Best laid plans and such …

At the start of 2022 I made the plan to not do the monthly expense reports because, well they are boring. The idea was to do a quarterly update and so free up time (and energy) to do some more, interesting posts. It’s safe to say we all know how that went …

Sure I have some excuses (like my back going kaput) but the main reason is I was and still am a bit burned out on the whole idea of FIRE. At 48 years old now, the RE part isn’t going to happen. And I also knew 2022 wasn’t going to be a frugal year for me. So writing a FIRE blog, well it kinda feels a bit fake you know? To be honest, I am still struggling with that but some people are kind enough to worry about my well being since my last post was in the middle of some serious back issues. So to put everybody’s mind at ease (and perhaps also because I do not like to abandon something half finished) I’ll give a catch up. We’ll see after that if I continu this blog or respawn at a place more aligned with where I am now in my life.

So let’s get some expense reports out of the way!

JanuaryFebruaryMarch
Income3 843,422 296,002 307,00
Expenses1 460,751 526,672 772,33
Savings2 382,67769,33– 465,33
Savings rate61,99%33,51%-20,17%

Income Q1 2022

Not a lot needs to be said here. It’s basically my income from work and a few new year gifts.

Expenses Q1 of 2023

Expenses are also the usual for the most part: mortgage, food, filling up the tank of my Vespa .,,

A few noticable expenses:

220 euro for kettlebells. I bought 2 x 20 kg kettlebells. One for home and one for work so I wouldn’t need to lug 20 kgs back and forth to work. I used it for about a month, then ruined my back and now I am too afraid to use it again in fear of ruining my back once more!

I gave 100 euro to an animal rescue (https://forrestandfriends.be/) since we adopted a pig for them. They actually charge less for it as pigs are difficult to place but I like what they do so included a gift. Q1 of 2022 was tough with a pet pig we had for 10+ years dying and also one of the kittens we adopted suddenly dying. For the moment both my wife and I are still lucky to have our parents but we do realize we are now at the age where funerals might be more frequent than marriages.

Speaking of marriages, the reason for the negative savings rate in March was due to me needing to make some early payments for our marriage! Planned in June of 2020 and then having Covid show up. Not wanting any restrictions for our wedding (screw me having wedding photo’s with people all masked up!) in 2022 we could finally go for it! I’ll go into more details in the Q2 post but let’s just say I am glad we waited as the party is still described as the best wedding party ever by most guests. Off course, the two year lull might have something to do with that. As most of our guests were more than ready to party hard after two years of on and off lockdowns…

An advance for the honeymoon (Denmark) of 755 euro and an advance for the wedding rings of 400 euro pushed me into negative territory in March. But money well spend.