My monthly Savings Rate report: May 2022
With a lot of things going on at the same time these pas few months, I haven’t had the time to write anything. As a result, this Savings Rate report follows two months after its month ends. While May seems already a distant memory, it’s a month wherein many things started to unfold. Like always, I will start with this month’s income and then get into my expenses while at the same time detailing the reasons for the purchase.
This month’s income streams are:
- Salary (with on-call)
- Child allowance
- My wife’s share of the expenses
This page can contain affiliate partner links to products that I purchased this month.
May Income — €3,892.88
Salary
My salary was somewhat normal in May. I didn’t receive anything special besides the typical three-weekly on-call bonus.
With that bit of extra together with the standard child allowance and my wife’s addition, my net salary for May was €3,892.88.
Child allowance
Next up, child allowance: €169.79.
Per child, you receive government support through what’s called ‘kindergeld’ or child allowance.
They set this per child instead of going up for each child, like in the past.
It can increase depending on specific criteria, such as single-parent or special needs.
Unlike last month my wife transferred her part of the shared expenses increasing my “income” by a couple of hundred euros. She also “refunded” some expenses but I kept those in their respective categories as income.
Curve Card - Your all-in-one card
Curve connects all your debit and credit cards and acts as the meeting point for all your payment accounts, so you never have to switch banks.
Not included: Dividends
I didn’t receive any dividends in April.
May Expenses — €3,255.19
I made the capitalist gods happy this time by spending money on lots of stuff.
Luxury — 2,095.47
As mentioned last month, we left for an exciting trip at the end of April till early May to celebrate -amongst other things- our daughter’s baptism. I spend some money on food, restaurants, transportation, and gifts.
The main reason for the high cost is the hotel I paid for everyone (which I got back in advance). We stayed at a lovely resort at an equally lovely price of roughly €300/night. Other expenses during our trip are also included, such as gas for the rental car, some snacks while on the road, and sushi for our last dinner.
Other than that, there were the usual subscription costs:
- Amex: €30
- Disney+: €8.99
- Netflix: €11.18
- Spotify: €9.99
- YNAB: €85.49
In the meantime, I decided to ditch Disney+ and Spotify.
Food & supplies — €841.47
As tradition would have it, food and groceries are one of the most expensive categories in May. The huge groceries bill (669.80) mainly comes from extra purchases (€190.63) we made at the end of our trip to my wife’s home country which we could take home with us.
We also ate out twice after returning from our trip, giving us a restaurant bill of €87.80.
Once we got back into the daily grind, we ended up buying sandwiches from our local Delhaize almost every lunch, which added up to a hefty €79.67.
Kids — +€492.40
The main cost last month, our daughter’s baptism, was covered for 1000 eur by my parents, which is now visible as the kids’ category is in the plus this month.
Personal home — €479.50
For the first time in a while, we got a big ticket item for the house: a gas stove (€300). My grandmother’s stove was technically still working, but the email pan rosters were almost disintegrated, and the oven was the gas type which is notoriously hard to use. Instead of paying 300 euros for new email rosters of a different brand, we opted for the more logical alternative, a nearly-new secondhand gas stove by Siemens.
Other hardware we bought was new cutlery from Zwilling, some soap, and a new scale on Amazon.
Besides the hardware, I also paid €12.19 for the internet.
Investments Real estate — €328.57
Since we will start renovating my grandmother’s, sorry, our house, I decided to move the interest payments of the apartment into this category where it belongs. For this month that is also the only cost.
Transportation — €65.85
My main expense in transport is the once-per-week commute to the office (€35.40). Since it’s so infrequent, I don’t have a subscription anymore, but that does mean I have to pay for it first and then ask for a refund. It’s this refund that I haven’t done yet, hence why it’s an expense this month.
The remainder (€30.45) is a lot of parking.
Person — +€36.21
Not much going on here. I had to pay my yearly ‘zorgkas’ of €54, bought some cough syrup for my wife, and she paid back some expenses from the previous month.
Remaining categories
- Banking and insurance – €11.31:
- Health insurance – €43.20: health insurance by the employer.
- Cashback – €5.22: Cashback from my credit card
- City and government – €9.94
- Transaction tax of my wife
All the expenses
The bottom line for April 2022
There you have it. May is finally written out on my blog. I do apologize for not writing much anymore. It has become rather difficult to keep a fixed schedule ever since the arrival of my daughter now more than a year ago. Things are rapidly changing and I hope to be back on a better schedule once our little family finds its rhythm.
Anyhow, to summarize May. An income of €3,892.88 and expenses of €3,173.27 provided me with a Savings Rate of €3,892.88/€3,173.27 = 18.50%.
Hey, just checked your 2020 post on how to read a Belgian payslip and noticed that you were earning 2800 netto. What happened meanwhile that you’ve had a 1k netto increase?
Good question. It actually makes me wonder if I shouldn’t share my last payslip before I went independent.
As for your question, normally it’s not a net increase of 1K; my max should be around €3500. What happened was that I:
And specifically for this month, I also had an actual call to intervene during the weekend and at night adding an extra hundred euros.
My wife also paid back some things I bought for her.
You only see income this month because otherwise it would be hard to fit everything in one image in a simple overview. In the income section you can read these details.