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!

Laser and smoke machine on the truss, behind the truss the DJ gear of the lady of the house

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.