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Wallet with euro coins

My monthly Savings Rate report: May 2020

As eluded to last month, May was a life-changing month. I even received a little surprise windfall at the end thanks to my grandmother's inheritance. With all of the preparations done in April, May was relatively calm in terms of expenses. This further improved my Savings Rate and pushed it to an all-time high. 

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PSD2 explained

How PSD2 will make banking more beneficial for you

Isn’t it frustrating to see how something simple like your various bank statements are still separate per bank. Wouldn’t it be great to automatically import them into your favorite banking app? Well, Europe has you covered. With the new Payment Services Directive (Directive 2015/2366, 2015), usually shortened to PSD2.

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Palladium wedding rings on a wooden surface

Should you invest in Gold alternatives? Checking out 3 alternative metals

Our wedding bands
This is the render of the wedding bands we ordered to symbolize our commitment to each other.

Recently, my wife and I were looking for our wedding rings 

While checking out different stores, I started thinking. Could white gold, platinum, and palladium be good gold alternative investments just as they are alternatives in wedding rings? 

Investors see gold as a safe investment in times of economic turmoil. But what about its lesser-known but more expensive and rare (metal) sibling palladium (not to be mistaken with platinum)? And what about white gold? Should you invest in any of these?

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Managing budget with YNAB on a laptop

YNAB Vs nYNAB Vs Excel: A Helpful Budgeting Tool reviewed

Disclaimer: This post contains a referral code to YNAB.

Important Note: As of November 2021, I decided to stop using YNAB. Their recent price increase makes it a less interesting option for Europeans who don’t benefit from Sync functionality.

The aptly named budgeting tool YNAB, short for You Need A Budget, stopped supporting their legacy tool YNAB4 on 31 October 2019. I’ve been an avid user of the tool for over 7 years, so seeing their support completely disappear made me question if a change was needed.

So using the end of support, I decided to do a review of my YNAB-usage and see what I should do:

  • Do the effort of moving to the new YNAB (aka nYNAB), and pay a subscription fee -the horror!-
  • Or move to a good old Excel spreadsheet
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