Weekly Budget Audit: The Mark My Surprise Trip to Bohol Left on My Retirement Ledger

On Thursday night, I was having a beer with my old friend Jun at a café in downtown Cebu. The conversation drifted the way it usually does: the weather lately, talk about grandchildren, and then out of nowhere, "Let's go to Bohol this weekend. I'll get the ferry tickets."

I spent nearly thirty years working as an accountant. An outing without a budget didn't exist in my vocabulary. But a few years into retirement, a strange shift had taken hold. My head says "no," but my mouth answers "sure" first. Friday morning, I was standing at the Cebu port with a single backpack.

Friday: Departure and the First Crack

The ferry to Bohol takes about two hours. Spending had already begun on the boat. I'd left without eating breakfast, so I bought bread and coffee at the onboard snack bar. The thought came automatically: I could have just eaten at home before leaving. The old me—the habits from the days of writing audit reports—were still alive somewhere inside.

We arrived in Tagbilaran and rode a motorcycle sidecar driven by Jun's cousin. The accommodation was a guesthouse belonging to someone Jun knew. 800 pesos a night. No air conditioning, just a fan, but we were told the beach was a five-minute walk. It was actually eight minutes. Once an accountant, always an accountant—you verify these things.

That evening, eating grilled fish and rice at a food stall near the beach, Jun said, "You're always writing about flexible budgeting on your blog. Do you actually live like that?" I just laughed. Honestly, there's a pretty wide gap between what I advocate on my blog and the expense log I keep in the notes app on my phone.

Saturday: A Confession in Front of the Chocolate Hills

Saturday was spent hitting the tourist circuit. Chocolate Hills, the tarsier sanctuary, the Loboc River cruise. Jun's cousin served as both guide and driver, and we split the entrance fees, tips, and snack costs along the way. The problem was that I'd been recording every expense in real time. It's less a habit than a reflex at this point. Ferry fare, lodging, meals, entrance fees, tricycle fares—each one piling up line by line in my phone's notes app.

At the Chocolate Hills observation deck, Jun glanced at my phone. "Dude, are you keeping a ledger right now?" He was right. I wasn't a retired accountant—I was someone who had never retired from accounting.

I felt a bit sheepish in that moment. On my blog, I'd written "ditch the rigid household ledger and switch to purpose-driven budgeting," yet here I was recording even a 50-peso tricycle ride. But at the same time, another thought occurred to me. Recording things isn't bad in itself. What matters is whether those records box you in or help you understand yourself.

Sunday: On the Ferry Back

Sunday afternoon, on the return ferry, I scrolled through my notes from beginning to end. I totaled up everything I'd spent over the two days. It was less than I expected. Of course, Jun had paid for the ferry tickets and the lodging was cheaper than market rate, so that factored in—but the numbers were showing me that my long-held belief that "an unplanned trip is a trip that bleeds money" was wrong.

In fact, precisely because we went without a plan, we didn't book an expensive resort, we ate at local carinderias, and we didn't even have time to stop at souvenir shops near the tourist spots. The absence of a plan had functioned as a kind of savings mechanism. There was something ironic about that.

I got off at the Cebu port and took a jeepney home. When I arrived, my wife asked, "How much did you spend?" I told her the exact figure. She said, "That's all you spent?" For someone who had watched my household ledger from the sidelines for thirty years, that was an unexpected reaction.

Monday Through Wednesday: The Audit Begins

On Monday, prompted by the trip, I pulled out my household ledger for the past six months of retirement. Just like my blog title suggests, I decided to audit my own budget.

What I found was quite interesting. The biggest monthly expense category wasn't food—it was a catch-all category lumped together under "miscellaneous." In my accountant days, if I'd seen that kind of classification in someone else's books, I would have reached for a red pen immediately. Yet there it was in my own ledger, "Miscellaneous – Other," repeating month after month.

On Tuesday, I broke down the miscellaneous items one by one. Most of them were small meals out, snacks from the neighbourhood sari-sari store, the occasional book, and treats for the neighbour's kids. Each one was small, but they added up to a significant amount. Yet what I felt looking at them was relief rather than anger. This money hadn't been wasted—most of it had been spent in the context of relationships with people.

On Wednesday, I created a new spreadsheet. Instead of the old method of setting caps for each category, I divided spending by nature into just three types: survival, relationships, and exploration. Food and utility bills were survival. Eating out with friends or buying snacks for the neighbour's kids was relationships. A trip to Bohol was exploration. Framed this way, the numbers looked different. The share of exploration in my total spending was far too low. I'd actually become more cautious after retiring.

This was the very trap I'd been criticizing on my blog. The defensive budget that automatically cuts everything when income drops. But the things you should cut and the things you should actually increase are different. If fifty-one years of living have taught me anything, it's that when people stop exploring, they don't grow old—they calcify.

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Thursday morning, I sat down at the café again. Jun wasn't there, but the coffee was. I stared at the spreadsheet one more time, then set my phone down. Numbers are just the skeleton of a story; the flesh is built from what you felt while spending that money. I'd been reading that clearly in other people's books for thirty years, but I was reading it in my own for the first time.

I don't know when the next surprise trip will come. But this time, before I open the notes app, I plan to pause for a beat and look at the sea first.