My monthly Savings Rate report: March 2021
March turned out to be a good month for my Savings Rate. While on the expenses side I spend a lot on the home and ownership part and again on food, I also received a nice extra on the income side thanks to evening deployments for work. I ended up doing a bit of work between 1 am and 3 am.
The extra income I got from this was €271.37. And that is for just a couple of hours. It makes me all the more annoyed that all the work I did during the last quarter of 2020 was for free because I was too late with registering it. But it is what it is, can’t do anything about it now.
This page can contain affiliate partner links to products that I purchased this month.
Income
It was an awesome month for my income. I earned 3,683.31 EUR from my day job thanks to €271.37 from nightly work as mentioned earlier. On top of that, I received three weeks of On-callI’m not on-call.
The situation for my wife hasn’t changed yet. No job, so no income. At the moment, everything is covered by one salary and thus we receive the marriage quotient.
Dividends
I received my second batch of dividends for 2021 this month:
- 03/30/21 – USDV: €21.73
- 03/31/21 – NVDA: €2.05
Combining everything gives me €23.78 for March. I don’t expect any dividend income in April but like every year (well besides 2020), May should be a good one.
Expenses
Home management and ownership
Home management & ownership turned out higher than I originally foresaw due to the aftermath of the move.
Because we moved earlier and to a place where I don’t have to pay rent, I decided to cancel the delay of mortgage payment and start paying it off as of April. One downside to that earlier start is the “compensation” I have to pay the bank. €250 isn’t low, but because I start sooner, I still save about €700 in the long run.
Expenses to get the house in shape
Besides my address, I also had to move my internet of course. This was €59 and a complete waste of money. Ever since the move, my internet has been shit resulting in having to switch to Telenet anyway.
Other expenses linked to the move were getting gas because the kitchen furnace still works on separate gas tanks which cost €27. With the water coming from a well (which will change this Tuesday), I also bought a finer filter for our filtration system. A pack of 5 filters was €20.40.
Cleaning up the apartment, throwing away an old mattress and trash from my grandmother cost me €10.95 at the recycling center. Talking about trash, we also got a secondhand trash bag holder for €8.
Delayed bedframe for free (for now)
Surprisingly, we didn’t pay for the last part of our bed as I mentioned in my February overview. Due to constant fuck ups from SleepLife we had to wait three more weeks to put our bed together because the slatted bottoms were too large. Once that was done I didn’t wait again for them to come and put it all together, and instead, decided to do it myself. I presume they’ll contact me at one point to handle the last things but then I’ll be in the stronger position to demand a discount.
That isn’t to say we didn’t spend money on peripherals, in fact, we still ended up spending €321.71 on things like:
- Cleaning products: €15.24 at Colruyt for soap, 2 buckets, and birthday candles for my wife’s birthday cake.
- Bol.com vouchers: €95, in March for turtle wax car shampoo and a 28 cm lid.
- Table cover: €12.58 at Hubo.
- Easter decoration: €39.27 at Colruyt
- Water holders for radiators and plastic boxes: €23.67 at Action.
- Extra bed sheets and mattress cover and a 5L pot: €135.95 at IKEA.
Finally, I paid interest, only, for the last time (110.81 EUR). As of April, I start paying down my mortgage in Full.
With so much going on, it’s not strange to spend €807.87.
Food and supplies
Next up are the groceries done in March. We ended up spending a lot more on groceries than expected, again. Though 541.38 EUR for 2 is again a bit better than last month but still relatively high.
I plan on making an excel comparing Lidl and Colruyt to see what costs most where to get an explanation for the increased food bill.
“Eating out” was €23.60 at Pizza Hut for my wife’s birthday and €34.80 on Uber Eats as part of our once per month “eating out” date. Lastly, I spend €15.48 on some quick bits while driving and going places.
The total food bill for March was €615.26.
Luxury
In March I spend a surprising amount of money on gifts (€95.09). €20 was for the birth of a colleague’s daughter, and 75.09 was for my wife’s birthday. Next to that, I also renewed my Google One subscription and paid €11.02 in Patreon support bringing the total for Luxury to €126.10.
Person
Medical bills (97.70 EUR) for the pregnancy, a universal 25 to 28cm lid (€20.56), and Parking (€8.85) were the expenses in this category. We spend 127.13 EUR in total.
Other expenses
The rest of my expenses were limited which of course explains the higher Savings Rate for March. Heck for kids stuff we got our cash back resulting in a positive amount for that category :)!
A quick summary:
- Banking – 59.16 EUR:
- Health insurance: 64.46 EUR
- DVV Family insurance: 7.48 EUR
- Cashback: +12.78 EUR
- Yearly Beobank Visa fee: 5 EUR
- Kids – +30 EUR:
- Cashback from Chicco for the Next2Me Air.
All the expenses
The bottom line
Thanks to limited spending I ‘only’ spend €1,705.52. this leaves me with €1977.79 which gives me a Savings Rate of €1,977.79/€3,683.31 = 53.70%.
That’s really amazing if I say so myself. Especially with a baby on the way and the extra expenses that come with it. I don’t expect big expenses as a result of the pregnancy either as, all expenses two months before, and 3 months after the delivery are covered by my employer’s health insurance. This will really save me a ton in extras that aren’t covered by my national health insurance.
This was my March overview. My Belgian friend Roadtrip to FIRE shared (amongst others) where why he invested in Bitcoin, and his favorite IPOs of 2021.
JoneyTalks Had some amazing Podcasts in March as well, be sure to check them out!
Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
Good job on managing to save again, and omg what a great income for this month!
I hope you figure out where the added costs for food are going, from my side I am still blaming it on inflation 😉
Thanks! I actually went to Lidl today and checked my most recent Colruyt bill to compare a bit. I was able to get most items so I’m going to post a comparison soon 🙂
I really like your posts and the detailed saving reports. Is it possible to share the excel template file ? It would be very useful for me.
A bit late but I actually don’t use Excel. I use YNAB.