Goals are for suckers, so I set myself a new one

As always I'm philosophin' about money, work, financial freedom, burn out, relationships, the whole sjabang. The thing is, since I lack motivation and discipline and most of the other succes factors as I've read lately and also, writing and reading aren't good for your future either (so what the heck are you doing here anyway?) I noticed I'm the one nagging for change but seem to be refusing to actually do anything. Because hey, impossible goals and to lazy/unmotivated/undisciplined to start working on them. I'm gonna be waiting until it feels right.

Q2 recap

Okido, another quarter gone, another recap to be made. Even though I've been talking about an insane savings rate, you could have also been reading my moving story which turned out pretty costly yet still worth it.

All things added up my real savings rate isn't up-and-running so far. And to undisclose another thing, I actually calculated my SR a bit wrong (since I was calculating it as a percentage of my total expenditure and not of my total income). Anyway. I updated my spreadsheet (also in my Q1 recap) and now it's telling no more lies (actually, my SR comes out a bit better with the correct formula). So here are the numbers for Q2!

Savings rate ramp up!

With my monthly income somewhere around 2.5K and my fixed charges (rent, utilities, insurance) being less than 600 euro’s monthly my savings rate is extraordinary since the beginning of this month. Including some money for groceries, fuel and even a fun thing here and there I’m up and running 60%. Whooha!


Did I mention I didn’t even include my vacation allowance and end-year bonus within this net income? So truly, vacations and other stuff aren’t even influencing my SR here.

Pretty neat, but the challenge for now truly is not spending more. As you’ve read, my spending while moving was quite a lot. Of course this made my living place cozy and neat, but for now I’ll have to stay put for at least a year before even breaking even here.

Movement, again

Mindblowing busy as my mind can be, I’ve been constantly staring at my spreadsheet and wondering how I could possibly save more. Me moving to another city and downscaling was one of the biggest leaps I could have made. In hindsight, that was a life changing moment last year but ever since, only so much spending could be allocated in a different way. As always, this is an ‘spend less and/or earn more’ equation. With living somewhere around my budgeted amount (and feeling this is as barebones as I am willing to go at this moment) there wasn’t really that much to scrape off on the spending side.

Q1 recap

Strugglers World, Strugglers World, Recap Time, Excellent!!

70 and a half

The official retirement age keeps rising here in the Netherlands. I am not quite sure how this is arranged in the rest of the world (I do know some people will never be able to retire while others are there when they're just over fifty years old) but at this moment, my pension date would be 70 years and 6 months if I simply rely on working, spending all my dough every month and pay the (ever rising) pension fee from my income. With me being thirty four that means I'm halfway between birth and pension. The trouble with these kind of calculations is that you can calculate that, but you can't calculate where you are between birth and death.

2017 Spending forecast

A weather forecast can't be looking far more than a couple of days into the future and there's no way we can influence weather (okay, there are some conspiracy theories on this subject but that's way beyond my point here, or at least way off topic).

On my spending (and maybe even on my future income) I've got major influence. So a spending forecast can be done for a whole year.

Spending Recap 2016

As promised, a spending recap. It will come as no surprise that most of my whatever money I could get a grip on was dumped in killing my debt. So, as a result, that portion is, well... fairly big.

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.

The Last Dive In The Abyss

It's prepared. I've made the final call to the nice people of Freo who told me what this months' interest would be and which amount of money I had to throw in the deep dark abyss of personal debt to make it leave my life forever and always.

Saving myself

With self-leadership on one side and a little bit of the flu on the other side I'm right in the middle of them here on my couch.

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.

Mileage

Recently I had to fill up my gastank for the second time since I had my 'new' car. 

Couldn't stop myself

I just couldn't stop myself updating the countdown timer and debt kill plan. With my recent calculation I could be debt free with maxing it out untill the end of this year. It will take up near all my savings, but I think every penny is worth getting rid of my debt.
Just watching the countdown timer show a number I can relate to was such a relief!

I know I've been kind of obsessed with it lately, buy I just couldn't take it anymore. (I guess only miss Struggler knew how bad it was, and my best friend since I kinda went underground in my appartement calculating and counting...)

The Big Car Hussle

It's going to happen. A 1m89cm guy is going to be driving around in a Dihatsu Cuore soon.
I might have to cut a hole in the roof but hey, it's summer anyway.

Little more cash, little less spending

I am lucky for being employed at a stable employer. Of course, no more need for employment is one of my long term goals (starting with no longer being financial dependent on work but being able to pick the jobs I like for how long I like them), but untill that day comes I can't really complain. If I do my job I'm supposed to do I get a small raise every year, and with our company having a new collective work agreement everyone will get 3,2% more from this day on and another 1% next year february.

This leaves me with the possibility to pay off more of my debt. I am thinking about raising the step up to 600 a month, where this was 500 a month. I think this will hardly be a difference in my current budget / spending, but over the next 18 months I still have to go that will mean I'm done about 3 months earlier.

Be careful what you wish for

Remember my last post, stating "this car will never ever fail on me"? Well. It did.
Not some major issue that got fixed for around 500 euro's. Still hurts, but my emergency fund had no problem fixing that.

Yet ever since I calculated my possible savings by changing cars of quit driving a car completely this has been on my mind. Not like a light breeze but like one hell of a big hammer hitting me in the head every time I blinked my eyes.

By simply switching cars I can save >1K yearly. That means 50K over the next 50 years. That seriously adds up. Even if this new vehicle gives up on me every 5 years that would still be profitable. And as I stated above... even a Volvo can break down.

Kill 'em!

I am on the move. As you can see in the debt-O-meter and the graph at the right I nailed my 2K down payment a month ahead. Saves me 10 bucks in the end lowering interest payments. I must admit, being down for a couple of weeks because of the confronting financial review and the clouds above my head until the end of next year seems to have moved on into seeing the beauty of recognition of my situation in the current world. Where they dark clouds, I can now see how they will slowly (truth, very slowly) begin to dissolve into a beautiful debt free blue sky.

Life costs per second

With my current investigtions and spreadsheet it occured to me I could quite easily calculate what my life costs me per second nowadays. Turns out, my current yearly budget (in which I am trying to get out of debt and without saving really anything) my life right now costs me 0,107 cent every second. Even though that sounds like hardly anything, this adds up to 6 cents a minute; 3,86 an hour (still seems like nothing) yet this ups to an mindblowing 92,66 per day!

With me glued to my screen for the past tho days reading a very interesting blog of a man capable of living of only around 500 a month, paid through rents he gets paid from property he bought after a couple of years of hard labour and frugal living while only somehere in his mid twenties this makes me very, very aware of the fact that I, at 33 right now and still only paying of a debt and hardly saving, am ages behind.

First big downpayment! (And it hurts...)

So. This week, my tax reduction came in. And, as I promised myself, I would use this and a partion of my vacation fee, to make an extra downpayment next month. But, since I already have the money to do so, I made the transaction today. In the end, this will save me a little more interest and every bit helps! 

This was the first time I got a litte "extra cash" which I immediately transferred into the bottomless pithole called "debt" and I must say, it feels strange. Yes, I do feel the joy of reducing my debt by a total of 2K this month. But on the other hand, it also feels uncomfortable because normally this kind of extra cash would give me a little more breathing space in my savings account and could make me do some fun things.

Fun things. That's interesting because when I think of it, last years where years where I didn't go on a long summer holiday or bought a new car (or something like that). So what DID I do with my money back then?

Damn those loans

As you could all see in my monthly expenses, I also have a student loan. I didn't pay that much attention to it since it's a fraction of my long term loan and interest is fairly low.

Yet, it still is a form of debt and I really would love to get rid of that one, too by the end of next year.

Luckily for me, there is a possibility to do so! This week, we heard there was going to be a raise. It's a fair 3% and that would leave me with enough breathing space to create an 'emergency fund' and double up my student loan down-payments.

Here are some figures...