Transfer

Happy New Year!

I hope you've all enjoyed whatever you did to celebrate the transfer from one year to another, and may this be a good one for all of us!

With the debt-O-meter down to I-Owe-No-One-What-So-Ever, it's time to rethink the whole concept. I think of transforming the whole thing to a save-O-meter. Sounds logical and since it's my blog, I get to do what I want. I am thinking of a number to gain for this year and it's yours to see if I make it by the end of the year. How's 10K working for you? I sure as hell hope I get there.

Somehow the whole pay-of-my-debt really kicked in by the end of December. I checked my account balance and realized each and every penny in there was mine. WIth my rent already payed up front and only a couple of things to be paid for this month like insurance, groceries and fuel before I already will receive my January pay check, I was amazed with how much there would be left.

And all along the road something must have changed deep inside me, because for the first time in my life I felt like holding on to the money and work out a plan with it could bring me freedom in the future, where this used to be a more or less craving-like feeling towards 'money... sweet money... let's spend you on stuff that will make me feel happy!'.

Darned, this feels like a conversion!

One thing I'm not so concerned of yet, but must be regarded as a possible danger for me, is my current spending on clothing. The thing is, I've barely spent any money on clothing the last few years. This means most of my shoes were pretty worn (and of the cheap kind which can't be fixed), my shirts were a little to boyish whilst I consider myself on the way of being a big boy man now. I bought two quality shirts last year for work (and wore them practically e-ve-ry week) and they still last*. So for the sake of variety and changing more and more in the person I think I might really be, I am slowly starting to transfer my current wardrobe to the second-hand-store / red cross and am slowly beginning to create a fairly good everything-combines wardrobe. I must say my SO steps in here since she really knows what she's doing here. Without her, I'd be lost. No kidding here. Really lost. I don't know plants and I don't know how to select good combinations of clothes. It's a missing chip in my systems or something. Luckily my youngest brother is a gardener. And the second one a truck driver. Although I've got no clue what that's got to do with any of this.

Back to the spending risk here. I managed to spend an astonishing € 549,99 on clothes. This amount of spending got me a pair of very decent leather shoes, some sweaters and a shirt (all perfectly combine-able with each other and my remaining wardrobe, thank you love) and two decent coats. One Parka for everyday-whatever and a really nice wool business coat (which came from € 200 down to € 130) for looking decent at work. Given the fact that I can't remember exactly when I bought my last two coats but this must have been at least five or six years (and maybe longer) ago I believe this was money well spent. This even made me get rid of some of the clothes that where taking up closet space for a long time now without ever being used for nearly two years now.

I really need to get some discipline into my system around this issue. It's not like going into the city center makes me spend like a whacko or anything, yet I tend to have these re-occurring moments of spending (on long lasting quality items) every now and then. And every time they occur, I manage to talk myself into the 'it's okay, you can go a little over budget here, you're doing fine' side of things. Yet with this year ending, that got me 10% over budget. A small overdue on a even so small budget (€ 1.500), but nevertheless, it's a 10% failure. Make some of those the year around and there goes the saving rate...

Wasn't this the feeling I just got rid of?

With my budget for next year being only € 1.000 I must carefully seek out wether or not to buy that quality pants, shirts, socks, under-whatsoever...

That being said, next thing up will be a 2016 recap and a 2017 forecast so it's clear on where I am and where I want to go. This followed up by monthly recaps might be a nice promise to myself to get some more useful (or was it fun?) blogging time this year.

Anyone else got some juicy details on their spending?

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*Fun fact with the clothing by the way is that my underwear (carefully selected somewhere around the end of 2013/beginning of 2014) starts to literally fall apart. No kidding here, either. With eight proper shorts washing them once a week that means they've more or less given up on me after what seems 150 washing cycles. Without any statistics on this subject, I could use some help with selecting proper replacement. Going without undies is a bit too frugal for me. For now.