My monthly Savings Rate report: February 2022

February, the shortest month of the year, is already well behind us. The invasion of Russia into Ukraine this month is one of the history books. The only question is, how? Will reports say Russia won or, who knows, Ukraine?! And how will all of this impact the world, both humanitarian and economic? Against the backdrop of this hectic tragedy, I share my monthly expenses.

Let’s try to start with the positive. This month’s income streams are:

• Salary
• Child allowance
• My wife’s share of the expenses (a bit extra!)
• Crypto.com

Home management and ownership — €849.50

Another month, another down-payment, and interest payment for the apartment. €825.33 in principal and €312.56 in interest. But like always, I don’t subtract the principal payment from my savings rate.

This month’s largest expense besides the mortgage was, without a doubt, heating. My grandmother’s house still uses heating oil leaving us to order a certain amount of fuel and pay right then and there.

Since we will either do an upgrade of the heating if we stay or we just won’t be here anymore, ordering a lot served no purpose. We ended up getting 1000 l at a total cost of €857.80, which was divided in two.

Other expenses in this category included:

• A rail bar for our daughter so she can learn to stand up on her own (€15.99).
• Some furniture (€24.88)
• Small stuff (€54.08)

Food & supplies — €460.36

I was in genuine shock to see this category so high. But if you spend 114.88 on lunches for yourself and your partner, I guess it was to be expected. Especially the sandwiches we get at our local Delhaize add up.

Groceries were more reasonable (€296.98) although I don’t include what we pay with meal vouchers since we can only use them for food anyway. That said, we also had friends over for the first time in half a year, which makes this month reasonable.

The ‘Restaurants’ category (€48.50) expense is our monthly “date night” where we order takeout instead of cooking.

Kids — €223.79

For our daughter, we bought some new secondhand clothes (€225.04) as she keeps outgrowing them at a breakneck pace. Included in this month’s clothes are two dresses for her baptism that we will do in my wife’s home country.
Other than that, there isn’t much else. We bought some more wet wipes (€12.75), got refunded by the NHS for a doctor visit last month (€12.00), and got some money (€12.00) for a Philips bottle sterilizer we literally never used.

With an income providing €3,829.44 and high expenses, €1,959.77, my remaining net income in February was just below 50%:  €3829.44/€1,959.77 = 48.80%.

Honestly, the only reason it’s this high is that my wife sends her share of the expenses including the heating and of course the transfer of some of my crypto gains.