Financial Freedom Sloth

achieving financial freedom one lazy step at a time

The health report – September

September 22, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I was a bit late with my last report so this one only covers two weeks. And in those two weeks I didn’t do a whole lot of exercises. So no overview of what I did or not did on the fitness, greasing the groove or cardio front. The low exercises was by design as I was (and still am) in holiday and my body could use a break. Since Friday the 10th September we went to a festival and 13th till 16th September we visited Ieper (more on this in my monthly expense report) I originally planned to take one week of. But that Monday the 13th I kinda fell sick so I didn’t restart exercising that Friday as intented, but only last Monday. So not a whole lot to tell on the exercise front except that I gave my body some well earned rest.

But I do have a lot of other stuff to talk about.

First of, I did manage to do my measurements once again (yes, the broken scale has been replaced).

Date:weightneckchestbellyarm
24-10-2017114 kg43 cm124 cm124 cm39 cm
15-5-2018104 kg42 cm115 cm114,5 cm38 cm
17-6-2018104 kg42 cm118 cm115 cm38 cm
15-7-2018101 kg41 cm118 cm115 cm38 cm
15-8-201899 kg41 cm118 cm113 cm38 cm
15-9-2018101 kg41 cm118 cm114 cm38 cm
15-10-201898 kg41 cm118 cm113 cm38 cm
02-02-2020115 kg43 cm124 cm 126 cm40 cm
16-06-2021117 kg45 cm126 cm125 cm41,5 cm
22-09-2021114,4 kg44 cm126 cm125 cm40 cm

Back down to around 115 kg, yes! But as you can see, especiale the cm measurements are somewhat correct and might indicate a certain evolution but they aren’t all that precise! I have been guessing that thanks to the last 15 months of exercises I added muscles but I have no way of knowing if this is correct. Since I am now going to make a serious attempt to really loose weight I wanted to get a correct and detailled measurement of my body. Enter the Dexa scan. So get ready to see the Sloth in all his naked glory:

behold: Skeletor Sloth!

As seen above, the Dexa scan also give you information on your bones, more importantely on your Bone mass density. Which in my case is still good. But truth be told I would rather have the dot above that line then just below.

But it is always good to know and I am curious if better eating habits will also improve my bones.

But then onto the good stuff: muscles!

Top 25 baby!

And good it was! Age matched I scored 75. This means that out of 100 hundred men aged 47 only 24 have more muscle than me. Definitely not bad and it shows that my exercises of the last 15 months have had some effect. The first goal is now off course to crack that top 20 for my age group.

For those who have met me it will be no suprise that there was also bad news:

My fat mass clocked in at 40,6 kg or a 35,8% fat mass. Ouch!

This also puts me firmly in the Obesity class 2.

Honestely I expected this and the whole point of the Dexa scan to was a clear picture of my current body composition so that in the future I can compare and see if any progress has been made.

To make that progress I have also started to see a dietician. First visit was an intake talk to discuss my goals and the second visit (last saturday) was to get started on Phase I.

It might come as a suprise to many that my motiviation to go see a therapist was not so much to loose fat but actually to get more energy so I could continue to increase my exercises. I mean, the facts are facts and I need to loose 20 kg of fat at a minimum. But the thing is, I have always failed at loosing fat. But for the last 15 months I have been succesful in following my exercise regime! So my first goal is to add 5 kg of muscle and along the way hopefuly also loose 10 kg of fat. And if succesfull to do the same a second time and finally end up with an acceptable fat mass and a whole lot of muscle mass. The approach is called Body recomposition and is often the road less travelled. I also seem to have done it somewhat by accident over the last 15 months while eating like crap. So imagine what I can achieve when I get my eating right! I am pretty psyched about the future, I mean, Europe is slowly descending into a totalitarian dystopian nightmare but I am going to be fit as fuck!

Monthly expense report: August

September 8, 2021 / / 1 Comment

I didn’t spend a lot in August mostly because I have a three week holiday in September which had me planning a lot of stuff for that month just because I have more time to do them then. So I finished August well under budget.

Income: 2 371,22 euro

Expenses: 1 357,43 euro

Savings: 1 013,79 euro or 42,75%

I consider every month with a savings rate higehr than 35% as a good month. Due to all the planning I did for September I will certainly go over budget next month.

Income:

Income was my standard wage + some birthday money, The big 5 is starting to become visible on the horizon. I am not all that bothered by it. All the exercising of the last year has put me in the best shape of my life, muscle wise. If the coming year I am succesfull in losing the excess fat I will be at my physical best ever. More on this in my next health report.

Expenses:

As usual 1 100 euro went to our joint account.

Ice cream and sandwiches at work cost me 26,5 euro.

Because I am not eating the right things for all the exercises I am doing my body feels tired all the time. This is something I hope to fix with my dietician but in the mean time I spend 45 euro for creatine powder and proteine bars. The creatine seems to help a little bit.

I am also a fan of the NAC (N-acetyl-L-cysteïne) supplement but this is a lot cheaper in powder form than in pill form. So I just fill my own capsules. Sometimes you run out of capsules. And being a frugal little sloth I buy my capsules also in bulk to minimise my shipping costs. 2 000 capsules cost me 29 euro and should last me serveral years again. But sometimes being cheap does make you look like a small time drug dealer …

On a somewhat related note. August saw me spending 65 euro on going out and partying. Lots of fun was had on several occasions. Zero capsules were taken to have this fun! At least by me or the girlfriend. But I am not putting any money on some of the other guests …

My mobile subscription only cost me 0,60 euro this month as Mobile Viking lets you earn points when you buy stuff online and although we do not buy that much most of what we do buy is online.

I have been going to the office a bit more so the Vespa needed filling up: 10 euro.

Gifts for some co-workers and friends we visited in August cost me 80 euro.

And to round it off, my bank is charging me 1,33 euro per month in costs now for an online only account. Unfortunately our mortgage is held at the same bank so I can not leave them for the moment. But the year our morthgage is done I am switching everything to another bank.

The health report – August

September 5, 2021 / / 0 Comments

No measuring as our weight scale is actualy broken (one of our cats is to blame). Although I did continue the slow and steady progress this was even harder in August than it was back in July. Yesterday I had my intake meeting with the dietician and she confirms I am probably missing necessary nutrients for all the exercises I am doing at the moment. Next week I am going to have some blood work done to check this.

I’ll write some more about the visit with the dietician in a separate post and just stick to my overview of my exercises for the last month.

Fitness

Once again I didn’t miss any fitness days. I also was able to add a bit of weight or reps to some exercises. But it is getting increasingly hard. I know I have posted before that progress here should slow down but now this is really happening. In part this is because of my greasing the groove routine (more on that later), But I believe it also is because I am not eating right. This is a big motivation for the moment to correct my eating habits!

Below you can see that the last three weeks my progress have been almost flat:

I still added 2 000 kg extra weight in total to my fitness exercises. Even if it is now over a six week time that is not bad. Hell, I am even starting to close in on the 1 million kgs lifted weight in total!

Greasing the groove

I got my sit up repetitions to 35 and then the 10 kg kettlebell finally arrived! The first week I switched my 25 reps with a 4 kg kettlebell to 10 reps with the 10 kg kettlebell and then over the next weeks I have added to the reps.

So currently I am at 35 reps for the sit ups and 16 reps for the kettlebell.

I am pretty happy with this progress and it might also explain why adding weight to the fitness routine is harder at the moment. Going from 10 to 16 reps might not seem all that much but it is 6 extra reps, 8 times a day for 6 days. For a whole week that is an extra 288 reps of 2 880 kg extra swung!

Cardio

This is where I am not very happy with myself. Rowing has been reduced to only once a week. And this time I didn’t even have the excuse of working a lot in the garden. I didn’t no anything in the garden!

I only did my rowing on Sunday. Weekdays I just could not find the mental energy to row for 20 minutes. So this was bad and I really need to apply myself more here. I am generally low on energy so I am hoping better eating will help here. But bottom line is I need to be doing more cardio and until my eating has improved I just need to push through and keep up the rowing!

I do have to say that doing three seperate exercices do help me mentally. Where in the past I just did one thing and then when I hit a rough spot in that one thing I usually quiet doing it completely I can now fuck up one of the three but still feel good about the fact that progress has been made in the other two, This progress then motivates me to correct the one thing that was not good.

So here is hoping on a better rowing report next time.

Monthly expense report: July

August 8, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Bummer, an unexpected expense in July pushed me slightely over my self imposed 1 500 euro budget. The savings rate is still great thanks to tax avoidance shenanigans at work but I am a little bummed that I broke my 5 month streak of remaining below budget.

Income: 2 657,21 euro

Expenses: 1 565,20 euro

savings: 1 092,01 euro or 41,10%

Income:

My income was my standard wage + part of a bonus for a total of 2 657,21 euro. The way our bonus is being payed out at my job has changed to reduce the level of taxation on said bonus (aka tax avoidance shenanigans). I am guessing I got a part of my end of year bonus now. Guessing because this year we are in this sort of weird, hybrid situation which makes things complex. After paying little to no attention to the several Teams meetings about the changes I figured out that if I send mail A, registered on portal B and choose option Z I would get some money now, have to pay less taxes later and the company got a ruling that it is al legal and such! So that was what I did and a few days later money appeared in my account: succes!

Expenses:

1 100 euro was transferred to our joint account to pay for the roof over my head, utilities and groceries.

On top of those groceries I also bought some icecream, sandwiches and a pizza, because I have no will power if it comes to food, for a total of 46 euro

We also went to a restaurant with some friends where I spend 70 euro

A gift for my mother was 25 euro. I am glad to spend more here but the woman never wants anything. Then again, I am not one to speak as I never want anything for my birthday either.

A local small festival was cancelled due to covid restrictions. But the organisation also organises a small summer bar in the woods. So that summer bar got an extra edition, the headliner DJ of the festival got some GPS coordinates and told to make sure to not be followed and fun was had by all! Entrance was free but I did spend 5 euro on drinks.

And the suprise expense? That was once more the Vespa!. I have only driven it for around 2 000 km over the last year and somehow something broke! Goddamn! I was on the road to a record low expense month and the Vespa repair bill of 319,20 euro pushed me over budget!

I also realized that nowhere in July I have a phone expense so I probably have spend 12 euro more than this but I am too lazy to log into my bank account (no, I do not have a banking app on my phone because paying stuff shouldn’t be easy) check and correct the above post. Over the years I have learned to not sweat the small stuff (or come up with better sounding excuses for my lazyness).

The health report – July

July 26, 2021 / / 4 Comments

I dropped to 115 kg but didn’t get around measuring so no new table this month. I also came to the conclusion I am going to go see either a dietician of a health coach? In part this is because I am not loosing weight the way I want to. But also because it starts to become harder to add to my exercise routines. I seem to be missing the necessary fuel for all the exercising I am doing at the moment.

The slow and steady progress is still there but is it becoming harder.

In the first draft of this post I actually wrote I was not happy with how my exercises went but after some reflection I have changed by mind about that. I actualy am very ok with my exercing of the last month. Full explication of why I changed my mind below.

Fitness

I didn’t miss any fitness days and once more added something somewhere each and every week.

The week of 18/07 saw me lifting a total of 20 136 kg. This is 2 600 kg more than a month ago. It might explain in part why adding weight or repetitions to an exercise is starting to become more difficult. After all, I am a doing quit a lot as it is.

Total numbers for about 13 months of fitness aren’t bad either:

Greasing the groove

I missed half a day of greasing the groove. It was a Saturday where I only did 4 reps and not the standard 8. It was also a where I did a lot of working in the garden and I just couldn’t find the energy to stop the garden work to come in and do my sit-ups and kettlebell swings and then gho back out again to continue. Especially because I was sweating like an otter.

I am also still waiting on my ordered 10 kg kettlebell so I decided to increasy my sit ups. Last week I did 32 reps for 6 days a week. That’s 1 536 sit-ups over a 1 week period. With all this progress you might be wondering why I would think last month was bad exercise wise. Well the main reason was my cardio.

Cardio

Rowing is still at 20 minutes and I actualy missed quit a few rowing days. I more or less skipped about half my rowing exercises!

The resaon for this is the work in the garden.

The weather in Belgium over the last two months made my grass grow really fast and really high. A heat wave and rain prevented me from cutting it when it was lower so now I had almost 2 meter high grass to handle. Cutting my grass in my garden has alwasy been done with a brush cutter. But believe me that 30 or 40 cm grass is a lot easier to cut then 2 m high grass. It normally takes me about 5 hours (spread out over serveral days) to do the entire garden. I have now spend over 10 hours and have still a spot to go (I also have aprety big garden). And it has been a lot more physically demanding work also. Where I normaly just let the cutting lying on the ground I now also need to clean up the cutting as it covers the entire ground preventing the new grass to grow. Adding extra work on top of the 10+ hours I have spend cutting the grass in the first place! The warm, very mosist weather hasn’t helped either. It has been a brutal couple of weeks. And the rain and sun are making the freshly cut grass grow so fast that by the time I will be finished with the last of the high grass, the spot I started will be ready to be cut again! And I beter do cut it right then, to avoid having to deal with too high grass once more …

So I was a bit miffed about missing all that rowing but writing it all down made me realise I actually increased my cardio work out! Just not on the rowing machine but by working the brush cutter for several hours a week.

Now I am actualy happy I skipped the rowing as it would have been to much stress on my body and probably would have leaded to injuries. And an injury would have stopped all exercises.

If I sum it all up: I did all my fitness and improved in weight or repetitions. I improved the sit up reps of my greasing the groove and in an entire month only missed 120 reps which is tiny compared to the total of sit ups I do in one week now. And yes, I missed around 7 rowing exercises. But each one of those was replaced by at least an hour of working with a brush cutter in my garden. Physically speaking, last month was probably the most physically demanding month since my university years! So hell yeah, I am actualy pretty happy with last month!!

Monthly expense report: June

July 4, 2021 / / 3 Comments

May and June are historically high savings months as those are the months my company pays our profit bonus and holiday money. May saw me reaching a 64,35% savings rate. Could I improve this already high rate in June? Below are the numbers:

Income: 3 660,60 euro

Expenses: 1 372,70 euro

Savings: 2 287,90 euro or 62,50%

Nope, I didn’t quit reach it. But I’ll take a 62,5% savings rate any month of the year.

Total expenses for the first half of the year are 8 705,20 euro or an average of 1 450,90 euro a month. Very nice within my self imposed budget of 1 500 euro a month. And this even includes the purchase of a 800 euro rowing machine. without the rowing machine I actually have spend closer to 1 320 euro a month!

Income:

Income was my standard pay + my holiday money for a total of 3 660,60 euro.

Expenses:

Once more I transferred 1 100 euro to our joint account for my part of the mortgage, utilisties, groceries, …

Since international travel is still restricted we decided to visit Brughes so we could enjoy this beautiful city without the hordes of tourists. Restaurants and pubs were allready open so we got the full Brughes experience. Travel, food and drinks did set me back 110 euros. But we did have a fun day playing tourist in our own country.

Mobile phone cost dropped back to my fixed 12 euro subscription amount. I found a very easy and cheap (as in 0 euro) solutions for not having the Wifi reach into our utility room. I just leave my phone in the part of the house where there is still a Wifi signal and then connect it to our wireless bluetooth speaker. And that does reach into the utility room.

The mobile app I use for keeping track of my weights work outs has an anual fee which needed to be renewed this month. It costs 34 euro. I could do without it by this point but I do like the tracking it provides. It’s this app that supplies the overview graphs I show in the fitness part of my health report.

After motherday last month, this month had fathers day so I spend 42,20 euro on a gift for him.

I also needed to refill my Vespa so that cost me 9 euro. Belgium is lifting the working from home obligation. July and August will see me going to the office about once a week so this cost will start to appear more often now.

I also spend 39,5 euro on ice cream (when working from home, damn that icecream truck passing right by my window!) and sandwiches (when working from home). Not good for my spending but, even worse, not good for my weight!

The health report – June

June 20, 2021 / / 2 Comments

Yes, I finally got around to weighing and measuring myself! So here is the overview table.

Date:weightneckchestbellyarm
24-10-2017114 kg43 cm124 cm124 cm39 cm
15-5-2018104 kg42 cm115 cm114,5 cm38 cm
17-6-2018104 kg42 cm118 cm115 cm38 cm
15-7-2018101 kg41 cm118 cm115 cm38 cm
15-8-201899 kg41 cm118 cm113 cm38 cm
15-9-2018101 kg41 cm118 cm114 cm38 cm
15-10-201898 kg41 cm118 cm113 cm38 cm
02-02-2020115 kg43 cm124 cm 126 cm40 cm
16-06-2021117 kg45 cm126 cm125 cm41,5 cm

I am still keeping my focus on a slow and steady progress in my exercises but it is time I start to look at my weight again. Rowing with this much extra weight is starting to become more difficult. But I’ll go into that in the rowing segment.

There are a few interesting things to note in this overview.

First is off course that my weight is bad. 117 kg is the heaviest ever in this overview.

But I have been exercises for the last year and that 117 kg isn’t the same kg as the 115 kg I was in February 2020 (last decent weighing I did before starting to exercise).

How can I tell? Well, both neck and chest are now a full two cm wider (and my arm 1,5 cm) and believe me, that is not where the fat is on my body.

Actually, my chest is now 1 cm more than my belly. Back in 2017 both were the same size (124cm) and I weighed 114 kg then too. If you actually compare the 114 kg of 2017 with the 115 kg of February 2020 You will notice my neck and chest measure the same. That 1 kg of fat can be found in the 2 cm of difference of the belly!

Conclusion: the 117 kg now contains more muscle. Something you would expect after one full year of exercising. Those muscles explain why the chest and arm measurements went up and I now have the belly width of my 114 kg weighing self. I roughly added 3 kg of muscles over the last year!

Honestely, I am pretty motivated now to lose 3 kg so I can compare one on one with the 114 kg back in 2017! I am not going to make it a hard goal (because I don’t do those anymore) but I am going to focus a bit more on what I eat and see where it takes me.

Let’s dive into the exercises

Fitness

Again, I did not miss any fitness days and continued to add something (either a little bit off weight or some extra reps) to an exercise each and every week.

The result is a slow and steady progress. At the writing of my last post I had lifted 15 504 kg in one week. Now I am at 17 530 kg or 2 000 kg’s more!

Since I am doing low intensity but lots of reps I was wondering if I was actually building strength. Turns out I am! With friends visiting for a BBQ I finally could test how much my maximum bench press weight is now (somebody has to lift it if I can’t because no safeguard on my in house set-up). Pretty happy to report my max is now 70 kg!!

So yes, this low intensity, lots of reps approach does build up strength. Also, I do not think I will ever again weigh less than 95 kg but if I am at 70 kg bench pressing now, 95 kg should be reachable with this approach! I just have to keep the slow and steady approach! I’ll check my max bench press again sometime next summer.

Greasing the groove

I missed one day of greasing the groove. A wednesday where we went to visit Bruges. No American and Asian (because pandemic) tourists means us Belgians have this beautiful city once more all to ourselfs! For some strange reason Bruges does not have dedicated ‘do your sit-ups here’ spots all over the historic centre so no greasing the groove that day. I did go to the office twice in the last month and yes I did do my exercies there. Strang looks from the few co-workers present? You betcha! Me not giving a crap? You betcha!

I also stayed at 25 reps of sit ups for the entire month as I was building up my kettle bell swings. I am glad to report I reached 25 reps there too! So that was 25 reps, 8 times a day for six days for the kettle bell swings and also for the sit ups.

The kettle bell weight is only 4 kgs because that was what I had laying around. I have ordered a 10 kg weigth and I am waiting on it’s delivery. When that one arrives I will drop my reps to 10 reps to compensate for the heavier weight and then start to build those up again. In the mean time I will increase my sit-up reps because I am adding something, somewhere each and every week …

Cardio

Didn’t miss any rowing last month! Woohoo!

So yes, that does mean rowing for 18 minutes when we got back from our day visiting Bruges. It also meant rowing for 20 minutes in our current 31 degrees celius heat wave (I was a puddle of sweat on the floor afterwards). I did both and I am pretty proud of it!

I also reached 20 minuts of rowing this week because I continued to add one minute every week. I am going to stay at this level for the next month. I have a few reasons for this:

  • I think I build up to 20 min a bit quick. Once at 15 minutes I feel like I should have added 1 min only every two weeks
  • 20 minutes of rowing in a heatwave is crazy. Luckily next week promises lower temperatures but I can use a less intense week or two. Also thinking about buying a mobile airco unit …
  • I weigh 117 fucking kgs! And I am rowing for 20 minutes at a pretty decent tempo. Somewhere around the 15 min mark my body is really not liking it anymore. I can’t really blame it. A person of my weight should not be doing this! Especially not in a heatwave … The reality is I need to get rid of some fat if I want to continue to add time to my rowing.

So rough goals for the next month are:

  • adding a bit to my fitness (I am ok there, not really having pushed myself too hard over the last month).
  • adding some sit up reps to the greasing the groove routine (I am actually eager to add some here since I didn’t do it for a month!)
  • staying at 20 mins of rowing
  • a bit more focus on food and see where I am weight wise at the next post

Monthly expense report: May

June 5, 2021 / / 2 Comments

Belgium is slowly opening up but until now this did not have an impact on my spending. The low spending in combination with my annual work bonus being paid out resulted in a record breaking savings rate!

Income: 3 988,38 euro

Expenses: 1 422 euro

Savings: 2 566,38 euro or 64,35%

Income:

Income was my standard pay check of 2 176 euro + my annual bonus of 1 811,88 euro. The bonus is an annual performance bonus. It could be a full extra month but we didn’t reach all goals for the full 100%. All in all my work had a very good year and this year we are even smashing last years numbers! For the time being my job is pretty secure.

Expenses:

As usual I transferred 1 100 euro to our jount account for my part of the mortgage, utilities, groceries and such …

My mobile phone subscription was 22 euro as I surpassed my data plan this month. Our wifi doesn’t reach into our utility room where I am doing my rowing. And some decent techno does help with the rowing. Still, I need to be honest here: I could have just made my own playlist and downloaded it on the phone and thus not need a data connexion. I have just been to lazy to do it. Lazy spinning up this Techno channel on Youtube is just easier but does chew up your data …

May is mothersday so I bought a gift for mom: 34 euro. Mom is a difficult woman to buy gifts for as she never need/want anything. Then again, I never need/want anything either ..

I spend 16 euro on extra food but this was completely in line with my regime: spare ribs for the win!

Back in Januari I bought extra weights and proudly said I wouldn’t need any extra weights for the rest of the year. Unfortunately I made an error then and only ordered one 10kg platter. I should have ordered two. As a result I was now coming close to running out of weights. Ordering just one 10 kg platter felt a bit stupid, especially with the delivery costs. Since I had barely spend anything in May I decided to order all weights I could potentially need for the next two years. 250 euro spend on weight platters, including not one but three 10 kg platters and two 5 kg platters! These are really going to be the last weights I buy. I will just add extra repetitions to my exercises when these weights eventually will not be enough anymore. Main reason being that I am running out of space to store these weights.

The health report – May

May 22, 2021 / / 0 Comments

No overview table yet. I still haven’t gotten around to take the measurements. I keep my focus on my exercises and adding something to them every week. As explained last month, slow and steady progress is the name of the game.

So how did I do on the this front?

Let us see for the 3 catgories of exercises I do now.

Fitness

Once more I didn’t miss a single fitness day and continue to add some weight and some exercise repetitions. Even with this slow and steady approach the gains are significant over a one month period!

At the time of my last health report I lifted 14 375 kg. And in the week of 16/05 I lifted 15 504 kg! That is an extra 1 130 kg added! Remember, I started out around 5 000 kg.

I repeat once more that progress in weight lifted will be slower going forward as I am going to stick to my ‘adding a little bit every week approach’. I also have added kettlebell swings to my greasing the groove routine. This is an extra weight exercise but I am not tracking it in the fitness app so it doesn’t show up in the above overview.

Greasing the groove

This keeps being the part of my regime I enjoy the most. Believe me, I find it crazy too that I like this so much! But it seems to be working very well for me.

I have reached my interim goal of 25 reps so for the last two weeks I did 8 times x 25 reps x 6 days a week = 1 200 + the 50 sit ups I do on Sunday which brings me to 1 250 crunches in a week. As you can see having vague goals and not worrying when you reach them eventually does lead to some impressive results!

Honestely, I do not even care when I will reach my final goal of 50 reps. The goal is to keep doing this every day, every week and every month and eventually I will reach that goal.

Actually, progress on the crunches will also be slower since I now have added the kettlebell swing exercise to my routine as off this week. I did 8 reps x 6 days with a 4 kg weight. The 4 kg weight is definitely to low for me but it is what I have for the moment. I will first build these reps up to 25 also and once I reach that I will double the weight, drop the number of reps and then slowly build up the nr of reps once more.

And yes, I did do my sit ups at the office the one day I went. I just popped into an empty meeting room and got crunching. Add the kettlebell swings and I am going to be getting some strange looks once the working from home restrictions are lifted!

Cardio

A bit of some good and bad news on the cardio front.

On het bad front: I missed 1 rowing session! And I missed it on the one day I went to work at the office!! This has gotten me a bit worried that since I build up this exercise routine while working from home I will not be able to stick to it once I go back to the office. Our new work agreement does allow us to work from home 3 days a week. But I hope to be able to push this to 4 days (the days I do my fitness). I then just have to make sure I do my rowing on the day I do have to go to the office.

The good new is I did keep adding 1 minute to my rowing time every week. This week I reached 16 minutes. It is starting to get tough to keep it up. So I’ll probably hit a plateau in the coming month, but that is fine. 16 minutes of rowing is already pretty good. Every minute I can add to it is a win!

Monthly expense report: April

May 2, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Belgium was still pretty much locked down so April was another month of low spending for me. In the first 4 months of 2021 I have spend a total of 5 910,50 euro which means that on average I have stayed within my 1 500 euro monthly budget. And that includes the purchase of a 800 euro rowing machine! I think it is the first time ever that I was still within budget 4 months into the year!

Let’s take a look at the numbers of this month.

Income: 2 277,55 euro

Expenses: 1 428,50 euro

Savings: 849,05 euro or 37,28%

Income:

Income was my pay slip from work plus a 100 euro gift from the parents because of easter.

Expenses:

Expenses are going slightly higher but this was in part by design. With the country slowly opening up I used this month to buy some more essentials as I am hoping to finally be able to spend some money on going out and seeing people in May.

First are the fixed expenses I need to pay each month.

This includes the 1 100 euro I transferred to our joint account for my part of the mortgage,utilities, groceries and such ,,,

My mobile phone subscription of 12 euro (no reduction this month).

A medical bill of 10 euro. Back in February I hurt my richt ankle (again) and just to be on the safe side I had photo’s taken form than foot (it was just sprained). The bill for this came in April.

Then there are a few moments of weakness.

Steam once more seduced me into buyning another game, No man’s sky set me back 54 euro.

I also spend 50 euro on extra food. Most of it was in line with my regime, but not all of it.

And then there was the stuff I decided to buy in April since I was going to end the month below budget anyway.

95 euro went to a new keyboard and mouse as working from home has taken a toll on my home equipment. Fancy new led lights, mmmhh! I actually only needed a mouse and I could have gotten one from work for a few months but I want decent stuff to work with and even pre-Covid I was thinking about buying me better gear for the work place. Now that I work from home there is nothing stopping me setting up my workplace the way I want.

I could have used the Vespa a little bit less and pushed the refill to May but we had a few very nice weather days in April and I enjoy riding my Vespa more than I do using the car so I filled it up in April: 10 euro

With all the exercise I am doing I needed some extra sport outfits. I have been rocking the same short for the last year and it was porbably 10 years old to begin with. I also needed some new underwear. And I define ‘needing new cloth’ not because ‘the colors are a bit faded’ of ‘it went out of style’ but more by the number of holes and how big they are. Trust me when I say I needed them.

All of this on the below photo set me back 97,50 euro.

I may have gone a bit over with the shorts. If my current use of 1 short per decade is any indication this may very well be the last shorts I will buy during my lifetime.

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Disclaimer

I am not a certified financial advisor and do not hold a license from the FSMA. Everything written on this blog expresses my own personal journey and opinion and is pure entertainment. It is never an advice on what how and where you need to invest. If you need this advice, then please reach out to a financial service expert

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