How much we spent in 2025 – Full 2025 Expense Report

2025 Expenses

Before we get started, you can take a look at our 2024 expense report if you want a baseline.

When talking about expenses, the context is essential. We are a married couple in the canton of Fribourg. We have a four-year-old son. In 2025, we had a single income. Even with that said, it is important to not compare yourself too much with others. I share our numbers here for transparency, but the best thing is to try to reduce your expenses, not agonize over how they are different from others.

Again, for transparency, I should mention that our internet and car bills are paid by our company (running the blog).

With all that out of the way, here are the totals of our 2025 expenses:

In total, we spent 149,833 CHF in 2025. Compared to 2024, we spent 3119 CHF less! This is great; I am thrilled that we managed to spend less money than in 2024.

Without taxes, we spent 77,999 CHF in 2025, 4,507 CHF more than in 2024. However, this accounts for some large expenses for selling the house:

• The advance fee for Neho to sell the house
• The cleaning fee
• Some maintenance work

And some expenses for the new house:

• Some new pieces of furniture and decorations
• Some new appliances that we did not need before

Overall, we spent reasonably this year, considering the move to the new house.

Here is a breakdown of our expenses per category for 2025:

The three main categories are representing a huge portion of our expenses:

• Taxes are 47.90% of our total expenses.
• Personal expenses are 22.60% of our total expenses.
• Housing is 12.20% of our total expenses.

In 2025, we should continue working on our expenses. I feel like taxes could go down because we moved to a cheaper municipality. We should also be more careful with our personal expenses because some of them are not really necessary.

We can now detail some of the larger expenses of 2025.

Biggest 2025 Mandatory Expenses

We can start quickly with the big mandatory expenses:

1. Taxes: 71,834 CHF
2. Groceries: 10,083 CHF
3. Health insurance: 9,998 CHF
4. Mortgage: 7,421 CHF

Together, these expenses represent a significant portion of our 2025 expenses. There is not much we can do about these expenses. We already have relatively cheap health insurance for the three of us. But it will go up higher again in 2026. We will likely change again in 2026 but did not change in 2025.

Taxes will slightly go down with the new municipality. In the future, with some house renovation, we expect them to go down again in 2027. The mortgage will go down slowly over time as we amortize.

Groceries have become more expensive this year. Some of it is likely due to inflation. But we have probably been less careful than in the past, so we should get back to a better habit here.

We can then take a look at some individual expenses.

Holidays – 3547 CHF

We spent almost the same for holidays in 2025 as we did in 2024. We went to China for two weeks early in the year. This was the first time our son could see our Chinese family. We do not plan to do that every year, but we will likely do that again sometime in 2027.

Next to that, my wife and son did a small holiday in Ticino and Milan.

In 2025, I wanted to do an extra holiday, but we failed there. Unfortunately, I had to use all my days off in the summer to take care of my son because my wife had a language course. So, I ended up the year with no holiday since February and no days off. In 2026, this may be the same because my wife is taking another German course and then starting school again.

I hope I can keep enough days off in 2025 to do a summer vacation. I feel like we need to go on a vacation, the three of us.

Kindergarten – 1265 CHF

We changed kindergarten in 2025. Our son is now going two mornings each week. The new one has much better hours compared to the old one. So, we can actually manage it properly when my wife is not home. I am pleased about this kindergarten.

New 2025 expenses

As mentioned before, there were a few new 2025 expenses, mostly related to the new house:

• A chainsaw because we got several cubic meters of uncut firewood.
• A high-pressure cleaner for the terrace and alley.
• Some pieces of furniture.
• A new compost.

And some related to the old one before seling:

• Replacing the shower.
• Replacing the ventilation hood.
• The cleaning bill
• The advance payment for Neho

Other than that, there is nothing really new in our 2025 expenses and nothing that will last to 2026.

Things we improved in 2025

We have not improved many things in 2025.

However, we managed to lower our taxes. This is great because taxes are our biggest expense every year. We increased our second pillar contribution for that.

Things that will change in 2026

Some things will change in 2026.

One important change in 2026 is that our son will start mandatory school. This will be an important step and a strong shift in organization for us since we have to review our day care organization. As  far as expenses are concerned, this will reduce our expenses since we will not have to pay for daycare and kindergarten anymore.

Additionally, if everything goes well, my wife is going to start school again. Again, this will be a big shift for everybody. Financially, we will have to pay for the school.

Our mortgage will go up since we have to buy a more expensive house in late 2025. Our power bill will also rise, but our heating bill will disappear since we have heat pumps now.

We plan to install solar panels in 2026. This means a giant expense during the year. And this also means that our power bill should go down.

We moved to a cheaper municipality in 2025, so we should see our taxes go down slightly.

Other than that, not much else should change in 2026.

Things to improve in 2026

I would like to try to improve two things with our 2026 expenses.

The first thing is that we should be more careful with expenses in the personal category. We tend to buy too many things in this category. Some of these things are not really necessary or not long-term. I already said this last year, so I am not sure if we can do much better here, but I still want to be more careful and spend more intentionally.

The second thing is that we should be a bit more careful with our groceries again. Until now, we have kept this budget in excellent shape. But this year, we increased significantly more than inflation. We should see whether we can shop smarter again.

Conclusion

Our 2025 expenses are lower than in 2024, which is great. Our taxes are finally stable (even though they are still very high). Despite moving into another house, we have managed to keep expenses relatively reasonable.

There are some things we can improve in our expenses. However, I think we are doing a good job already. Without taxes, we are spending less than 80,000 CHF per year. This is not so bad for a family of three.

Our main weakness with our 2025 expenses remains small expenses. We tend to think less about them, but they can quickly pile up. We should think about the real need for small expenses as well.

What about you? How were your 2025 expenses?