Ive been tracking all my money ever since I started to read from Dividend Growth Investing blogs back in July 2014. Big expenses have been gone to zero. Do we need a new computer when there’s a computer in my home that works just fine? NO  Do we need the most expensive/beautiful bicycle or can we use a 2nd hand? 2nd hand ofcourse!

Since I got my wallet closed and keeping an eye on all the actions like 1 euro for a big bag of potatoes in the supermarket. Together with my girlfriend we have saved LOTS of money by doing so.

There’s one thing to note…. my girlfriend is paying the food for the month and everything for our son like new clothing and such as she gets the extra’s every year from the tax department roughly 900 euro a year.  The thing is.. she wants to live as if it is her last day by spending her monthly part-time salary for monthly activities with our son and the rest of the family. She knows it will be for the better good in the future that I invest my leftovers.And so I will be fully devoted towards the saving and early retirement. Some hiccups can occur like a car that breaks down that I cant invest for a month as I do not have a very high salary to put much aside.

I just want to prove to the world that a young father at the age of 26 with a low taxi salary can be financially independant within 20 years by investing about 1000 euro/1200 dollar a month. My aim is 45 to be free of my chains of working and spending all my time with my girlfriend and son by traveling over the world. There’s just so much to see and so little time. Even this past year ive worked all the holidays except summer holiday just to earn some more money.

By living a frugal lifestyle im able to cope with the 1000 euro investment a month that im gonna be making starting in februari 2015 as I do need to save some money for some future planned expenses.

So each month I will update the Income & Expenses for the previous month so this update will contain the month of december 2014.  I am tracking every euro of what comes in and what goes out, so what you see is exactly what I have earned and spent (rounded to the nearest dollar). As this blog is international ill just keep it in US dollar and use the currency calculator on google using the term “euro to usdollar”

 

Income From December 2014:
Salary Income	$1829
Other Income	$1523
Total Income	$3352
Expenses From December 2014:
Mortgage + Utilities	$957
Auto	$61
Student Loans	$56
Broker	$119
Restaurants	$72
Shopping Oberhausen	$64
Groceries	$0
Last Debt Payment	$1795
Insurances	$123
Gifts	$106
Everything Else	$52
Total Expenses	$3405

 

Income

This is my first income/expenses report.. feels a bit awkward by just sending it out to the world for public view, but I am for real and want to spread my word across the globe through the internet. The word that wealth can be made by those like me that have a low salaryincome and living a frugal lifestyle, just by investing all the leftover money in high quality dividend growth stocks for early retirement.

I do have to admit that i’m quite burned by this past December working hours. Having days of 11-13 hours of work during 1st and 2nd of christmas and old/new year’s eve without breaks so I had it payed in full without the loss of an hour of “breaktime” mostly during my drives towards clients ill eat my sandwiches. So I wont forget eating haha. The hours I made during december will be payed around the 24st of January. So this salary on the list above was made in November but was being payed out in December.

The dividend income is just the starting out and once I start gathering high quality stocks then the dividend income will really start rolling. December was just a test-phase at the broker I used to see how it all works out. I’m fond of the broker system that degiro.nl uses so ill continue using it as they’ve got very low fees and its easy to use.

The other income consists of winnings from the casino. I have used 60 dollar to make 540 dollar on the roulette on unibet. Felt lucky that day and did it in 2 hours. The funny thing is I been withdrawing the winnings and got mails to verify my account with letters and drivers licence so took ultimately 2 weeks to receive it on my bank account.

Received my loan back from my oldest sister as she recently got a new job so she was able to pay back the 360 I borrowed her.  As I bought an apartment back in September 2013, most of my mortgage interest is covered by the tax department with an amount of 295$. Just like I thought after recalculating the amount im receiving is a bit too much. I should be getting around 188$ a month so a $1600 expected backpayment bill should be set aside next to my rescue money.

The rest of the “other income” is from the returns from my recent sale broker that I’m using and some sidehustling that I did last month as I’ve sold some videogames that I didn’t use and some  furniture.

Expenses

The expenses I have had were pretty high last month mostly because of my last debt payment which was $1795. I just wanted to get rid of it as it had an 13% interest rate and the total amount just kept going up with about $0.65 a day based on what was left until it was payed off.

Mortgage and utilities consist of :

$588 mortgage     $82 cable tv/internet     $151 electricity/gas      $136 VVE for homeowners association

My auto was not used by myself and my girlfriend fills the tank for her job as she needs it more then I do.     I am on my bicycle for a total of 80 minutes a day up and forth from my job. The only monthly costs for my car consists of roadtax $29 and the $32 car insurance.

My student loan with an interest of 1.5% will be payed with this amount of $56 for a while until the total amount of $7085 is payed in full.

Restaurant was taking my girlfriend out for dinner for the new year and the shopping was done on the bustrip when I went with some of my girlfriend and some of her family to Oberhausen. I gifted them 5 bus tickets as it was only 18 euro’s each for a day trip. The clothing I bought were some new pair of jeans a dark t shirt and a nice dark coloured sweater with a white zipline in the middle to pull it over the t shirt as a combination. Not that bad of a deal for only $64.

The everything else consist of a second opinion appointment at another dentist where I went, where they found out that ive got some pockets in the back of my mouth which means i have periodontaldisease. Ultimately I have to be treated for that which will add an extra $200-$300 expenses for this year as I dont want to lose my teeth. Never thought about having that as I got quite a good smile and my teeth dont feel like its hurt. All in all im lucky I had the dentist appointment as ive changed my healthcare from VGZ to Menzis. It didnt get cheaper tho as I now got an addon for teethcare with a maximum of 750 euro will be covered for only 22 euro a month on top of the healthcare insurance.

 

Savings

This last month of December 2014 I managed to save none of my income as I had too big of a debt payment to pay. I was $53 short.                                                                                                                                 On the other side im done with that big debt that I had. Was 5800 euro but because of the interest it went up to a total of 10.653,92 but only because of my continued pressure of sending most of my income towards that debt I managed to go from about 3200 euro to zero in only 3 months time. This was a long term debt I had since handing out my cellphone to a so-called-friend that needed help in 2008 so im finished with that one! Believe it or not its a good ending of a year when u see new years eve with 1 debt less in your life Now only that dang 100.000 mortgage with 4% interest and 6000 student debt is left.

 

The savings goal I have for this year 2015 will be 60% a month of my total net income. I havent recorded more then 1 month of the year 2014 so I just see it as a minus year.. So 2015 can only get better.

 

Did you manage to save much of your income last year? Did you reach your goals for the year 2014?