Category: monthly expense report (Page 1 of 6)

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!

	January	February	March
Income	3 843,42	2 296,00	2 307,00
Expenses	1 460,75	1 526,67	2 772,33
Savings	2 382,67	769,33	– 465,33
Savings rate	61,99%	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.

Changes to the pay out system for our bonus means that the remaining part will only be paid out next year. So no extra income from that source this time. But I did do my best to stay within budget this month and even end the year within my self imposed budget. Find out how I did below:

Income: 2 339,69 euro

Expenses: 1 458,72 euro

savings: 880,47 euro or 37,65%

Income

As said, just my normale work income + a small christmas gift of 60 euro.

Expenses

I wanted to end the year below my 18 000 euro budget so I did tighten the screw and barely spend anything.

1 100 euro went to the joint account to pay the mortgage, utilisites and groceries

I also did spend 31 euro extra on food. To limlt this, 25 euro was also spend for my dietician. More discipline on the food front could eliminate both of these!

As mentioned in my last health report I bought the wrong sort of kettlebell, a mistake that cost me 80 euro! And now I have the problem of what to do with 2 heavy and very large kettlebell. Is it ridiculous to just put them on top of the posts and each side of our gate? Thinking about painting them gold and doing just that (the wife does not approve …).

Working from home meant I needed a new – quieter- computer mouse: 18 euro and the wife definitely approved of this!

A full tank for the Vespa (I have been going to the office one day a week) set me back 9,40 euro. And I remember a time when it was rare for this to reach the 9 euro. Gas has become expensive!

Gifts for people cost me 144 euro.

I also bought 40 euro worth of Ethereum because I thought you needed to have Ethereum in your wallet to use mirror.xyz But this wasn’t the case! Well, I now have some Ethereum.

Mirror could become a blockchain alternative for substack, let you turn your writing into a NFT and monetize it that way or be the webpresence for a project and let you fund said project throught the sales of NFT’s. I am just exploring a bit. I sometimes have weird shit to say that doesn’t match with the overal idea behind this site here and I do try to keep my weirder tendencies limited here. Mirror might become an outlet for those tendencies. But my vision on cryptocurrencies remains unchanged! They shoudl be used to buy drugs, hookers and illegal firearms from markets on the dark web: AS GOD INTENTED! (/humor for the too literal people reading this).

As of next year I am no longer doing these monthly expense reports but switching to a quaterly overview of my expenses. They are boring as I do not spend a lot of money and I want to replace them by some more interesting content.

I haven’t forgotten I still needed to do my November expense report. But I am prioritizing my health more than my finances at the moment. The reason being that finances are more or less on automatic pilot for the moment and health wise I still have a lot of work to do.

It’s also the reason why I will be switching to a quaterly overview of my expenses starting next year. Most months are basically the same anyway.

With that said, here is the overview for November.

Income: 2 212 euro

Expenses: 1 408,53 euro

Savings: 803,47 or 36,32%

Yes indeed, I succeeded in remaining below 1 500 euro in November and I am close to ending the year within my self imposed budget of 18 000 euro.

Income

One more boring and predictable income this month. The 2 212 euro is just my standard wage from work.

Expenses

With only 1 408 euro spend I do not have a whole lot to report here either.

1 100 euro went to our joint account as usual

The bank charge of 1,33 euro for my account continues to annoy me. Mobile subscription was 14,70 euro.

I only filled up my Vespa 1 time in November so transport cost me 10 euro.

I still spend a bit extra on food (some of it good like sushi, some bad like pizza): 69 euro.

My fix visit with my dietician cost me 25 euro and the docter visit 4 euro.

A necessary expense I hope to have a bit more fun with next year was my webhosting for a total expense of 210 euro.

I also spend 51,70 euro supplements. One of which was cinnamonum because apparently interesting things start happening if you take a gram of cinnamon with every meal. I am VERY interested to find out if I can personaly replicate these findings. FinancialFreedomSloth, your human guinea pig!

I missed a health report mid October. Not because I fell of the health wagon but I just did feel like doing an update. I will do one mid November which will show I am still very much rocking it exercise and weight wise 😉

But first my financial health:

Income: 2 226,19 euro

Expenses: 1 556,33 euro

Savings: 669,86 euro or 30,09%

Savings rate droppen a bit but did remain just above 30% which isn’t bad in my book. Average spending over the last 10 months is 1 513 euro or just barely above my self imposed budget of 1 500 euro a month. I am going to do my best in November to drop below the 1 500 euro average,

Income

Income was just my standard wag of 2 226,19 euro. The month was boring and predictable income wise,

Expenses

In the fixed category I once more transferred 1 100 euro to our joint account for our mortgage, utilisties, grocery shopping, ..

My bank charged me 1,33 euro again and my mobile phone cost me 12 euro.

I had to fill my Vespa tank 2 times in October since we are now working two days from the office now (will probably change again in the future) which cost me 19,50 euro.

I also spend 32,50 euro on food. Once more not really bad food but I still haven’t gotten around to better food prepping which I definitely should do for the long term. I did get healthy cracker which should help with the prepping.

We also went to the pub with some friends visiting from Portugal before the QR code verification came to in effect in Belgium. I am drawing a hard line in not participating with the QR code society our government so clearly wants to impliment. The pub visit was 16 euro and will probably be the last one for several months. I have been organising my life over the last year in such a way that I have pretty much everything I need on my own property, The last piece will be turning our attic (once the roof has been replaced) into my own private cinema/techno club. Until then I will be rejoining illegal raves held in woods, abandoned factories and underground tunnels. Ah, too feel young again!

At work I had given a co-worker a somewhat funny t-shirt which resulted in my other co-workers also demanding a t-shirt. And then the girlfriend also wanting one.,, Sigh, 80 euro later I have now spend more money on clothes for other people than for myself!

Last month I bought the hardware necessary to run bitcoin core and a lightning node. But for proper channel management you also need channel liquidity, which means you need Bitcoins. So this month I spend an additional 270 euro on bitcoin. I am not a bitcoin investor and do not really care what the price of bitcoin does. But I do now that if we are going to keep the internet a free and open place we are going to need a censor proof, not controlled by government payment system and I am willing to do my part to make sure this will exist in the future. Plus, I need to do something with all the money I safe by not going out anymore .,,

With a festival visit, a holiday and the start up costs for a new ‘hobby’ September was an expensive month. But some luck on the income front still got me a very nice savings rate.

Income: 3 091,47 euro

Expenses: 1 948,09 euro

Savings: 1 143,38 euro or 36,98%

Another month with an above 35% savings rate. Read below the ‘luck’ I had on the income front

Income:

Income was my standard wage of 2 217,47 euro. I took a three week holiday in September and I have to admit, even though holiday money is an incredible complex arrangement in Belgium that in my opinion is in desperate need of simplification, it is a nice feeling to barely work during a month and still get your normal pay in your bank account!

I was already pretty happy that my expenses would stay below my normal income of 2 217,47 euro for September. But my mom is somewhat of a clean up mode in her house. This clean up also entails selling of stuff. And apparently the selling of stuff then implies I get the proceeds of this stuff (my mothers logic being I would have inherited the stuff upon her dead). So in September muy mother gave me an enveloppe with 874 euro cash. My parents are well aware of my investments and thus know I do not need the money. But they are perfectely happy with their life as it is and do not need it either. I just view it as a reduction of future inheritance taxes.

Expenses

With the execption of February when I bought the rowing machine September has been my most expensive month. Below is an overview of where I spend my money on.

1 100 euro was transferred to our joint account for mortgage, utilities, grocery shopping …

September was the start of me getting serious about my eating. So I had 2 visits with my dietician of 50 euro, blood work cost me 8 euro and the Dexa scan I reffered to in my health report was also 50 euro. So that is a total of 158 euro spend on my health. Future visits to the dietician will only be 25 euro so this cost will be lower in the future. Dieticians aren’t that expensive for the time and work they put into it. And I should be getting money back from my health insurance.

Me getting serious with my food did however not prevent me spending an extra 29 euro on food. Most of it wasn’t that ‘bad’ food. But it does prove I need to put more effort in meal prepping.

My bank now also charges me 1,33 euro a month for the privilige of having an account where I have to do everything online but as long as our mortgage is there I am unfortunately stuck at that bank.

My cell phone subscription was 10,86 euro this month and I did have to fill up the tank of my Vespa: 9,50 euro. Rising fuel prices do have a limited impact if your tank can only hold 5 liters.

In the fun category was our attendance at a festival in the Netherlands which cost me 70 euro in total.

And our stay at Ieper cost me 255 euro. Ieper is a nice and charming little town. It is was also a good reminder how all of our lives have improved beyond any imagination compared to how it was a hundred years ago.

At the end of my three week holiday I also took the train (17,20 euro) to Ghent to see some friends (10,40 euro spend at a bar).

During my holiday I als ordered a raspberry pie 4 and a 1 Terabite SSD card. Although I consider myself a tech guy I have never been a cryptocoin person (to this day I am still not a big fan of digital money, I prefer my money to be unprogrammable). But for some strange reason I am interested in the lightening Network

This layer on top of bitcoin makes cheap and fast transactions possible. And more important: all you need is a raspberry pie and decent SSD storage to run your own lightning node. Which then allows you to manage your own channels on the lightning network. In a way it is like the Swift network for international payments but ran by a couple of weird guys who put a raspberry pie in their cupboard. Add to this that managing these channels and the necessary liquidity on your channel is part math part art and well, I am very interested. It is in theory possible to actualy make some money by providing this service but I am just in it for the weirdness of it all and consider it a hobby.

In Octobre I will purchase some additional satoschi’s as to have the necessary funding to set up my very first channel since the necessary hardware did cost me 259 euro. But there is a lot of fun stuff you can do with a raspberry pie so the hardware will be put to use in one way or another.

I didn’t spend a lot in August mostly because I have a three week holiday in September which had me planning a lot of stuff for that month just because I have more time to do them then. So I finished August well under budget.

Income: 2 371,22 euro

Expenses: 1 357,43 euro

Savings: 1 013,79 euro or 42,75%

I consider every month with a savings rate higehr than 35% as a good month. Due to all the planning I did for September I will certainly go over budget next month.

Income:

Income was my standard wage + some birthday money, The big 5 is starting to become visible on the horizon. I am not all that bothered by it. All the exercising of the last year has put me in the best shape of my life, muscle wise. If the coming year I am succesfull in losing the excess fat I will be at my physical best ever. More on this in my next health report.

Expenses:

As usual 1 100 euro went to our joint account.

Ice cream and sandwiches at work cost me 26,5 euro.

Because I am not eating the right things for all the exercises I am doing my body feels tired all the time. This is something I hope to fix with my dietician but in the mean time I spend 45 euro for creatine powder and proteine bars. The creatine seems to help a little bit.

I am also a fan of the NAC (N-acetyl-L-cysteïne) supplement but this is a lot cheaper in powder form than in pill form. So I just fill my own capsules. Sometimes you run out of capsules. And being a frugal little sloth I buy my capsules also in bulk to minimise my shipping costs. 2 000 capsules cost me 29 euro and should last me serveral years again. But sometimes being cheap does make you look like a small time drug dealer …

On a somewhat related note. August saw me spending 65 euro on going out and partying. Lots of fun was had on several occasions. Zero capsules were taken to have this fun! At least by me or the girlfriend. But I am not putting any money on some of the other guests …

My mobile subscription only cost me 0,60 euro this month as Mobile Viking lets you earn points when you buy stuff online and although we do not buy that much most of what we do buy is online.

I have been going to the office a bit more so the Vespa needed filling up: 10 euro.

Gifts for some co-workers and friends we visited in August cost me 80 euro.

And to round it off, my bank is charging me 1,33 euro per month in costs now for an online only account. Unfortunately our mortgage is held at the same bank so I can not leave them for the moment. But the year our morthgage is done I am switching everything to another bank.

Bummer, an unexpected expense in July pushed me slightely over my self imposed 1 500 euro budget. The savings rate is still great thanks to tax avoidance shenanigans at work but I am a little bummed that I broke my 5 month streak of remaining below budget.

Income: 2 657,21 euro

Expenses: 1 565,20 euro

savings: 1 092,01 euro or 41,10%

Income:

My income was my standard wage + part of a bonus for a total of 2 657,21 euro. The way our bonus is being payed out at my job has changed to reduce the level of taxation on said bonus (aka tax avoidance shenanigans). I am guessing I got a part of my end of year bonus now. Guessing because this year we are in this sort of weird, hybrid situation which makes things complex. After paying little to no attention to the several Teams meetings about the changes I figured out that if I send mail A, registered on portal B and choose option Z I would get some money now, have to pay less taxes later and the company got a ruling that it is al legal and such! So that was what I did and a few days later money appeared in my account: succes!

Expenses:

1 100 euro was transferred to our joint account to pay for the roof over my head, utilities and groceries.

On top of those groceries I also bought some icecream, sandwiches and a pizza, because I have no will power if it comes to food, for a total of 46 euro

We also went to a restaurant with some friends where I spend 70 euro

A gift for my mother was 25 euro. I am glad to spend more here but the woman never wants anything. Then again, I am not one to speak as I never want anything for my birthday either.

A local small festival was cancelled due to covid restrictions. But the organisation also organises a small summer bar in the woods. So that summer bar got an extra edition, the headliner DJ of the festival got some GPS coordinates and told to make sure to not be followed and fun was had by all! Entrance was free but I did spend 5 euro on drinks.

And the suprise expense? That was once more the Vespa!. I have only driven it for around 2 000 km over the last year and somehow something broke! Goddamn! I was on the road to a record low expense month and the Vespa repair bill of 319,20 euro pushed me over budget!

I also realized that nowhere in July I have a phone expense so I probably have spend 12 euro more than this but I am too lazy to log into my bank account (no, I do not have a banking app on my phone because paying stuff shouldn’t be easy) check and correct the above post. Over the years I have learned to not sweat the small stuff (or come up with better sounding excuses for my lazyness).

May and June are historically high savings months as those are the months my company pays our profit bonus and holiday money. May saw me reaching a 64,35% savings rate. Could I improve this already high rate in June? Below are the numbers:

Income: 3 660,60 euro

Expenses: 1 372,70 euro

Savings: 2 287,90 euro or 62,50%

Nope, I didn’t quit reach it. But I’ll take a 62,5% savings rate any month of the year.

Total expenses for the first half of the year are 8 705,20 euro or an average of 1 450,90 euro a month. Very nice within my self imposed budget of 1 500 euro a month. And this even includes the purchase of a 800 euro rowing machine. without the rowing machine I actually have spend closer to 1 320 euro a month!

Income:

Income was my standard pay + my holiday money for a total of 3 660,60 euro.

Expenses:

Once more I transferred 1 100 euro to our joint account for my part of the mortgage, utilisties, groceries, …

Since international travel is still restricted we decided to visit Brughes so we could enjoy this beautiful city without the hordes of tourists. Restaurants and pubs were allready open so we got the full Brughes experience. Travel, food and drinks did set me back 110 euros. But we did have a fun day playing tourist in our own country.

Mobile phone cost dropped back to my fixed 12 euro subscription amount. I found a very easy and cheap (as in 0 euro) solutions for not having the Wifi reach into our utility room. I just leave my phone in the part of the house where there is still a Wifi signal and then connect it to our wireless bluetooth speaker. And that does reach into the utility room.

The mobile app I use for keeping track of my weights work outs has an anual fee which needed to be renewed this month. It costs 34 euro. I could do without it by this point but I do like the tracking it provides. It’s this app that supplies the overview graphs I show in the fitness part of my health report.

After motherday last month, this month had fathers day so I spend 42,20 euro on a gift for him.

I also needed to refill my Vespa so that cost me 9 euro. Belgium is lifting the working from home obligation. July and August will see me going to the office about once a week so this cost will start to appear more often now.

I also spend 39,5 euro on ice cream (when working from home, damn that icecream truck passing right by my window!) and sandwiches (when working from home). Not good for my spending but, even worse, not good for my weight!

Belgium is slowly opening up but until now this did not have an impact on my spending. The low spending in combination with my annual work bonus being paid out resulted in a record breaking savings rate!

Income: 3 988,38 euro

Expenses: 1 422 euro

Savings: 2 566,38 euro or 64,35%

Income:

Income was my standard pay check of 2 176 euro + my annual bonus of 1 811,88 euro. The bonus is an annual performance bonus. It could be a full extra month but we didn’t reach all goals for the full 100%. All in all my work had a very good year and this year we are even smashing last years numbers! For the time being my job is pretty secure.

Expenses:

As usual I transferred 1 100 euro to our jount account for my part of the mortgage, utilities, groceries and such …

My mobile phone subscription was 22 euro as I surpassed my data plan this month. Our wifi doesn’t reach into our utility room where I am doing my rowing. And some decent techno does help with the rowing. Still, I need to be honest here: I could have just made my own playlist and downloaded it on the phone and thus not need a data connexion. I have just been to lazy to do it. Lazy spinning up this Techno channel on Youtube is just easier but does chew up your data …

May is mothersday so I bought a gift for mom: 34 euro. Mom is a difficult woman to buy gifts for as she never need/want anything. Then again, I never need/want anything either ..

I spend 16 euro on extra food but this was completely in line with my regime: spare ribs for the win!

Back in Januari I bought extra weights and proudly said I wouldn’t need any extra weights for the rest of the year. Unfortunately I made an error then and only ordered one 10kg platter. I should have ordered two. As a result I was now coming close to running out of weights. Ordering just one 10 kg platter felt a bit stupid, especially with the delivery costs. Since I had barely spend anything in May I decided to order all weights I could potentially need for the next two years. 250 euro spend on weight platters, including not one but three 10 kg platters and two 5 kg platters! These are really going to be the last weights I buy. I will just add extra repetitions to my exercises when these weights eventually will not be enough anymore. Main reason being that I am running out of space to store these weights.

Belgium was still pretty much locked down so April was another month of low spending for me. In the first 4 months of 2021 I have spend a total of 5 910,50 euro which means that on average I have stayed within my 1 500 euro monthly budget. And that includes the purchase of a 800 euro rowing machine! I think it is the first time ever that I was still within budget 4 months into the year!

Let’s take a look at the numbers of this month.

Income: 2 277,55 euro

Expenses: 1 428,50 euro

Savings: 849,05 euro or 37,28%

Income:

Income was my pay slip from work plus a 100 euro gift from the parents because of easter.

Expenses:

Expenses are going slightly higher but this was in part by design. With the country slowly opening up I used this month to buy some more essentials as I am hoping to finally be able to spend some money on going out and seeing people in May.

First are the fixed expenses I need to pay each month.

This includes the 1 100 euro I transferred to our joint account for my part of the mortgage,utilities, groceries and such ,,,

My mobile phone subscription of 12 euro (no reduction this month).

A medical bill of 10 euro. Back in February I hurt my richt ankle (again) and just to be on the safe side I had photo’s taken form than foot (it was just sprained). The bill for this came in April.

Then there are a few moments of weakness.

Steam once more seduced me into buyning another game, No man’s sky set me back 54 euro.

I also spend 50 euro on extra food. Most of it was in line with my regime, but not all of it.

And then there was the stuff I decided to buy in April since I was going to end the month below budget anyway.

95 euro went to a new keyboard and mouse as working from home has taken a toll on my home equipment. Fancy new led lights, mmmhh! I actually only needed a mouse and I could have gotten one from work for a few months but I want decent stuff to work with and even pre-Covid I was thinking about buying me better gear for the work place. Now that I work from home there is nothing stopping me setting up my workplace the way I want.

I could have used the Vespa a little bit less and pushed the refill to May but we had a few very nice weather days in April and I enjoy riding my Vespa more than I do using the car so I filled it up in April: 10 euro

With all the exercise I am doing I needed some extra sport outfits. I have been rocking the same short for the last year and it was porbably 10 years old to begin with. I also needed some new underwear. And I define ‘needing new cloth’ not because ‘the colors are a bit faded’ of ‘it went out of style’ but more by the number of holes and how big they are. Trust me when I say I needed them.

All of this on the below photo set me back 97,50 euro.

I may have gone a bit over with the shorts. If my current use of 1 short per decade is any indication this may very well be the last shorts I will buy during my lifetime.