This Month’s Numbers…I Discovered A Dumb Mistake In My Excel Sheet…We’re Much Closer To FI!

Have I ever told you I am a blonde? 😉 In The Netherlands we have all these dumb blonde jokes…and I now feel like one…

September 2014
Mortgage: 32.55% (0.15% increase)
Emergency fund: 392% (4% decrease, due to money going towards stocks, stocks are not included in our EF since they’re not liquid assets)
OMG! I have discovered a mistake in my Excel sheet…. the formula only added our Meesman accounts to our ‘Stash and didn’t include our BinckBank account…. D’OH D’OH D’OH….I never added these accounts to the formula after we started to invest with Vanguard at the start of this year…let’s blame the pregger hormones 😉 Anyway….we’re closer to being FI than I thought….woohoo!
Stash (=EF + stocks): 15.14% (20% or 1/5 here we come!)
Income to spending ratio this month: 59% (yeah! Even with a couple of extravagent expenses this month we managed to keep our spending below 60%!)
Income to spending ratio this year: 61% (<60% here we come!)

I mean, seriously, how could I not have noticed this mistake for months? Luckily the outcome is a pleasant surprise.

I implemented the formula for all previous months of this year and here’s an overview of our ‘Stash:

• January: 9.67%
• February: 9.88%
• March: 10.36%
• April: 10.57%
• May: 12.13%
• June: 12.44%
• July: 14.39%
• August: 14.86%
• September: 15.14%

Jeez, will we be able to double our ‘Stash this year? Okay, there was a windfall…but these numbers are extremely motivating, aren’t they?

Love,

Mrs EconoWiser

57%!

August 2014
Mortgage: 32.4 (0.22% increase)
Emergency fund: 396% (2% decrease, due to money going towards stocks)
Stash (=EF + stocks): 12.86% 12.07% (0.79% increase due to investments and the bullish stock market)
Income to spending ratio this month: 57% (yeah! Even with the husband going to a 3-day music festival and spending lots on drinks and food)
Income to spending ratio this year: 61% (<60% here we come!)

Love,

Mrs EconoWiser

Last Month’s Numbers

Mortgage: 31.8% (0.6% increase)
Emergency fund: 342.4% (45.7% increase….our ER keeps growing like crazy, even though we’re investing our asses off….)
Stash: 10.77% (1.27% increase! Financial independence, here we come! Ow yeah, we love F-you money!)
Income to spending ratio this month: 30% (thanks to a huge tax return and “holiday money”)
Income to spending ratio this year: 57% (Ow, yeah!!! >60% here we come!!!)

Love,

Mrs EconoWiser

Last Month’s Numbers

Finally!

March 2014
Mortgage: 31.66% (0.3% increase)
Emergency fund: 303.5% (even though we’re investing bigger chunks of money…our EF won’t shrink that fast)
Stash: 9.56% (10% here we come!)
Income to spending ratio this month: 58% (now, that’s what I’m talking about! Even though we had to pay real estate fees to get the Hungarian house on the market and the hubby made a bunch of extra trips to the store to get baby supplies (jeez…those nappies have a short life span!) we nailed March!)
Income to spending ratio this year: 69% (ow, yeah, <60% here we come!)

Our little girl is doing great. We just love being a family. The hubby is totally in love with his daughter…and so am I! He turns out to be a wonderful daddy. Yes, people, I feel extremely happy and blessed!

Love,

Mrs EconoWiser

The February Numbers

February 2014
Mortgage: 31.36% (0.14% increase, interest on the savings part of the mortgage was paid out, we can’t make extra mortgage payments due to stupid tax rules)
Emergency fund: 306.1% (about 2% increase…we have started throwing more into index funds…but the emergency fund is still growing!)
Stash: 9.35% (0.2% closer to early retirment)
Income to spending ratio this month: 74% (as expected, not very impressive. the husband repaid his wintersport buddy the remainder for his holiday, we had professional pregger pictures taken, the hubby bought tickets for a music festival…besides the fact that we’re going to have a baby, nothing expensive will be happening to us in March 😉 )
Income to spending ratio this year: 76% (not a realistic number yet…, we’ll get to 60-65% by the end of this year!)

Ok, let’s put on our Money Mustache and make things happen in March!

Love,

Mrs EconoWiser

What’s Your Offical Pensionable Age?

Pensionable age in the Netherlands is being increased from 65 to 67 within the next couple of years. As of 2024 pensionable age will increase according to the average life expectancy of the Dutch.

The calculator on this website (I found it via Spaarolifantje) will allow Dutch citizens to calculate their pensionable age according to the new rules. It’s not set in stone yet…but you can imagine that pensionable age will exceed 67 in the future.

The hubby is 35 years old now. I entered his date of birth and the website told me he’ll be allowed to officially retire on 16-12-2048 at 70 years and 3 months of age.

I’m 32 years old today. I entered my date of birth and the website told me I’ll be able to officially retire on 19-10-2051 at 70 years and 6 months of age.

I don’t know about you…but I find this rather shocking! I will have worked for 50 years in total. There’s no way in hell I’m going to sit around and wait for the government and my pension funds (which sucks at investing my money properly anyway…but I’m obligated to participate) to tell me when to quit work. Jeez, that’s another 37 years. I don’t think so!

What’s your official pensionable age? Is pensionable age being increased in your country as well.

Love,

Mrs EconoWiser

New Index Investing Strategy: Meesman, Binck And Maybe Interactive Brokers

We finally made our decision and have already acted on it! We have decided to:

Increase our monthly investments with Meesman, because:

1. They solved the dividend leakage with their global fund and this is just too tempting to invest in
2. They are Holland’s leading broker when it comes to index investing for private investors (my personal opinion). There are other ones out there, but they’ll offer funds based on the AEX for example (no way we’re throwing cash at that!) or charge higher fees. Again, my personal opinion.
3. We love the company’s philosophy (do what Vanguard does…try to keep costs at a bare minimum and strive to lower costs wherever and whenever possible)
4. They have lowered their transaction fees which made them very competitive compared to Binck again (from 0.5% to 0.25%)
5. It’s easy to diversify. The husband chose 80% global and 20% emerging, whereas I’m more conservative and chose 90% global and 10% emerging. (Global = 1604 stocks in 24 countries; Emerging = 855 in 21 countries)
6. I love their service, website and the way they’re treating me as an investor ❤

Start bi-monthly investments which add up to the same Meesman amount with Binck in the Vanguard All-World fund, because:

1. We really wanted to invest with Vanguard as well
2. We looooooooove Vanguard ❤
3. All-World offers stocks in both large-cap as well as mid-cap and emerging markets. (2900 stocks in 47 countries, emerging included) and thus makes it a one-stop shopping trip for index investors investing in euros.

(With Meesman we’re investing in a mutual fund and with Binck we’re investing in an ETF. Even more diversification!)

Maybe invest with Vanguard in dollars via Interactive Brokers (we’ll look into that during the next couple of weeks), because:

1. We can’t stop loving Vanguard ❤
2. The Vanguard Total World Stock Index (VT) would be our most ideal mix of stocks (5109 stocks, all-cap and wonderful diversification)
3. TER is very low (0.18%)
4. This fund is also recommended by Malkiel and Ellis in The Elements of Investing, p. 122.
5. We might want to play around with dollars….and then again we might not…still thinking about this one.

We decided to also diversify amongst brokers in order to reduce risk.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Early retirement! Early retirement, who? Early retirement for you! :-)))

Love,

Mrs EconoWiser

Disclaimer: as always, these are our personal choices. I am not a professional investor nor do I claim to be one. I am an individual investor merely sharing ideas here. You are solely responsible for your own investment choices. I am not affiliated with any of these brokers in any way, shape or form other than being a paying customer myself.

November Numbers

As today is the first of December the November numbers are in!

December 2013
Mortgage: 31.01% (I continue to hate the fact that we can’t make extra mortgage payments anymore…)
Emergency fund: 309.18% (187% increase! Thanks to the endowment.)
Stash: 8.14% (4% increase, almost at 1/10 of being FI!)
Income to spending ratio this month: 57% (verrrrrrrrry happy about this!)
Income to spending ratio this year: 63% (1% decrease, yay!)

The husband and myself high-fived over our income to spending ration of this month. We “only” spent 57% of our income (I didn’t add the endowment to the income). The “unexpected” spending went to changing to winter tyres, a board game festival, a donation to help out the Philippines, a couple of presents, new bathrobes, maternity underwear, a second-hand nursery for my parents so that the little one can stay the night there sometime in the future, other second-hand baby stuff, one lunch with a friend and uncovered health insurance expenses.

Without all of these “unexpected” expenses we would have stayed well under a 50% income to spending ratio. We are so getting better at this! If we’ll really be able to spend less than 50% of our take-home pay we’d be FI in sixteen years. Cool, I’ll be 48 by then. Our goal is to have this mortgage paid off by the time I’m 50…so our ‘stash by then should more than cover our expenses. Whoohooh!

How did you do last month?

Love,

Mrs EconoWiser

How Can Pat The Rat Escape The Rat Race?

Somebody gave me this book and office gadget thing called “Welcome to the RAT RACE”. Obviously, I was interested. Against all my minimalistic beliefs I brought this piece of extra clutter home. There was a foam board and wind-up rat with a little booklet titled “Fighting the corporate treadmill”. Ah, a way to get out of the rat race, I naively thought.

You can get this for a dollar…But don’t buy it! Here’s my review and an escape plan for our friend: Pat the Rat.

See, the booklet was really depressing. The story sort of goes like this: Pat is in this cycle of traffic, deadlines, sleep (or lack thereof) and meetings working as a Generic Rodent Data Entry Telemarketing Assistant. He follows the rules of the rat race. Whenever you feel as depressed as Pat, you can wind him up and watch him run his circles for a couple of seconds and then go back to your daily grind in the rat race while suffering the same fate. Then, there are a couple of pieces of advice for Pat (and you!) in order to make these cycles more bearable. All Pat wants is to make The Big Cheese Happy. So he uses his two-hour commute to catch up on business calls and what not in order to efficiently use this lost time. Even though Pat hates meetings he sees the benefits of free coffee and donuts. Pat always meets his deadlines and will therefore get a promotion before Lazy Louise. Pat doesn’t get enough sleep, and he should work on that. Pat dresses for success, which means he wears the same uniform suit every single day. He might take a break every now and then, but always plans these breaks around work so that his work doesn’t suffer. Pat is cautious in the office kitchen in order to avoid any gossip about him. He goes out of his way to please The Big Cheese and tries hard not to take criticism personally. He’s also aware of coworkers who might steal his great ideas and he’s careful not to lose his superficial friendship with his office mates even though some of their habits drive him nuts. All the while he’s buying more stuff, hasn’t got a social life nor a spouse because he’s too damn busy working. In conclusion: the rat race isn’t easy, but you can always turn to Pat for some commiseration and a reminder that you’re not alone. And this is supposed to be a kit for “helping you survive the corporate rat race” according to the makers.

SURVIVE??? After reading this and watching Pat run around his cycles the only thing you want to do is kill yourself?!!! The message is to become a better rat….well, I don’t want to be a rat caught in the rat race!

Hence, my alternative route for our poor Pat the depressed and extremely unhappy Rat:

Here’s my alternative in close-up for Pat the Rat:

Love,

Mrs EconoWiser

The Numbers Are In!!!

July was just too easy…after a very frugal June we did spend some money on our skiing addiction. However, with the big fat tax break the numbers are way too cool! But here they are anyways! (I’ve also updated my page dedicated to this thing)

The best news is that we now own 30.35% of our home! This just feels so great! We did dig into our emergency fund so that’s at 88.05%. We’ll have to fatten that one up during August and September. Our ‘stash is 3.3%. We have this number in mind at which we’d like to call ourselves financially independent. Mind you, in my opinion we’d have to be rid of the mortgage plus achieve that number. Our overall income to savings ratio for the first seven months of this year has dropped to 65% on average! The monthly numbers were:
January 98%, February 98,% March 73,% April 94%, May 71%, June 40%, and July 28%…I guess we’re heading into the right direction?! This year’s goal was 75% and next year’s 70%. Let’s see whether we can nail the 70% this year already?!

Love,

Mrs EconoWiser