My monthly Savings Rate report: December 2020
December, the month of Christmas and New Years’. Lots of celebrations meaning some bigger expenses. This wasn’t any different this year even with corona. We just did it on our own and just handed over the gifts outside. We went a little wild with food but my income was higher so it balanced things out a little bit.
My income received a boost again thanks to the on-call I did at the end of November/the beginning of December. It was welcomed because of the increased holiday expenses. Additionally, I received my tax refund which helped my Savings Rate stay somewhat decent.
This page can contain affiliate partner links to products that I purchased this month.
Income
For December I welcomed two extras on the income side. On top of my salary was the on-call bonus. I received 2,835.05 EUR. Finally, I received my tax return for the fiscal year 2019 resulting in an extra “income” of 366.38 EUR. Together I got 3201.43 EUR.
The situation for my wife hasn’t changed yet. No job so no income. At the moment, everything is covered by one salary.
Dividends
I received my final dividends of 2020 this month:
- 4/12/2020 HOME INVEST BELGIUM – 34.00 EUR
- 29/12/2020 NVIDIA CORP – ~1.96 EUR
Combining everything gives me 328,19 EUR for 2020, meaning I missed my milestone of 400 EUR by 71.81 EUR.
Expenses
Home management and ownership
My largest expense is without a doubt the monthly rent (645 EUR) plus the interest I have to pay on the already borrowed amount (110.81 EUR). For our Christmas and New Years’ dinner, I bought an injection needle and Sodastream bubbles (36.94 EUR). Aside from that, I got some cleaning products from Action and Colruyt (5.6 EUR). These extra expenses together with the typical ones brings the total to 798.35 EUR for December.
Food and supplies
Next up are the groceries done in December. We ended up spending a lot more on groceries than expected. 569.94 EUR for 2 is quite a lot, but I have a good excuse! Since these holidays were going to be different from normal, we wanted to treat ourselves a bit, so we got a bit fancier at Carrefour.
“Eating out” was limited to some extra fries (3.68 EUR). The snacks (7.75 EUR) were at the local Delhaize after we did some cleaning at my grandma’s place. The result is 574.01 EUR on food and supplies.
Person
Medical bills (110.96 EUR) for the pregnancy and underwear for me (164.47 EUR) were the expenses in this category. We spend 275.43 EUR in total.
Other expenses
The rest of my expenses were relatively minimal.
A quick summary:
- Online business – 120.64 EUR:
- Paying the co-writer of two of my articles.
- Luxury – 83.47 EUR:
- Christmas and New Years’ presents for my parents (72.45 EUR).
- Subscriptions on Spotify and Patreon (11.02 EUR)
- City and government – 71 EUR:
- A stupid speeding ticket.
- Banking and insurance – 25.83 EUR:
- The basic fair of home and fire, and medical insurance with a dash of cashback.
- 15.72 EUR Home and fire insurance
- 10.46 EUR for company health insurance
- 0.35 EUR cashback from Keytrade.
- The basic fair of home and fire, and medical insurance with a dash of cashback.
All the expenses
The bottom line
Summing it all up for a total expense of 1,948.73 EUR. I’m left with 1,252.70 EUR which gives me a Savings Rate of 1,252.70 EUR/3,201.43 EUR = 39.13%!
This was my December overview. My Belgian friend Euromoney -or should I say Roadtrip to FIRE?- shared his name change, the five steps you must take to get started on your FIRE journey, and last but not least, his income and expenses for October.
JoneyTalks Had 4 amazing Podcasts in November. From How to go from a Scarcity to an Abundance Money Mindset with Anissa to Is It Too Late to Turn Your Financial Life Around in Your 40s? with Ben. Be sure to check out his podcasts!
Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
Nice saving rate, I’m baffled how you never buy any stuff. No clothes or nothing, how do you do that? 😀
So unfortunate about the fine 🙁
Btw does your blog make you that much money that you pay someone to co-write articles?
Hey Marc!
Well, I have quite some pants and (dress) shirts, that I bought over the years before I started this blog. Also, I do buy? I recently got underwear and comfort wear for at home.
If it’s any consolation, I just bought a new bed that will be delivered to my grandmother’s house in mid-February.
I got two slatted bottoms at ~1200 EUR and a wooden frame of 1050 EUR.
The fine sucks, but OK, it is what it is.
Hahaha, hell no, it pays a couple of euros. I had a good October month where I earned 17 EUR but Google then stopped my ads because of “suspicious activity”.
Now I’m back down to cents, especially after the Google update at the end of last year.
It’s all out of my regular salary. I did some co-authoring to help improve my writing and to see if it’s something that could elevate my blog.
It has somewhat paid off, but again, due to the Google updates that favor professionals (such as bankers) I got pushed back down.