My monthly Savings Rate report: May 2020
This page can contain affiliate partner links to products that I purchased this month.
As eluded to last month, May was a life-changing month. I even received a little surprise windfall at the end thanks to my grandmother’s inheritance. With all of the preparations done in April, May was relatively calm in terms of expenses. This further improved my Savings Rate and pushed it to an all-time high.
Income
May’s income has three sources this month, with one far outweighing the other:
- My grandmother’s inheritance at 27,913.49 EUR (of which roughly 600 EUR goes to taxes).
- My salary at 3,246.44 EUR
- Of which about 700 EUR is a marriage bonus.
This gives me a total income of 31,159.93 EUR for May. Obviously a one-time thing but it’s not hard to see how a +90% Savings Rate is achieved.
P.S.: I also received some dividends:
- Home Invest Belgium (HOMI): 8.80 EUR
- Sofina (SOF): 14.50 EUR
But as long as I use them for investing, I don’t count them as monthly income. Interestingly enough, this is a lot lower than May last year. Probably because of COVID but I need to check why else because not all companies are as impacted by the pandemic.
Expenses
Food and Supplies
This became my biggest expense for May because I had to get stock up on quite a few things and rectify some smaller expenses from the last months. We spend a solid 499.38 EUR on smaller snacks and drinks.
On top of that, the groceries were 360.23 EUR and the takeaway restaurant expense for our wedding was 144.93 EUR. Adding it all up gives us 1,103.04 EUR for food and supplies.
Home management and ownership
After my food expenses, everything else was normal. Rent and interest payments were thus the largest gluttons. Like always rent was 322.50 EUR, interest payment 54.90 EUR.
After that, I spend 145.76 EUR on peripherals such as a Tefal contact grill, a small frying pan, a turban cake shape, and other smaller stuff that we could use.
The best thing is, we got most of this household stuff at a 50% discount because Blokker changed the owner and will become mega world.
With the three expenses combined, I spend 523.15 EUR in this category.
Luxury
An interesting unforeseen expense this month was in electronics. My Logitech G500 mouse broke down after 8 years of service. At first, I tried to fix it myself using a tutorial online but it proved to be very cumbersome and I ended up completely breaking it. I could have fixed it if I had a soldering iron for electronics and the right components. Purchasing that would be overkill, so I decided to lay my loyal rodent to rest and get a new companion. My new mouse is a Logi G502 Lightspeed and my first wireless gaming mouse. It’s also the first more expensive “want” I bought in a while.
Besides the new gear, there wasn’t anything special. I had my subscriptions at 12.25 EUR. Oh, I did pay for my yearly travel insurance (56.10 EUR). Though, I was more than happy to pay for it as it has given me back a whole lot more than it cost me.
The total luxury expenses were 181.24 EUR.
All the expenses
As planned, May didn’t have any exceptional expenses. Well, nothing compared to the last month. I can even be bold and say it’s the first month in over half a year where nothing happened expense-wise (well besides corona obviously). My other expenses were fairly basic and it all together brings me to a firm 2,021.43 EUR in expenses.
New savings account(s)
So what will I do with the remaining +90% in cash? Well, after talking about how I would budget the windfall I received, I opened two savings accounts:
- 10,000 EUR went into MeDirect Fidelity Saving:
- Fidelity: 0.35%
- Interest: 0.05%
- 5,000 EUR in MeDirect Monthly Max:
- Fidelity: 0.50%
- Interest: 0.05%
It’s a bit different than what I wrote originally, but since the limit of the max account is 5,000 EUR I figured I could go for that. In the end, it boils down to putting 15,000 EUR in savings.
This was my May. Obviously an extreme difference on the income side to what I received till now. When it comes to income and expenses, it’s always fun to look over the fence at my neighbors. So be sure to check out fellow Belgians Ambertreeleaves and Euromoney. Their months were interesting as well. Euromoney had some extra housing expenses but still managed to go above 70% SR! AmberTreeleaves sees the benefit of staying at home.
Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
Shopping with a 50pct discount is a nice thing to do. I might go and take a look at Blokker here in the city as well as I could use some coocking stuff.
Hey Amber Tree,
Thank you for replying.
Definitely! I’m not sure how much they will still have in your city since here everything is pretty much gone. But it doesn’t hurt to have a look, you never know!
Greetings
Action is a great shop too for random stuff you may not find in the local grocery store.
Cleaning, decoration, self care products are ridiculously cheap there compared to a carrefour/delhaize.
Unrelated topic but might be of interest of you since I guess you are a gamer: My computer is +7years old and for gaming it’s not the best anymore. Since I have a good internet connection I’m very interested in https://shadow.tech/befr/ that comes out in august. instead of buying a +500€ desktop (minimal gaming desktop) this could be a good alternative for 15€/month. The reviews of the users are quiet positive.
Hey Chrome,
Thanks for your comment.
True, we get quite a few things from action as well. Coconut oil for one. But also microwave popcorn, sometimes some gummies, or binders and other office supplies. You really can find a lot of cheap basic stuff there.
I’m indeed a gamer so thanks for the suggestion :). I know of the development of gaming through streaming. Hadn’t really looked into it though.