Financial Freedom Sloth

It is starting to become somewhat of a habit to do these full year recaps on the first of February.

Which immediately anwsers the first question: yes I am still as lazy as I was back in 2019.

Since I liked the overview I did last year I will be continuing it this year. This is going to just be a financial recap of 2020. I am saving the whole covid stuff for a ‘1 year working from home recap’ which I will try to do on time . On time being 15 march 2021 as that was the start of the first lockdown in Belgium and since that date I have perhaps been to the office a grand total of 20 days.

4 year recap

Recap conclusions

The trend from the last years seem to continue:

* my annual spending is slightly above 20 000 euro

* that spending is pretty much irrelevant from how much income I make

The sidegig did not materialize in 2020. Let’s hope I have some better lucki in 2021 on that front.

2020 numbers

Income

Income was 32 064 euro.

Working for the Boss man brought in 31 441,67 euro. The reason this is lower than 2019 is because I did not get a double bonus this year. My company has no ‘double bonus’ policy. It was very exceptional for me to get one last year. So this year is actualy a return to normal.

Gifts were 530 euro. With no new car to buy my parents didn’t see any reason to give me any extra gift except for the normal birthday, christmas and such gifts.

Covid did bring my little experiment with ticket arbitrage to a screeching halt.

I also got 89 euro back from my health insurer.

Expenses

Expenses totaled 20 228 euro.

Predictably most went to our joint account since we use that to pay our mortgage, utilities, food .. My half of all these bare necessities has cost me 13 400 euro in 2020.

Theoretically I could live on this amount. It wouldn’t be any fun at all, but I could, well exist on it.

The Vespa cost me 1 367,15 euro. Honestely I thought this was going to be a lot lower since I have barely used it since March when the pandemic hit and I started working form home. But I was close to needing some maintenance when the pandemic hit. So I didn’t really save that much on maintenance (890 euro) this year. I only saved on fuel and that isn’t the main cost of having the Vespa. Not needing any maintenance in 2021 will be the big savings consequence of working from home.

Extra food was 1005,55 euro. I am going to be honest, the only reason this is lower than last year is because of the pandemic and working from home. Working from home means the shop is further away. So just external circumstances, not an improvement in my discipline.

Gifts were 264 euro. Hey, the girlfirend doesn’t get a shiny gift every year.

Hobbies: 449 euro. Most is actualy trying to get a side gig off the ground but since it is not bringing in any money at all I have put these expenses under hobby.

Random fun: 1 019 euro. With nowhere to go I bought several games on steam. But also a laser and fog machine to be able to have the club experience at home (no lockdown parties here but I do hope social restrictions can be lifted somewhat so I can put this equipment to use again).

Restaurant: 145 euro. This is one restaurant visit with the parents because hello Covid.

Sports: 174 euro. This was 64 euro for swimming until the pandemic shut this down and then 110 euro for extra weights for my home gym

Telecom: 150 euro because I have a very cheap mobile viking subscription.

Health spending was 60,5 euro at the doctor/dentist and then another 164 euro at the pharmacy (mainly glasses for 147 euro). Not getting sick turns out to be cheap.

Hobbies: 449 euro Most of this expense is actualy trying to get a side gig off the ground but since it is not bringing in any money at all I have put these expenses under hobby.

Clothing: 92 euro

Travel: 1 220 euro. This amount covers our 10 day holiday to Portugal.

If I repeat the exercise of last year and look at the money i spend on stuff for me I liked buying I end up with 2 333 euro. A little bit up from last year but not by that much. Most of the up can actually be explained by games on steam and one could argue if these are that good for me. On of my goals last year was to spend more on funn stuff for myself but I honestely struggeld with this one. It seems I just don’t need more stuff.

2021 goals

Making goals for the new year is pretty futile since Covid is making a lot of things uncertain. Main things are still that I need to lose weight and get a somewhat interesting, fun side gig.

With no more expenses for the side gig and my end of year work bonus being paid, December should be a great month for savings. Let’s have a look.

Income:

Woohoo for the income!

Most of it, 3 679,15 euro was work income. My regular mothly wages + the end of month bonus. The remaining 150 euro was from christmas gifts from the parents and my mother-in-law.

Expenses:

I may, or may not have come in under budget this month depending on how you look at one particular expense this month. Mor e on that at the end of this post.

As I do every month I transferred 1 100 euro to our joint account to pay the mortgage, utilities and our joint grocery shopping.

Extra food was 100 euro. Being home helps me not buyng extra food to eat during lunch. Especially because I now do my fitness during lunch break which just dossn’t leave me with any time to speed of to the nearest shop and buy some chips. I spend 60 euro on these extra snacks and then another 40 euro on pizza form me and a co-worker as the co-worker is leaving the compagny and pizza together was a bit our thing … Since he is leaving I paid for his pizza too.

Gas for the Vespa was 0 euro this month as I only drove it one time to work (and one trip to the shop to get some extra chips …). Which reminds me I need to take it for a spin in January and pump up the tires.

Mobile phone subscription for a bizare reason was only 2,5 euro. I have no idea why it was not it’s regular 12 euro and I am too lazy to find out.

Miscelanious expenses are a shampoo for 17 euro and a game on steam for 12 euro.

And then we come to the gift’s section where accounting my expenses has a tricky part.

The non tricky part is the 10 euro I chipped in for the goodbye gift for the co-worker keaving. And 130 euro I spend for end of year gifts for the family.

The tricky – acconting wise – part is the 100 euro I spend on buying Bitcoins. This because for a certain gift I needed bitcoins to pay for it. So I spend 100 euro buying bitcoins on Coinbase. But Coinbase also gives you a sign up bonus and allows you to ear some alt coins by watching some instructional videos (alt coins I off course exchanged into bitcoin the moment I received them). And then there was the incredibale value rise of Bitcoins in the second half of December… Long story short is that I bought the gift (which was 45 euro) but my balance on Coinbase is now close to 200 euro …

So did I just buy a 45 euro gift? Because, then I stayed below my 1 500 euro budget this year… or did I invest a 100 euro, bought the gift with part of my profits and still have another 100 euro in profit I should book? Since it’s a low amount. And since I am still not a fan of this whole crypto craze and will probaby use up the remaining balance in the future for other gifts, I just decided to book the 100 euro as an expense in the ‘random fun’ category.

After a pretty expensive month of June I was happy to have July return to a more normal level of expenses.

Income : 2 167,40 euro

Expenses : 1 559,90 euro

Savings : 607,50 euro or 28%

Income

July income can be summed up in one sentence: just my normal wages from work.

Expenses

A return to normal and actually almost within budget! Besides the 1100 euro I tranfer into our joint accounts (and which co-pays for our mortgage, food and utilisty bills) I only spend 460 euro:

70 euro on food I should not have bought: shame, shame on me!

33 euro on some health supplements: this actually makes the 70 euro on food from the previous line even worse! The best I can and should do for my health is lose weight. But this is something deserving of its own post. Supplement wise I am actually pretty frugal as I buy powder and fill my own capsules. This comes to about 1/3th the cost of buying pills in a bottle (packaging seems to be the main cost of most generic available supplements).

20 euro on cheap games on steam. People spend more on games during this lockdown apparently. I know I am!

20 euro on my cell phone plan

231 euro on a brand new laser and smoke machine! Yes I caved and bought myself a new laser. I went for the Laserworld EL-230RGB and the Ayra WSM black 01 smoke machine.

I am pretty happy both of them. Covid 19 has closed down all clubs in Belgium. These two turn our living room in our own private little club. In July you could see up to 15 people so we had a small 11 people party (no photo’s of that to protect the not so innocent grin) and the laser was a big hit.

I did have to improvise with the placement of everything. So I wasn’t a 100% happy and in August I also bought a truss to add to our set-up and that does add a little professional feel to the whole set-up. Me happy!

We are currently finishing the renovation of our office room. Once the office is finished we will finally be able to move the last of our boxes out of the living room and finish the living room (the wire sticking out of the wall). And this in turn will give me the space to turn that corner of our living room into our own small club. Off course, once we have replaced our roof I will have an entire 90 square metre attic to play with. But for the time being this will do .. .

Frugal living doesn’t mean living a miserable life but instead spending your money on what is important to you. it’s why I am not happy with the 70 euro spend on food I shoudl not have eaten in the first place but also why I am very happy spending the 230 euro on the laser and smoke machine.

June expenses really, really, annoyed me. Which is probably why I didn’t do this expense report sooner. The numbers below may look good but it is what behind the (expense) number that annoys me.

Income : 3 623,74 euro

Expenses : 2 423,50 euro

Savings: 1 200,24 euro of 33,12%

Income

June income consists of my normal wages + my holiday money. The total is 3 623,74 euro and this will be the last time work is giving me anything extra for the remainder of the year. The higher income is alos the only reason why I was able to save at all. My normal income of around 2 160 euro would have not covered my expenses.

Expenses

Those expenses were 2 423,50 euro. The main culprit for this high amount is the Vespa.

Due to working form home most of the days I do not use the Vespa all that much anymore. This is the reason why maintenance only happened in June. In my mind this was going to be a ‘cheap’ maintenance. New tires and some other stuff decided otherwise and left me with a maintenance bill of 890 euro. Driving the Vespa too fast even added another speeding ticket of 108 euro. Add in some gasoline for the Vespa and I spend just over a 1000 euro on the Vespa this month. In other words, I would have remained firmly within my budget this month without the Vespa related costs.

I blame in part my garage, and in part myself.

Blaming the garage is the easy part. They maintain the Vespa too well. Honestely they do! They do the maintenance by the book which means they replace stuff when the maitnenance book says it is time to replace it. Thing is that those maintenance books err on the safe side. Big advantage is that your Vespa is always purring like a happy little kitten. Downside is that it increases the maintenance costs. Those new tires? Yes they could use replacing. On the other hand, I am sure they would have survived another 2 to 3,000 km’s, probably … So a bit more flexibility with the ‘recommended’ maitnenance guidelines could save me a couple of bucks left an right. But I think we all knwo who is the main culprit here. Yep, it is me.

The person I really need to blame is myself! I know the maintenance is expensive. Hell, I did an entire post about it back in January. What was the conclusion again of that post?

Right, I need to move my ass on the electrical bicycle front. Did I do it?

Nope. I didn’t do it in June when I was really annoyed at the high maintenance cost.

And I haven’t done it now, almost 2 months later. People, really, if I tell you guys I am a lazy SOB, believe me, I am!! So yeah, I still need to do this.

And since I am being critical about myself. The second largest expense in June after the Vespa was, drum roll … Food! 133 euro worht of extra food I purchased.

Might not be a big amount but I am supposed to be trying to lose weight! It is my eternal struggle and this 133 euro just represants too many instances where i didn’t follow my food regime. I am definitely being to lazy there.

The othere expenses were a 50 euro gift, a visit too Pairi Daisa (we visited shortly after it reopened during the week so almost no people!). My cell phone bill (13 euro this month) and a game on steam for 17 euro. All very reasonable, normal expenses. If it wasn’t for the damn Vespa and all my eating June would have been a very good month …

Another full month off lockdown has past. In May lockdown measures in Belgium were relaxed. But since we are not big on shopping and my work continued his work from home policy the relaxed measure didn’t really have a big impact on either off us. The only real difference was that we did get to see our family, once.

As of 8 June measures will further be relaxed with pub and restaurant visit becoming possible. And also meeting with up to 10 friends. As of Monday I will also be able to go back to work if I choose to so we will finaly see a real impact on our lives as off Monday.

Last month I only really spend 75 euro due to the lock down. In May I did spend a bit more.

Income : 4 062,45 euro

Expenses : 1 307,70 euro

Savings: 2 754,75 euro of 67,81%

Income

May income consists off my normal wages + my anual bonus. Add in 100 euro from a late easter gift from the parents and in April i saw over 4,000 euro flowing into my checking account.

Expenses

Expenses were pretty low again. And most of it was even on fun stuff.

I spend 36 euro on 3 steam games. I went once again bargain hunting in the steam promotions and now really have enough games to last me for months and months of play time.

Another luxury spend for me was 35 euro for a nice black metal jerrycan. I have jerrycans but all are of the cheap plastic version. And ever since buying the Vespa I have wanted a nice, quality metal jerrycan. Yes I am weird that way.

I off course had to fill up the Jerrycan (and also did a fill up of the Vespa zel) so I did spend 19 euro on gasoline as well.

In May we would have normaly visited Extrema outdoor but since that got cancelled and did want something of a festival vibe I decided to buy a T-shirt from one of my favorite techno labels. I consider it a little gift back for all the excellent stremas DJ’s have been doing online over the last month. And I could use a new t-shirt anyway.

On the practical side I had my cell phone bill of 12 euro. This might go even lower in the next few months as Mobiel vikings reshaped their formulas and is now offering 1 GB and 150 min call time for 10 euro. Mobile subscriptions (and technology in general) is one of the areas that firmly remains deflatory: year after year you get more for the same money.

On the bad side: I did spend 45 euro on grocery shopping I should not have spend. I continue to struggle with my weight and diet regime. Hence also the reason why I still haven’t done a health reports.

But all in all May saw me going considerably below budget. It was even enough to push my monthly average for the year below my self imposed budget. On average I have now spend only 1480 euro/month!

June will probably screw this up since the relaxation of the Covid measures will enable us to catch up on several social obligations. After 3 months of being cooped up in our house we also want to go somewhere. So, weather permitting we will probably do some day trips in Belgium.