I calculated I can live of about 50% of my monthly income without really having to not-do anything beside traveling, eating out and join personal courses. With all those fun things my saving rate goes down, of course. I am still trying to find a balance between those things. Without some kind of free period every now and then I'll go crazy, yet it IS crazy to spend all your money ON and IN those free periods leaving you with nothing but to work for the next one. For now, the focus is on killing my personal loan by the end of the year.
Even with an upcoming snowboard break (for which I adjusted my downpayment of this month to match next month), I will be able to pay whatever might be remaining with my December salary since we get our 'thirteenth month' as we call it here. (Some companies here give their people a yearly bonus at the end of the year in the form of a month extra salary. Heavily taxed, but it's extra non the less!).
The next big thing still remains next year. Since I've got no plans for changing jobs or moving or anything (since I'm well aware I'll only take myself with me wherever I go and there's plenty of insight to be done, which can be perfectly done in my current whereabouts) I'll be needing a different kind of perspective for this blog.
There are
1. Save as much as I can and try and reach a save haven of 10K by the end of 2017.
2. Invest in the stock market to try and match my interest on savings.
3. Pay of my student loan (but in relation with thing number two).
4. Travel.
It'll probably be the last one which could endanger my other goals. I didn't travel much in my life but am more and more curious in how life is around the globe. Instead of traveling I more or less think I might be the kind of guy who moves somewhere else and start over there. Yet this also refers to why I am planning to stay where I am for a while; I am willingly to have some more insight into myself here at first. So, without the money in form of a safe buffer or the purity in reason to move over to another country, I might as well go on a trip to somewhere far away. Miss Struggle has been a traveler for a lot of years now and she wants to go to South America, Canada, Alaska, see the Northern Light, New Zealand and who knows where else. Lucky me! I like the thought of all those places so I'm in for it. Maybe it should be Argentina or something for our first trip since traveling around there might be affordable. Maybe that's where we need to find balance; she is well on the way for financial independence while I am just starting out. I don't want to blow my saving capacity in the first year, yet I also don't want to regret not having seen the world in all it's beauty.
What might kick in here, are of course the costs of traveling itself. Yet since I've only got 4 weeks of leave I might be wanting to buy another two weeks of leave. That will make my monthly net income go down, which will influence my saving rate. I've taken this into account by accepting 10% of my net income to go into traveling which will leave my saving rate around 30% for the first year. Somewhere this feels like a wrong start of a 7-year to 100K plan so I'll have to see how this will work out.
As for paying of my student loan. I could do it all at once in December or January. But hey, where's the fun in that? It'll be roughly 700 euro's by the end of this year and I'm planning to stop doing extra payments in January (since it's a 0,01% interest!) and am planning to invest half of my savings in relatively safe index trackers. With just two stocks there I'm gaining more then the interest of a year with more or less 3K in the savings account so I am willing to try that thing out. The idea is to cover my student loan with the dividend payouts and a 3% withdrawal. I know, with this little in stocks I could be better buying more of them with those earnings, but I do want to enjoy seeing my SL go down with 'working money'. And maybe the market goes down and I will be crying by the end of next year with having nothing left to pay of my SL with besides savings.
That's where the saving 10K goal will come in. I am not sure how I am going to save 10K. For me, it's clear that even though there are certain risks, saving and buying a diversed portfolio or index fund are more or less equal to another, despite the fact that saving will be money guaranteed (and at this moment earning nearly no interest) and investing might also be money that will lose it's value in no time. Since I'm only interested in the long run and am just happily living below my means for most of this year I can't imagine why things would drastically change next year, besides I get to keep the money I am now monthly dumping into the great deep dark abyss called Personal Loan.
Anyway. A lot to think about and make real from January and on. The way it's looking now there won't be much traveling the first five months anyway so that might create a nice buffer in the first place. I am eager to see whether my freedom in life will feel any different without having the pressure of a loan making feel stuck to everything. Somewhere deep inside me I know that's all an illusion I created in my own mind, but hey, I am still here now and financially stuck with this thing anyway, I might just as well be enjoying being free of it?
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