August has been a busy month. Working, swimming, day trading, job hunting, birthday, preparations for a 20+ persons BBQ in our orchard … Let’s see the impact on our finances.
Personal account:
Income: 2 320,29 euro
Expenses: Â 1 557,35 euro
Savings: 762,94 or 32,8%
A bit higher income as it was my birthday. Since I am not accepting any financial help from the parents in the home renovations (I would find it a bit strange since I have a stash of over 250.000 euro) Â my parents have resorted to a guerilla-style of money giving. Any time they have an excuse to give me (or the girlfriend!) money they do it. And they have been increasing the amounts too! Sooner or later I will need to have a talk with the parents about this and either let them pay for the remaining renovations or put a stop to this monetary guerilla-warfare. It’s starting to get a bit ridiculous!
I only count day trading income when I actually transfer it to my personal account so that explains why my day trading profits of 800 USD do not show up here.
Just a little bit over the 1 500 euro mark on the expenses. I have only myself to blame as I spend 93 euro buying graphic novels. Back when I was a student I used to be a pretty big graphic novel fan. One of my favorite pass times was browsing the new arrivals in different comic book shops. I still enjoy it and had a few new issues on my wish list for some time now. First time ordering it on line as I just didn’t have the time to go visit a shop. And isn’t that a sad statement?
The joint bank account
Income: 2 672 euro
Expenses: 2 752,66 euro
Savings: -80,66 euro
An expensive month due to one reason: home and fire insurance of 854 euro. Yes, I need to look into it. But first I need to still check if we can transfer/renegotiate our mortgage. And then afterwards go shop around for better insurance. On the other hand, we do have a big house and those things apparently take square meters into account …
We also had one restaurant visit to enjoy one of Belgium’s best national dishes: mussels and fries with a cold beer!
Income was also higher due to finally getting the meal ticket situation sorted out. Finally got my hands on the card where three months of accumulated meal tickets was waiting: 472 euro of extra disposable money!! (In Belgium companies can give their employees meal tickets. A fiscally interesting way since this is not taxed or something. But my present company worked with a provider of which I no longer had a card. They first send the card to their office in Ghent , then to their office in Antwerp and finally to the Brussels office. I then needed to find the time to go get the card because it is a form of compensation so papers needed to be signed and identity verified, sigh!).
The meal vouchers also present me with a bit of a problem. How do I count it? I get them as income but they go directly to our joint expenses as a bit of an extra. We both pay 1 200 euro into the joint account, I give whatever meal voucher I get and the girlfriend pays for the cat food. We try to divide stuff 50/50 but neither of us want to start calculating it down to the last euro so we just agreed upon this (the girlfriend did get the better part of the deal, damn her and her womanly ways!! 😉 )But it is income that we do spend.
I think I will add half of it to my income. So doing that and adding half of the 80,66 euro deficit to my expenses gives me a savings rate of 28%.
Mussels are great… When I go eat them, I try to throw in an oyster as well! When eating out, do it good.
I have not bought comics in ages. I still have my series that I bought when I was a student. Sometimes, I pick them up. Fun to reread
Yes, comics seems to be one of those things that drop off after the university years. Leuven does have two very good shops, so perhaps time to go snoop out some new series …
Better it going there to avoid a money spending hobby. I prefer then rereading Thorgal and XIII.
Glad to read you are still enjoying life! Your personal savings rate is actually pretty decent! Too bad about the expensive month, but life happens (or fire insurance).
The savings rate is ok. And yes, expensive months will keep happening as well. I do realize insurance is a weak point of me. Really need to apply more attention to it, but I fidn it all very boring and even a bit annoying to do …
Nice report! Saving rate is ok! .
About comics bought, everyone has his hobbies. I should keep this in my budget as a regular expense.
(our mussels were not the best, we will fix next time at an italian restaurant close to the Bourse)
The comics do make me happy. As does a nice plate of mussels and fries!
I’m rereading your post about the financial support of your parents… Just cave in and accept it 😀
From a rational point of view, it totally makes sense to accept the gift. I would ask myself 2 questions: 1) Is there a chance my parents ever need this money again for their own purposes of living? 2) Estimate the net worth of your parents.
The current tax rules on a legacy are divided into brackets. <€50k = 3% tax, €50-€250k: 9% and above €250k: 27%!!! While anything less than 50k might be too little for your parents future, anything above 250k I suppose is overkill.
For instance a normal house already sells at more than 250k nowadays… Either you use the system, or the government will be greedy as always…
Just my 2 cents on the matter. The emotional side is a different story, but that's not really my cup of tea 😉
I probably take a decision next year. Not going to work on the house this year anyway …