Its been a while since I could show such nice figures for my savings Rate. While I must say my Expenses did not do particularly well, I got a nice amount back from the tax-man that gave me a great boost on the income side.

Expenses

Lets go over the different expenses for this month and compare with last month

The highlights

• Housing: my housing costs is the biggest one this month at 1249 EUR. This is because I had my quarterly syndic payment this month. Good news though. Its a new year, and with one of our loans almost paid off the quarterly syndic costs dropped from 670 EUR/Q to 520. A nice drop of 20%! It will drop more next year, and even more the year after.
• Groceries at 246 EUR: If the groceries are my second highest cost then it must have been a pretty frugal month. Although I know people are doing better then me, it is much lower then it used to be. As you read in previous blogs I am shopping in the Aldi, and while it has lowered my grocery bill by a lot, I want to see if there is options to shop even cheaper, without cutting back on health of course!
• Hobby’s 150 EUR: while I usually spend about 400 EUR on hobbys, this time it dropped. the 150 EUR was because of: 1)Report costs to my kite, 2)purchased a second hand harnass to kite. I really believe in second hand purchases when it comes to amateur sport gear. Yes you will never have that extra edge to be the top, but you are doing it for fun afterall and I am having a great time with my second hand gear. Remember I purchased a second hand full carbon racebike in October for 250 EUR? I tested it out and where I used to be at the back of the pack, now I spend a large portion pulling the pack and taking the wind. So as long as you look hard enough you can do great bargains! I also saved on my monthly tennis/gym subscription which is together about 120 EUR per month. Although I would prefer the gyms to reopen of course. Maybe in January..
• Shopping 146 EUR: mainly because I had to buy a bike – carrier for my new car. It costed me 129 EUR and can carry 2 bikes. I purchase most sportgear usually at Decathlon, but they didn’t had what I needed for a good price, so I got this one at bol.com. I absolutely love the quality.
• Business expenses 144 EUR: I purchased a new domain for my Website (changed from euromoney to roadtriptofire), and it was time for my monthly renewal. I have a Premium account at wordpress that costs about 100 EUR per month.
• Smaller expenses: restaurants 23 EUR (I got 15 EUR coupon from Uber eats, so went ahead and ordered 2 meals, and I got another coupon for a free bickyburger so went to get some fries), also gifts (67 EUR) because of Christmas coming up is worth a mention

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Expenses overview for 2020

Total Expenses for November = 2275 EUR

2020 average = 2146 EUR (+12) / month

Income

My income rose to about 4500 EUR this month, mainly because I got about 2000 EUR taxes back. Why so much taxes back: startup investments, pension savings and a loan on my house are the main reasons to get taxes back.

Saving Rate

So thanks to this boost on income I was able to report 51.44% saving rate this month!

2019 saving rate: 45.8%

2020 average (so far): 40.43%

What’s next

• I don’t really expect any high costs in December to be honest. Of course its gift month, so I need to find Christmas gifts for my family. I usually budget at about 30 EUR per gift, which is normal in my family. For birthdays 50 EUR is expected..
• Im looking forward to use all this data to put me some realistic budgeting goals for 2020!

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