My monthly Savings Rate report: February 2020
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This February update is finally a lighter one. The start is the end of my trip to my fiancee’s home country. After this, things have remained relatively calm beside the occasional date night. We saw “Little Women” for example. Unfortunately, my Savings Rate still isn’t above 50%.
While the month was calm, there is one thing that I’d like to mention. As I had a bacterial intestine infection end of January. I had to spend ~1500 EUR on medical bills in February.
I have sent the bills to my National Health Insurance but since the expenses were done outside of Europe it takes a lot longer to get a refund or decline for a refund. I need this response (which should be a decline) before I can get a refund of my expenses through my travel insurance.
My travel insurance confirmed that all expenses, including transaction costs, will get refunded within 7 days of receiving the decline and the original receipts. I expect this to happen in March, but since this a ratification I rather keep out the expenses than to screw up both February and March.
Income
My income for February now reflects the salary car I choose end of last year as it’s subtracted from my salary. As a result, my total income for February is 2488.25 EUR. The on-call premium I usually get once a month, got substracted from the salary car amount I was due in January.
Expenses
The major expense this month was, of course, the trip to my fiancees home country that ended the 9th. The remainder of the month was normal besides some an extra check and some pills for my stomach that is still sensitive.
Person
My person category was now relatively tame compared to last month. The only real expense was paying for the translator and pay the wedding at city hall. Together with a medical check-up and some prescription drugs, I spend 111.917 EUR on my person.
Food and Supplies
Groceries remained stable for February at 230.53 EUR. This is a 2% drop compared to January. Besides some snacks, I spend a total of 274.04 EUR.
Housing
This was nothing special again. All expenses combined puts housing at 339.11 EUR for the month.
Luxury
What really pushed me below 50% SR this month were the expenses made during the trip to my GF’s home-country. I count all the expenses I made during these two weeks as “holiday” expenses which falls under luxury. Since her home-country is relatively cheap to live the expenses I made in the second part of the holiday were low. I only spend 447.19 EUR; This includes economy comfort seats btw.
The second biggest luxury expense in February, is surprisingly, electronics. I purchased three electronic items (I got a discount on Office 365 Home through my employer):
With all these expenses combined, I spend 700.74 EUR.
All the expenses
Like February was, in terms of personal finances, calmer. Some big expenses to come are:
- Wedding bands
- Wedding reception
- (Maybe) an OLED tv
Anyhow, for this month, It all comes together for a cool 1506.88 EUR in expenses.
As I mentioned in my previous overview February was a bit more normal. I am almost back at 50% Savings Rate. The goal for the coming months is to get at least once 75%. Preferably in March of course. For this month I stranded on 981.87 EUR / 2488.75 EUR = 39.45%.
This was my second month of 2020 which cooled down quite a bit!
How was your second month of the year? Were you able to continue strong? Or did you have major costs like I had in January?
Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
Maybe not what you aimed at, still a very nice savings rate.
Hey Amber Tree, Thank you for your kind words. It’s definitely better than last month. I’ll try this month but unfortunately I realized yesterday that I might have some expenses for the wedding coming up.