Money

When I woke up early in the morning, I thought it should finally be time to find out where all my money is going.

I have been using You Need A Budget (YNAB for short) for several years now, which means I can easily find every Euro spent. Well, at least if I entered it into the software.

When I started budgeting a few years back I inputted literally every cent. At the end of last year and start of this year I was a bit sloppy and so I “restarted” in February.

Since then I have been tracking every Euro again I spent and now, a few months later, I can easily few a report and see where my money is going.

I found out I have average expenses of about 2100 € per month. In contrast, there is an average income of 2700 € per month.

I have to admit, I was a little bit shocked. If all my fix costs (and also large parts of the variable) are inside this 2100€, where do the other 600€ go?

I really didn’t have to think about the question, because I already knew my answer. It is the spontaneous purchases I’m doing. I wasn’t expecting that they are 600€ on average per month, but sadly it all adds up.

No wonder I’m always short on money.

The thing is, if I would be saving 600€ per Month, I would save almost 10k per year (well, 7.3k). I would have a rainy day fund in no time. And more importantly, I could buy a Tesla Model 3 in about seven years of saving.

Since I only have till November 2023 to get the funds for a new car (as the leasing contract on the old one will expire then), I really need to hit the brakes on those expensive and short-thought buys.

As @brandonwilson once wrote, every day can be January the first and so today is my first day of getting rid of an expensive buying-stuff-habit.