2021 full year recap

I am early! Only the 13th of January and already writing my full year recap. No waiting till the first of February as was the case last year!

Am I becoming less lazy? Nah!!

This is allready the 5th recap, how time flies!!

Year	Income	Expenses	Savings	SR
2017	30 862	20 719	10 143	32,9%
2018	27 765	20 047	7 718	27,8%
2019	39 221	28 320	10 901	27,8%
2019*	34 221	20 207	14 014	40,9%
2020	32 064	20 228	11 836	36,9%
2021	31 904	18 000	13 904	43,6%

Recap conclusions

Yes I did it! Finally I stayed within the self imposed budget of 18.000 euro!

I did game it a bit. There is some stuff I would like to buy (like a mesh wifi network) that I have been postponing for months now because I now it would have mushed me over budget. I am also sure I forgot some small expenses left and right so I probably spend a couple of 100 euro’s more than the 18 000 here. But you now what, I am going to take the win and say I stayed within my budget for this year. this is not going to happen next year, I am sure of it.

2021 numbers

Income

Income total was 31 904 euro.

Of that amount 30 170 euro came from work and a grand total of 1 734 euro from gifts.

A bit strange is that work income is going down! It was 31 441 euro last year! This is in part because of the new way our bonus is paid I will only get some of it next year. The other reason is that with me almost not going to the office I also didn’t get that much home-work travel expenses paid. This means a lower amount on my paycheck but does also translates in lower fuel and maintenance costs for the Vespa so it is kind of a wash. I would have made more money but also spend more money.

At 1 734 euro the gift amount is high, really high! I call it the perks of being an only child. The parents decided to help fund the purchase of my rowing machine with a 500 euro gift. And when cleaning house and selling some stuff my mother also gave me the 870 euro earned from this. The topic of testaments did come up recently (me and the girlfriend need to update ours) and I did express that I am perfectly fine with them giving to charitable causes or to friends and such. But nope, it’s all going to me. So these gifts are just advances on the inheritance coming my way. Here’s hoping that this will be many, many decades in the future. My mom did have a cancer scare about 18 months ago and it has certainly had an impact on her cleaning house and ramping up the gifts to me.

But even with a bit lower income savings rate was at an all time high and the amount saved was almost the highest ever (only beaten by the 2019 adjusted number!). I could live for 9 months from the amount I saved this year!

Expenses

Expenses totaled 18 000 euro.

Off course the bulk, 13 200 euro went to our joint account. This covers the house, me eating and our car.

The Vespa cost me 405 euro. This amount represents some gas as I occasionaly did go to the office to work, or used it for groceries runs so it didn’t stand still for too long. there was another maintenance bill for 319 euro. The maintenance costs are really starting to annoy me. Combining my health goals with my money goals I am going to try to use our electric bike more to go to work (if and when we actually return to work).

Speaking of health goals. I did spend 475,8 euro on extra food this year. What can I say? It is less then half of last year’s amount so at least there is progress!

Gifts was 399 euro. Considerably more than last year and not a cent for the girlfriend! We don’t really do gifts to each other but I think I buy here something nice this year.

I spend 892 euro on hobbies. Up from last year and I am happy with that! Webhosting for this site and a few other online experiments are covered by this category. As is some hardware like a raspberry pie to run my own Bitcoin node. 310 euro in this category is me buying some crypto. Noticing I put it in the hobby column and not under investments. I did it because I want to play around in the crypto world and see if you can actually use it for something. It’s for trying stuff out and even though I still have most of it I do consider the money as spend.

Talking about money well spend. I did spend 1336 euro on sport. Mostly weights I bought for my fitness (including 80 euro for the wrong sort of kettlebell, grr), 800 euro for the rowing machine and some supplements. Well worth the money! And this year I am going to need to buy the correct type of kettlebells because progress needs to be made! From a purely financial perspective this money would cover 5 years of going to a basic fit. Now the equipment should last for more than 5 years, but it also means I need to keep up my exercising regime to get my worth out of it!

More fun can be found in the random fun category where I only spend 226 euro. The pandemic did have an impact here as a lot of festivals needed to cancel. If the government keeps enforcing the Covid pass I expect this category to be low again this year as illegal raves aren’t all that expensive …

Restaurant visit dropped to a new low with only 70 euro spend here. The covid pass was introduced in August which barred my plague riddled body from entry anywhere. Well, it’s good for my health and wallet so in my book I am winning here.

Telecom cost me 90 euro but I might have missed a few payments in this category. Sorry but I am too lazy to go digging.

I did spend 306 euro on health. I did get sick twice this year (none of those times with Covid) and off course spend money on the dietician and some supplements.

Clothing cost me 97 euro which is in line with my spending last year. Most of it was sports outfiots which should be good for a decade or two.

Travel cost me only 392 euro this year as we only made two small trips in Belgium. On to Brugge and one to Yper. Europe also seems hell bend on locking the unvaccinated filth down like dogs in 2022! But the way I see it, I either go on holiday or get myself a home cinema. Either way, I will be a pretty happy Sloth (don’t tell the girlfriend but I might prefer the home cinema to travel, sshhhht!).

There was some money spend on public transport and insurance too but who wants to read about insurance spending? Even if you want to read about it, I don’t feel like writing about it. Too boring!

Evaluation of my 2021 goals

My 2021 goals were to lose weight and get a side gig of the ground.

The losing weight was ok as I lost 10 kgs last year. My general level of fitness has also improved a lot as you can read in my health reports.

The side gig was once more a no show this year. I really need to find something here!

2022 goals

My 2022 goals are the same as 2021. Continue to lose weight and finaly get a side gig off the ground.