Savings rate in high expense month saved by high income | November 2019 update

Due to some high unexpected costs my expenses went trough the roof. However as I also had my tax refund this month I was able to save my savings rate

Let’s go over the highlights of this month:

Restaurants costs have stayed stable at 340. I will try to lower them further in December
I had to pay an additional 1300 EUR extra for the repair of the roof. This was normally going to be part of a loan to be spread over 3 years but as the bank would not grant the apartment building a loan we have paid it off
I spend 221 EUR on shopping. This included extra warm gear for my hobby (mountainbiking) so I could continue doing this in winter, and a new paid of shoes as I mentioned last month in my blog.
I realized how important it is to have hobby s. If I FIRE then I need things to fall back on. That’s why I do not mind to invest in mountainbiking and dancing. To be honest I did not pick the most expensive hobbies. I used to sail more but every time I went sailing I could spend easily 50 EUR. When I go mountain-biking I spend about 10 EUR.
I had a weekend away with friends but we kept it cheap, we cooked a lot ourselves, did not go out for dinner once, and did some cheaper activities like board games, walking and riding a boat. We still had such a good time that we already decided to do it again next year, just on a different location

Again I go over the 1270 EUR I set as my first FIRE goal. It makes me wonder if there will be months that I will make it. Perhaps now but to be honest 1270 EUR has been mostly symbolic.

The chart

The moment you have all been waiting for 😉 The graph with my savings rate. And wohoo this is the first month I can compare with last year’s savings rate. Altough I am not sure this is the most fair month to compare. Last year the tax refund came in another month (around spring). That being said it is nice to see I am making some progress there. But when I see at how high it was in December last year I don’t know if I will be able to beat it!

Average saving rate so far…

As a final note I want to close with my average saving rate. So far I am able to get a 47.57% savings rate in the last 12M, an increase of a little over 1% compared to last month!

Its in Red as I feel like anything under 50% should be in red 🙂

Whats next

In december I plan to book some holidays and additionally I will be doing some Christmas shopping. At the same time I am expecting a small holiday bonus I get around Christmas every year. I do have 2,5 weeks of vacation so that also means my income (as its partly based on performance) will have a small drop.

As for my new suit. Its still planned but right now it looks like it will be for January when it’s discount month in Belgium. I try to buy one piece of clothing per month, this way I keep my wardrobe up to date and I don’t overspend on clothing.

I sometimes think I should add this post together with my more popular portfolio blog (that attracts more visitors each month), but then I notice its just to long to put it together in one.