2019 full year recap

With the end of Januari being here I realised I had not yet done the full year recap of 2019.

And then digging through my archive I realised I never did one for 2018 either.

Oops

And let there never be any doubt about my laziness!

Doing a 2018 recap a year too late seems a bit silly to me but with three full years under my belt a small three year overview might be interesting.

So before diving into 2019 here is that recap:

Three year recap

	2017	2018	2019	2019 corrected
Income	30 862	27 765	39 221	34 221
Expenses	20 719	20 047	28 320	20 207
Savings	10 143	7 718	10 901	14 014
SR	32,9%	27,8%	27,8%	40,9%

2017 had on the income side a 5000 euro gift from the parents

2017 I went on a holiday and bought the vespa for 3 000 euro

2018 income was just my wages at the current employer. It was my first full year of working at my employer so I didn’t really get any profit bonus as those are calculated on the previous year. Holiday money also is a complicated mess (due to 2017 being in part unemployed and the other part filled with interim work) with me actually having to pay some back.

2018 expenses had nothing exceptional either.

2019 on the income side once again had a 5 000 euro gift from my parents to our new car purchase.

This off course means I had a 8 113 euro expense for said car also. If you correct the car purchase from 2019 I feel those corrected numbers reflect my spending a lot better.

three year recap conclusions

Two broad conclusion can be taken from the above:

* my annual spending is slightly above 20 000 euro

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

The second point is proven by 2018. This was a low year on the income side because no gift from the parents and the first year at the new employer (so no profit bonus, no holiday money that year) but my spending remained pretty much the same.

Logic then dictates that as my income goes up so should my saving and especially my savings rate. The 2019 corrected numbers clearly demonstrates this. Hell even with the car purchase I saved more in 2019 than 2017 or 201! The conclusion is I need to boost my income with some type of sidegig.

Lets dive a little bit more into the numbers of 2019

2019 numbers

Income

Income was 39 221 euro.

Main part of the income was work: 33 510,27 euro

Gifts stand at 5 345 euro. The main one being 5 000 euro from the parents for the car and the remainder being the normal birthday, christmas gifts and such

My litle experiment with buying and selling tickets did bring in 135,40 euro but it is clear that as a side gig I need something better (and also more legal in Belgium).

And I also got 130 euro back from our health insurer

Expenses

The bulk of my 28 320,21 euro spnding went to our joint account:

13 800 euro. Understandable as this money pays our mortgage, all house related costs (like heating, electricity) and the food for both of us.

The new car purchase was 8 113 euro

The Vespa cost me 1 649,20 euro (as I showed in this post)

Extra food 1 311,5 euro. This is a bad expense!! It annoys me in particular as it was just too many sandwiches, pizza and candy bought. Add it all up for an entire year and it is a pretty decent amount. And + it made me fat again! This category needs to be lower in 2020 and thus far Januari has been good in this regard. 11 more months to go!

Gifts stand at 1 226,5 euro (with 826 euro being for the girlfriend)

Hobbies 593 euro

Random fun: 614 euro

Restaurant: 300 euro

sports: 120 euro

Buried in telecom was a 350 euro smartphone and Clothing : 114 euro

I include these last two because of this: of the 28 320,21 euro I spend in 2019 I only spend 4 629 euro on what can be considered ‘fun’ stuff. The remaining 24 000 ish euro are fixed expenses I had to do (one could discuss the car purchase ..). En out of the 4 629 euro 1 226 euro was gifts, or stuff not for me! On myself I only spend 3 400 euro on stuff I liked spending money on (well, I liked buying the gifts but you get what I mean). And that includes 1 311 euro extra food I should not have bought.

Bottom line: I only spend 2 019 euro on stuff for me I liked buying and was actually good for me. That amount is the sum of the hobbies, random fun, restaurants and sport categories! It is around 10% of my expenses. It is also scary realising how low this number actually is!

2020 goals

So my goals for 2020 are finding a decend side gig that can push my savings rate higher, drastically lower the extra food purchases (idealy some of these expenses are shifted to the sports category) and spend more money on fun stuff for myself! And all the while stay below 20,000 euro in total spending.