My monthly Savings Rate report: April 2022

Apologies I haven’t been able to post much in recent weeks, but a lot has been going on. In the meantime, I found some time to provide you with my monthly Savings Rate. Since we were abroad from the 21st of April till the 5th of May this report will contain a higher expense in the holiday category as I put everything I spend during my trip there. On top of that, some of the shared expenses weren’t paid back yet increasing this months expenses.

While the expenses were higher due to the holidays, I also got a higher income.

This month’s income streams are:

• Salary (with on-call)
• Second hand sale
• Child allowance
• My wife’s share of the expenses

Kids — €2,354.18

For the baptism of our daughter, we wanted to do something special since it was in my wife’s home country so we booked a rooftop venue for the party. As you might expect, this doesn’t come cheap and it’s the reason why this category has the highest expense at €1,900.80. Luckily my parents offered to pay half but this only got transferred in May.

Everything else remains rather “normal”. Our daughter got some more second hand clothes for the coming months (€76.48). Well, besides a few extra doctor visits we made before we went abroad (€146.04). We also got one more long body pillow, a cover for baby seats in shopping carts, and a mattress inc. 3 sheets for the bed we got last month. (€222.36).

Since the weather is getting nicer we also got a tiny bike helmet for when she is in the bike seat.

Person — €919.43

€857.84, that’s how much I spend on clothing this month. I don’t even remember ever spending that much in one month. Seeing the number while doing this summary, startled me even a bit. I wanted to have a complete look at the baptism of our daughter, so I went a bit overboard and didn’t look at the price as much. What was my new look?

•  White linen shirt + Orange linen shirt – €159.90
• Boat shoes Floris Van Bommel – €159
• Linen blazer Tommy Hilfiger – €349

On top of that, I also paid for a handbag and shoes for my wife (€114.99) and got zippable hiking pants (€74.95). The rest was covering some expenses for my wife.

Investments Real estate — €840

For the first time since I bought the Brussels apartment, I made expenses for the finishing touches. I made a deposit of 840 for the curtains. While this will remains in the house, it’s not really a part of the house so I consider it an expense.

Luxury — €767.10

As mentioned last month, we left for an exciting trip at the end of April till early May to celebrate -amongst other things- our daughter’s baptism. Obviously, I spend some money on food and restaurants, as well as transportation and gifts.

Regarding subscriptions, April was rather expensive because of a lot of yearly subscriptions:

• Amex: €30
• Beobank Extra MasterCard: €5
• Disney+: €8.99
• Netflix: €11.18
• Spotify: €9.99
• Amazon Prime: €49.00

Seeing them all listed makes me wonder if I shouldn’t just ditch one or two of these. But then I realize I use all of them on a daily basis, which makes deciding which one to cut rather impossible.

Personal home — €401.98

Everything was unexciting in this category:

• Interest payment: €323.71
• Peripherals: €66.08
  • 8 x Villeroy & Boch Champagne glasses
• Utilities:
  • Telenet: €12.19 – This expense will disappear as of August as it will be covered by my company.

Businesses — €134.37

A category I rarely use is for my so-called businesses. With good reason. I will go deeper into this at a later day, but I always tried to limit this as I planned to go independent for a while now.
As a result, it’ll be the last time I have this expense as a personal cost. From now on, anything related to the blog will go through my company.

Food & supplies — €110.56

Groceries are usually one of the bigger expenses during the month, but because we were away as of 21/04 and we still had a lot of meal vouchers left, it had a limited impact (€87.57) on the budget. Snacks on the road or after my martial arts training were okay-ish at €20.39 and since I went to the office two times I also spend €2.60 on the vending machines there.

Banking and insurances — €103.72

One of the few months where this category is on the higher end. Only one reason for this: we switched from DKV family insurance to AG. The latter charges €72/y. Including the mandatory health insurance from CM and my family’s contribution to my employer’s plan. A plan that will also disappear once I go independent so it’s going to be interesting finding something equally good.

There you have it. April was an intense month on many levels. But thanks to an income of €6,693.47 my high expenses of €5,981.51 were covered and helped me keep a Savings Rate of €6,693.47/€5,981.51 = 10.60%.

Couldn’t be happier with this result given all the stuff I got and booked. I expect May to be calmer although I was still away for the first week. However, besides that, didn’t have anything else.