Gerald's Journal

[Gerald]

I'll start with numbers.

May:
Income: 2.458€

Spendings: 1.259€
Food: 337€; 240€ home food, 97€ eating out
Living: 428€; 388€ rent(plus electricity, internet, household insurance), 40€ 4 used chairs for the dining room
Hygiene: 11€
Clothing: /
Transportation: 95€; 61€ gas, 34€ share in car
Mobile phone: (8€); in brackets because I top up my mobile with 15€, so some months there is a payment, some months not. Cost is 8€/month
Recreation: 107€; 28€ Camping, 39€ ticket of ten for the swimming pool, 40€ registration for a business run
Education: 30€; books
Insurance: 28€; dental insurance
Going out: 32€; mostly beer
Misc: 192€; 5€ allen wrench, 54€ bike chain, break pads and handles (I would have gotten that for half the price if purchased online), 2€ parking, 3€ postage, 2€ lottery ticket, 54€ deposit for weekend trip, 69€ birthday present for GF, 3€ locker at train station

Savings: 1.199€

SR: 48,8%


Explanations:

Food: with "home food" i mean the food I buy at the supermarket to prepare at home. Sad thing is, my GF spends about the same which roughly makes 700€ per month for both of us. She works at the biggest supermarket chain in Austria and almost solely wants to get our errands there and not from discount supermarkets. We mostly buy organic. She also doesn't want to make weekly dinner plans, because "what if I fancy something else that night?". Cooking in bulk isn't good either, eating the same dish two days in a row doesn't satisfy her tastes. And she always says: "have you heard about restaurant xy, I'd like to go there sometime". I haven't found out a way to convince her that 700€ is way to much for two people/month. On the other hand we grow some vegetables and herbs on the balcony. And we ferment many vegetables such as Sauerkraut (you didn't see that coming ), pickles, asparagus, radishes, beetroot,...

Living: we share a flat with 54m^2, ~580 square foot, which is as cheap as it gets in Salzburg. 727€ in total. We contribute proportionally as I earn more than her. Same with the car share.

Hygiene: things like tooth brushes, shampoo, skin cream,...

Clothing: yeah...

Transportation: we share a car, which I rarely use. She uses it to get to work, which is useless, because it is a 15 minute ride by bus/bike. Laziness it is. I commute by bus (365€ yearly ticket), by bike (8 minutes door to door) or by foot (20 minutes). I own an old VW campervan, which I travelled Europe for 2.5 years with. That costs 450€ in taxes and 350€ insurance per year (german registration). We use it on weekends for mountain trips and for holidays.

Mobile: as cheap as it gets. 2GB data volume and telephone flat.

Recreation: doing much endurance sports, these are mostly costs I don't want to cut back

Education: as I'm constantly eager to learn things, I buy books. But only used ones.

Insurance: this complementary insurance covers services at the dentist's which aren't covered by medicare. Dental fillings made of ceramics or plastics for instance. I don't want to have amalgam in my mouth.

Going out: that's not many beers at a price of 4.5 - 5€ per pint.

Misc: all the other stuff


Net worth: 10.000€
Banking account: 7.600€
Online Broker: 500€
Cash: 2.000€
Gold: 2.800€
Silver: 1.000€

Student loan: 3000€

Explanations:

Banking account: Most of the money is still on the bank account as I just recently made myself familiar with other forms of saving money than a savings account.

Brokerage account: I started off with 500€ to get to know the account's operation itself and the principles of investing. 75% went into an ETF that represents the S&P500, 25% into european government bonds.

Cash: I keep that for emergencies

Gold and silver: some coins my grandmother gave to me and my siblings. Not sure whether I can count that in the way I did. I looked up the value of a Kruger Rand for example.

Student loan: that's student loan which I have to pay back to the government. It's called BAföG. Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz. Haha


Gross income: 54.800€

Net income: 35.600€

In Austria one gets 14 salary payments per year. 12 are taxed the normal way, on the other two (holiday and christmas allowance) there is very little income tax.


What else there is to say? I dont' have a specific age where I'd like to be FI. 45 would be awesome. I'm still struggling to get my expenses down, but in the long run I should be living happily in a range from 12.000-15.000€ per year. My GF is not really in with the concept of FIRE because she wants to live now and not later. Going car free is not an option at all for her (I read "How to live well without owning a car" - was a complete waste of time.). I suggested to live in my campervan during summer - she was about to call the sanatorium. I just realised that during my travels I spent about 7.000-9.000€ per year. No exact numbers as I didn't do the accounting. I spent the winters in ski resorts in Austria, working in sales and had the time off during summer. Pretty much Jacob level I'd say
Since September 2018 I'm back to business in earning money on a regular base as a project engineer. My salary is in the medium range for what I do, how old I am and my educational background (Master's degree). I'm getting a projectmanagement certificate next year (PMP of PMI), this year's educational budget was cut down due to cost savings. Nevertheless, I'm doing a leadership programme right now. That will boost my income to about 70.000€ in the not so distant future (~3-5 years).
I'd like to pick up a side hustle, but I don't know how to approach this. I have many technical skills, but nothing I'd say I can make money out of it. I say "but" too often. I'd enjoy to do freelancing in the engineering field of my main profession, but (there we go again) I have absolutely no clue how to approach this. I have no network. I don't even know how to network. I'm an introvert and have a hardtime to get to know people. Especially if I want something from them.


Any comments on my spendings, and my work situation are appreciated.

Gerald



P.s.: I was doing an exchange semester in Edinburgh in 2009. One thing I noticed back then and now again: As I'm writing so much in English, I suddenly can't recall the german words anymore I want to write. Pretty odd, because I don't know the english ones either
P.p.s.: that's the first time I register to a forum where I can use my real name. And not something like SuperBavarian3000

[Stahlmann]

how much of such salary is thanks to specific conditions like specific uni graduation, union/trade membership or connections/whatever?

inb4 free movement of high skilled workers in globalized world. I can only say this -> .

[Gerald]

I don’t have any comments on your spending because you already seems too conscious of everything. I had a similar situation with my wife regarding savings and eating out and unfortunately I didn’t find a good solution either. But I’ll be following you closely to see how you deal with it, out of curiosity. My marriage ended 4 years ago, for reasons unrelated to finances, so I never got to arrive at a good solution on how to deal with these kinds of differences.

Thanks for the comment.
I've come up with two possible strategies:
- we talked about mobile contracts, bank accounts and credit cards, all of which she can easily save about 250€/year without doing more than change providers. Maybe she acquires a taste for more savings.
- with our current food spendings of 700€/month I try to set a budget of e.g. 600€. That money we withdraw from the bank and everytime we go shopping we take the cash and use it. Hopefully it pains her enough to see the money slipping through her fingers, to get her on the way.

Let's see how it works.

[Gerald]

how much of such salary is thanks to specific conditions like specific uni graduation, union/trade membership or connections/whatever?

That salary is a product of my university degree, my previous work experience (3.5 Years in the same field) and probably the union membership (metal collective). Someone with the same education but more experience could have gotten around 60.000€ i guess. But I didn't want to set the price tag too high, because I wasn't working in that field for 2.5 years before I got that job.

inb4 free movement of high skilled workers in globalized world. I can only say this -> .

Sorry, I don't get that. If it is important, you need to specify

[singvestor]

I enjoyed reading the humorous parts, like the gf threatening to call the sanatorium. Fast 50% Sparrate ist auch super!

[Nomad]

You are doing a good job of tracking and you've get a decent savings rate so far.
The grocery shopping bill looks a bit high so you may have to come up with a way of reducing that.
Maybe offer to do the shopping, or do a taste test - cheap/expensive.
With regards to your investments, low cost tracker funds are a good way to go, you may want exposure to European / Chinese / Japanese too.
Personally, I favor funds such as Fundsmith and Lindsell Train Global Equity.
I wouldn't probably both with bonds while you are in the early accumulation stage - their return is quite low.
More something to go into during the drawdown stage when the stock markets are doing badly.

[Gerald]

June

Income: 2.587€
Spendings: 3.952€ (1.335€)
Savings: (1.252€)

SR: (48,4%)

This Monthe earnings were a bit higher due to travel expenses.
Spendings is really high, I paid back my student loan, which was about 2.600€. Good thing is, I paid it back in one bit, so I got a 13% discount. Apart from this, I was on a four day weekend trip with the boys, where we slept in a hotel and ate out every night.

Hence the brackets on the savings rate, which would have been quite the same like last month.

Food: I spent 288€ this month. 175€ on groceries and 117€ eating out. I don't quite understand why it is so "low" (the lowest this year), especially groceries.

All in all I'm quite happy right now with my spendings. With food costs hopefully going down in the future (I didn't have the serious talk with the GF yet), this could settle down at about 1.100€/month (13.200€/year), which is below poverty level in Austria (1.259€(although this is for a 1-person household)) and is better than most people I know, while still living a really comfortable life.
So my theoretical NW for early retirement is 330.000€. Looks doable in a twelve year's timespan.

I was trying to read books on value investing in English but had to quit eventually because I just couldn't comprehend the content, the financial correlations. So I'm not sure whether to read about the mechanics of companies in German and give it another try or to just stick with ETF's.

I was also thinking about looking for a foreclosure appartement and renting it out. The tenant gets to pay for the loan (let's assume 15 years) and after that I've got a few hundret quid additional cash flow every month.

[Gerald]

I enjoyed reading the humorous parts, like the gf threatening to call the sanatorium. Fast 50% Sparrate ist auch super!

Thanks, find ich auch

[Gerald]

@Nomad:

The cheap/expensive taste test is another good idea, thanks!

I'll have a look on other markets than the American. The thing with bonds is that I'm still a bit nervous about the stock market and it gives me that bit of safety right now, to not worry too much.

Edit: changed from quoting the whole answer to quoting the name.