Monthly expense report: January

A bit late as we are already 7 February but illness (there is currently a flu epidemic in Belgium) had me off the computer for most of last week. As the misses can attest, a very rare occurrence! Circumstances must really be dire to pry me away from the holy LED screen!

Even worse, it had me miss the second Belgian Dutch meet up!

On friday I had high hopes to be well enough to make it. But saturday had me waking up with a headache for the fifth day in a row and a throat that felt like a hedgehog had take up permanent residence down there. Waking up around 8 I lay in bed have an internal debate about just rolling over and be sick or actually drag myself out of bed, under the shower (most definitely needed a shower) and then off to Antwerp. But then I coughed something up that will be starring in the upcoming remake of the 1988’s classic ‘The blob’ and decided to not expose my fellow financial travelers to these horrors from the deep ….

How I felt for most of last week

But anyway, on to the expense report of January!

As mentioned in December, these are without any investment gains taken into account. Principal payments on the mortgage are also viewed as an expense. Once paid off this will off course have the huge benefit of living mortgage/rent free but as this is something that will only happen after I am financially free I do not take it into account.

Personal account:

Income: 2 134,09

Expenses: 1 524,93

Savings: 609,16 or 28,5%

Significantly lower than last month but there were a few exceptional expenses:

-hosting costs for this site (113 euro) have been paid for the full year. As I paid with Visa the bill landed this month

-doctor visit and medication: 45 euro. I will get some money back from the doctor visit, and I actually found a few older certificates I never bothered to give to my health insurer so next month I should have a nice amount back.

-too much snacks at work (50 euro!) especially bad as I really should lose weight

The results of the joint bank account are:

Income: 2 326 (1 100 euro each and some meal tickets)

Expenses: 2 019,49

Savings: 306,51 euro. Adding this half to my savings amount and my savings rate for the month of January was 35,7%. I think this still ok for a month in which I fell sick and we bought a 500 euro chest freezer.

Groceries were 420 euro but we did start to stock up a little bit in the chest freezer and car expenses 146 euro. No repair bill just all gas.

Taken into account the savings on the joint account my budget for January was again under 1.500 euro which is the main reason for me to be running a budget.

2017 will be interesting and challenging in many respects. With a stash at 240.000 euro I know that will take care of itself (well a little bit of effort here and there). What I need to do is not touch it for a few more years and in the mean time get the house renovations finished and lay the ground work for the second half of my life. I will be prioritizing this above generating income so I fully expect this savings rate to drop even more.