest guy while the other has a bit of "ah beng" feel who has nice designs similar to what we wanted. We met up with them 2/3 more times to discuss more in details (payment terms, materials, etc.) and even went down to their house/previous project. We also told both of them that we will be engaging professional to check the renovation before releasing the final payment and the honest guy told us that we cannot expect 100% perfection, got to close one eye. At the back of our minds, we were thinking how can one close one eye after paying $60k, confirm both eyes open big big. Eventually, we decided to choose the ah beng over the honest guy (maybe too honest).

Most IDs were asking for 5% for final payment but we wanted to hold more and split the payment. His initial payment terms were 10%, 40%, 45% and 5% but we negotiated till something like the above.

We were using what CASE proposed/recommended previously as justification. You will not find the percentages in the updated document. We signed the $62,888 contract in early June and these are the dates when we made the remaining payment. You will be able to see how slow it was as compared to the 2 months timeline he gave us initially.

10% - June 2019
40% - July 2019
20% - August 2019
20% - September 2019
10% - December 2019

Around August, he told us that he did not account for one portion of the cabinet and we will have to top up and gave us the below revised quotation - $65,658. My friends were suggesting that I get him to tank half of it because it was his fault for missing it but we just wanted everything to finish ASAP so we just agreed to it.

The above does not include the electrician cost which is $3,006. Our electrician cost might be slightly higher because I requested for all the light/fan switches to have the neutral wire/point which is necessary for our Xiaomi smart home setup (will blog about this next time) and we moved/added quite a few power points.

Let me share some photos of those screw up:

1. My "favourite". We have an open kitchen concept (no wall) but both our mum said the kitchen cannot be open. lol. So we added glass panel to "close" the kitchen. Below is the fixed glass panel and there will be a sliding glass panel on the other side.

As you can see, the fixed panel was installed over the cabinet and when the sliding glass panel closes, we will not be able to open the kitchen drawers =.=" We usually see this kind of design on social media or 9gag. Definitely did not expect to see it in our own home. Imagine the frustration... This happened because the ID did not leave additional space on the side for our fridge when we gave the fridge dimensions.

2. He installed 3 sliding panels and 1 tiny fixed panel for our service yard windows and insisted that it has to be done this way because there is a pipe (top right corner) blocking it. In the end, I told him to remove it (not paying (-$580) for it too) and found another contractor to install it properly for us at $380. See the 50% markup just for the windows?!

3. Lots of hollow tiles. Not visible to the eyes but can be heard clearly with the correct equipment/coin. The higher tiles are a risk as it may fall off in the future. According to the standards/recommendations defined by BCA (Building and Construction Authority), any hollowness or cracks need to be rectified. This was highlighted by the professional defect inspector we engaged (will blog about this next time too). Imagine the mess created when they were replacing it...

Total Cost: $65,658 + $3,006 - $580 + $380 = $‭68,464‬

In all fairness, he was still responsible enough (or for the remaining 10% payment) to arrange for the various contractors to come down to fix/touch up whatever that was flagged. Comparing our experience with some of the horror stories in the Budget Reno (Singapore) Facebook group, it was just a small case of poor project management.

Would we have engaged him again if we can turn back time? Definitely not, we would/should have followed our gut feeling and went with the honest guy. Will we engage ID or contractors the next time? Hopefully, there wouldn't be a next time since we do not have plans on getting a second property but we will definitely be engaging contractors, managing everything ourselves and saving some money. If both ID and contractors are going to give me headaches, I might as well save some money.

No naming/shaming individual but I will leave the company name here :)

Honest Feel: Length & Breadth
Ah Beng Feel: Mons Interior (previously known as Mons Werk Interior Design)

Renovation Costs Breakdown

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