I’m so glad to notice how our Mustachian spendings and savings new habits got strongly rooted in our household life since we started our journey towards financial independence.
Even though I can’t stop recommending you to use a budgeting tool like YNAB because it changes so much your vision about money (for the better), we nowadays clearly see that we are used to our new way of consuming and dealing with cash. As my Belgium Mustachian mate said, the end goal is to build these habits so strongly into your lifestyle that you don’t even need to track your expenses anymore because you spend frugally without thinking about it. I’m totally aligned with him!
Once you are at this level of mastery, you’re all set to reach early retirement very soon!
What about expenses?
Overall, February was similar to last January with its bunch of expenses, although they were of different kind.
Groceries’ bill was very reasonable after last month big refill.
We also met our oldest friends when back to our hometown, which led to some extra outside food expenses, but it was damn cool and so worth the money! Some things in life doesn’t have a price tag!
Due to February bad winter weather here in Switzerland (rainy and cold vs. sunny and snowy we hoped for), children got sick and we had several medical outflows.
On the more fancy and luxury side, we renewed our dishes set which was broken here and there.
Also, we bought a new gadget: an iPhone car charger as we are often on the move with these battery suckers… The good point of this purchase is that it will reduce our future Canada holidays expenses as we won’t rent a GPS with our car, but instead we will use our iPhone with a cheap prepaid data plan.
I also renewed shoes as the others were getting worn out.
Finally, I took the time to order some very nice books at Amazon to learn new things, including the ones needed to achieve my yearly goals!
Still, we agree that these explanations are no excuses to our totally non-vital spendings!
As with the weather, life came with its bad news (loss of a loved one). The funeral increased unexpectedly our gas monthly consumption.
I naturally tend to find positive sides in each and every situation: for this specific one, it reminded me of how our lifetime on Earth is short and that we need to enjoy all of our loved ones as long as we can - and forget a bit (or more) about iPhone notifications, work emails, etc.
Children daycare fees were a bit under the average as I took some days off to enjoy kids. It was so cool! I just love to stay at home, take them to school, write some stuff on the blog while they are napping, play games with them afterwards… I can’t wait for the spring and summer to come back so that we can get outside more often!
Finally, I will need to analyze my phone plan consumption as I tend to pay more than the planned CHF 30/month. I suspect last issues with our Internet provider and other problems with our property management to be responsible of the unusual costs.
February 2015 savings rate
Once again, if you take a close look at our 2014 history, I can proudly tell you that we set a new record with 61% of savings rate!!! reached a decent savings rate of 46%.Kinda unbelievable but I double checked YNAB (referral link) reports, and here we go!
But don’t get used to it, we unfortunately won’t get 13th salaries and company bonuses every month…
I think next month will be back to normal with a 30-40% savings rate - except if we get some reimbursements we’re waiting for.
What about you guys and gals? How was your savings rate looking last month?
ERRATUM UPDATE 04.04.2015
On the super luxury side, we got charged for our Canada holidays booking after I computed the February savings rate. This got our so-called February 2015 record to be null and void, unfortunately…
