Week 19

I feel like we did quite well last week. Like during the actual week. During the weekend we spent a lot of money for sure but it was worth it. We went to Seoul for the weekend to meet up with family friends who are visiting Korea from South Africa. It was great to see them and surprisingly fun to play tourist-tourist with them 🙂 It confirmed that I shouldn’t wait for visitors to be a tourist.

Walking from Myeongdong to near Insadong

Samgypsal in Insadong (the tourist pozzie in Seoul)

The toilet from the top of Seoul Tower (over looking the lights of Seoul). Talk about a loo with a view! Was just brilliant 🙂 🙂

So the week’s spend went like this:

To new readers of The Brat Experiment: I basically report on our weekly spending and then write up a summary of our spending for each month. You can check out other weekly spends and the monthly summaries in The Numbers section.

Groceries 11 120 won	10 120 won	Groceries	Necessary
	1 000 won	Gum	Necessary
Eat Out 60 500 won	49 000 won	Dinner and drinks with work	Necessary but we did indulge in beer tastings etc 🙂
	11 500 won	Order in	Indulgence but cheap
Clothes	n/a
Alcohol 12 750 won	3 000 won	CU beer	Indulgence
	3 750 won	CU beer	Indulgence
	6 000 won	Drinks before dinner	Indulgence but lekker (South African for “really nice”)
Once-off	n/a
Bills & Fees	n/a
Transport   10 200 won	5 300 won	Taxi to work dinner	Necessary. It was super far.
	4 900 won	Taxi home after dinner	Necessary
Gifts	n/a
Medical	n/a
Travel	n/a

 Day to day total: 94 570 won

So basically, I was right and we were amazing with how little we spent during the week last week. Now for the tiny matter of Seoul…

Transport 95 200 won	4 400 won	Taxi to bus station	Necessary
	43 000 won	Bus to Seoul	Necessary
	43 000 won	Bus home	Necessary
	4 800 won	Taxi home	Necessary
Accommodation 60 000 won	60 000 won	Motel	Necessary
Food 116 830 won	5 600 won	Bus snacks	Necessary
	73 000 won	Lunch out for 5	Necessary
	2 500 won	Cool drinks	Necessary
	5 000 won	Gimbap	Necessary
	13 000 won	Breakfast	Necessary
	17 730 won	Lunch out	Necessary. AND it involved steak – a REAL treat here
Alcohol 3 500 won	3 500 won	Beer after Seoul Tower	Indulgence
Tourist Activities 36 000 won	16 000 won	Palace secret garden	Necessary.
	20 000 won	Seoul Tower	Necessary and awesome
Shopping 49 600 won	3 500 won	Socks	Necessary. Been looking for ages
	5 000 won	Scarf	Indulgence but so pretty 🙂
	41 100 won	Harry Potter book and a puzzle	Indulgence
Gifts 5 200 won	5 200 won	Postcards sent from Seoul Tower	Necessary

 Seoul travel: 366 330 won

Check how pretty my scarf is! AND it’s practical colours that I will use often – at least I felt responsible in my indulgence 🙂

We did Seoul a little differently to usual in that we only travelled up on the Saturday morning and so didn’t to pay for accommodation on Friday night – this was a big saver. Accommodation really does nail the travel budget… so long term we definitely need a camper van or something…

Week’s total: 460 900 won

Necessary: 387 050 won (84%)

Indulgence: 73 850 won (16%)

Overall I am very pleasantly surprised by our spending last week. We only have one more weekend before payday and we feel like we are actually going to make it without having to eat nothing but ramien (Korean noodles) for a week 🙂 And this is even with this weekend coming lasting FIVE days. Yip, it’s Chusok (Korean thanksgiving) and so today is the last day of work for the week (yaaaaaaaay!). And I’m very excited because we are going to play tourist-tourist again 🙂

Xxx

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