January was a fat green surplus. February went deep red. March did neither, and that’s the whole point of this one. 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). Add in side hustle income on top, and that’s what I’m tracking here. I call it “alternative” rather than “passive” because some of it (like blog revenue, digital product sales) takes