achieving financial freedom one lazy step at a time

Monthly expense report: March

Ouch, April has already passed us by and I haven’t even posted my March report! The reason is simple: the Covid-19 lockdown in Belgium has me working from home. And after working 8 hours behind my desk at home I just don’t feel like sitting more time behind that same desk!

On all other accounts the lockdown doesn’t post any problems for me. I have never been a ‘people’ or ‘shopping’ person. So no big changes for me on that front.

The weather in March was not all that good either so I didn’t really miss being able to go somewhere or invite friends over.

Health wise I definitely ate way too much crap during the first weeks of the lockdown (which started the second half of March in Belgium).

But this is the financial report. So how are my numbers for being half a month in lockdown? Pretty good!

Income : 2 385,20 euro

Expenses: 1 433,45 euro

Savings: 951,75 euro or 40%

Income

Income is once again very boring. Just my wages from work + 66 euro from my health insurer.

Expenses

Wohoo, inside of the budget of 1 500 euro!

But I have to admit, I did cheat a bit. I bought a 400+ euro matras at Ikea that I put on my debet card and that cost will be coming in April. The reason is mostly smoothing out spending. With the lockdown approaching I knew I wasn’t going to be spending a lot in April. So instead of having a big bump in March and then a big drop in April I used the debit card to even that out.

Anyway, enough talk about my cheating ways: I only spend 333 euro above my fixed 1 100 euro contribution to our joint account!

And I even had about 120 euro health insurance costs (53 euro for a forced government plan and the rest for my personal insurance).

Not good was my increased spending on bad food once again. I really went all out on that front and I am really happy I was succesful in turning this around in April. But that’s a story for next months expense report.

2 Comments

  1. ambertreeleaves

    cheating…! Well done. Spreading out expenses to fool the stats is a technique I also use. I have 5 social deals for food ready to be eaten when the lock down is done

    • finan112_wp

      For the full year it doesn’t make any difference but for March – April it kinda evens things out. In stead of a huge surge in March and then an equal drop in April it now kinda stays the same. And something in my rbain just likes it better this way ..

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