Home » Retire » FIRE FIRE Trial Expense Report — February 2026: Chinese New Year Met A Low Income Month June 9, 2026 by Kevin Leave a Comment Updated : June 12, 2026 Category : Retire › FIRE January ended in a fat surplus. February didn’t. 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). This series looks at our real monthly expenses, compares them against my alternative income, and answers one question. Can we sustain our lifestyle without a full-time salary? A quick note on what “alternative income” means in this series. I mentally split my portfolio into two halves: the income-producing side (dividends, interest) and the non-income-producing side (Index ETFs, sitting there compounding). Add in side hustle income on top, and that’s what I’m tracking here....