Savings Rate September 2020: slowly gaining momentum at 26.67%

I really enjoy to write this post. It forces me to do some self reflection on the past month, and hopefully it makes me think about the next one. But most of all I just enjoy to play with numbers.

Unfortunately some urgent repairs at my house took a big bite of my budget. My washing machine had been leaking for over a year. I finally decided that it was not a good idea to let it go on. The whole venture to get a new washing machine costed me about 600 EUR, so a big bite from my budget. You can read more about that bellow.

Expenses

Lets go over the different expenses for this month

Recurring costs

I decided to look at the recurring costs every month to see if I could do anything about them:

• Loan 1: 547 EUR. This actually will end by September 2021, so only 11 payments left! Unless I find a house to live in first of course, then it might even go up…
• Syndic Costs: 647 EUR every 3 months. This will drop to 400-500 EUR by May next year. Currently it means 215 EUR / month recurring costs
• Gym subscription: 59 EUR: its actually the most expensive in my region, but they give a lot of personal guidance and have an egym which is what I need to stay motivated
• Tennis: I play tennis 2 hours weekly, this costs me about 15 EUR/hour (average) so 60 EUR per month
• Gass & Electricity: 54 EUR atm, I will try not to turn on the heating at home yet since I work a lot from home now I fear this could go up
• Internet: 27 EUR for 100 GB with Proximus. The 100 GB is not enough now that I work from home, at one point I might need to take a different subscription
• Netflix: 6.59 EUR, which is bellow the minimum in Belgium of 7.99 EUR. How did this happen? I used to live in London and paid it there. When I moved back to Belgium the pound collapsed because of the Brexit and I kept the subscription

Right now there is not one of these costs that I would want to touch right now. That leaves me with a total recurring costs of 968.59 EUR

The highlights

• Housing: costs have dropped to 799 EUR
• Hobbys: again most of it is sport related. I don’t like to save on sport because my physical and emotional health is important to me. Of course there is a recurring cost of 120 EUR for tennis and Gym, but I also spend some in the Decathlon to get some extra gear for kiting, and went sailing a few times (10-20 EUR per time).
• Groceries: I wanted to shop an entire month in the Aldi and I have. I can see a clear difference in cost: 314 EUR last month vs 245 EUR this month. So clearly worth it to shop in the Aldi, by now I also know where to find most items, so I actually start to enjoy to go there. The biggest downside I found was that I bought mostly I bought unhealthy microwave based food. So a point for October: cook more and try to eat more healthy. I wonder if cooking more will also lower my grocery bill. Let’s find out next month!
• Shopping: I had to buy a new Washing Machine that set me back about 540 EUR. A few days after I bought it Mediamarkt lowered the price by 19%. They were so kind to give me a 93 EUR coupon I could use later. I ordered it online which was a big mistake. Delivery was a disaster. They needed to plan in 4 deliveries to finally get it to me. I will never order from Mediamarkt online again.
• Restaurant costs are at about 139 EUR, the highest since the lockdown! So I will be watching this expense and try to get it back under 100 EUR next month.

Expenses overview for 2020

Total Expenses for August = 2289 EUR

Total Expenses for September = 2218 EUR

2020 average = 2159 EUR (+7)

Income

My income rose slightly because I managed to book in some overtime. This month it was 2848 EUR, including wage, meal allowances and overtime.

Saving Rate

Given the circumstances a saving rate of 26.76% is ok. This month it was mainly higher

2019 saving rate: 45.8%

2020 average (so far): 39.49%

What’s next

• I will try to shop 1 month at the Aldi and cook more (at least 60% of the time), and see how this will impact my Groceries bill
• I need to get my restaurant expenses under 100 EUR / month again

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