I’m saying this since four months but it will have to change at some point. Anyway: 2015 is gonna be a damn great year!!!
I’m very lucky to “work” at a job and in a field that I’m passionate about. I say “work” as it’s about doing something and getting paid for it. But I actually don’t feel it as a painful or forced activity.
In such a mindset, I somehow forgot how much I gave at work in 2014, and the corresponding generated overtime. I chose to get it paid instead of compensated as I have enough with my 5-weeks/year vacations - yeah lucky me, I know - I recently learnt from a family member that Canada official holiday duration is about 2-weeks/year….
Let’s see how we did in April!
What about expenses?
Well, April was a rather spendy month compared to our expenses history.
For once, groceries category wasn’t the responsible as we were in-budget although we had some unplanned apéros with close friends.
Regarding healthcare, one of our kids had a medical control which led to expensive fees (as usual in Switzerland) that will be reimbursed - we just have to pay 10% of the bill. But with our healthcare insurance Assura, it’s up to us to pay in advance. No brainer when you have the liquidity!
I almost forgot that we took an Easter break earlier in April in the South of France. Was great! Sun, family and chocolate! And expenses were correctly budgeted.
As every month, the most variable budget point are the children daycare fees which were in the normal range in April.
On the luxury side, I had quite a bunch of eating-out lunches and beers that weren’t planned, neither mandatory for work. Nobody is perfect! But everybody has only one life to live!
Ah and we finally booked our flights for our Canada trip! We can’t wait to get back in this wonderful country! Obviously, this has decreased dramatically our savings rate…
I also renewed my Dropbox subscription - notably used in my quest for minimalism - that I was paying monthly as I waited for Apple to release their cloud pricing. The latter is more expensive and doesn’t bring that much more value so I chose to renew Dropbox yearly - CHF 20 saved while doing nothing. Not bad.
Last but not least: we hired a financial advisor! Yes, you don’t dream. We want to take our Financial Independence journey up to the next level, meaning to use every possible Swiss tips and tricks to reach faster our Early Retirement goal.
All his advices will also be very useful to provide better and more accurate data for the ebook I’m writing for you.
As you can imagine, wealth advisor isn’t the cheapest service one can think of in Switzerland. It crashed our savings rate under the 20% mark. For an even brighter future I’m sure!
April 2015 savings rate
Canada plane tickets and Swiss-class financial advisor are bringing down our April’s savings rate to 16% while our average for 2015 is now at 33.3%.
But! Because there is a but! Come back in one month as we got yet another income surprise that confirms my guess that 2015 will be a purely awesome vintage!!!
Stay tuned! And until then, keep up with the good work so that one day, you get ranked 1st on the #BSRI 2015 - right in front of my Belgium friend ;)
