August 2024 – Increased expenses and reduced earnings

August 2024

August 2024 was a nice month. We had a few events with friends and family, and we could spend time the three of us again. The heat was again a bit much for me, but there is not much we can do about it.

We went on a short vacation to Germany this month. We took an Airbnb in a quiet village in Germany, relatively near the border. It was really pleasant, we visited mostly Freiburg and Breisach. Thanks to the local guest passes, we only used trains and trams, for only 12 EUR for 4 days, quite amazing. It was enjoyable to spend some time abroad again, it had been a while. We saw some pleasant things in these cities and ended up the trip at the Basel Zoo.

The orthopedist made some modifications to my insoles. I feel like walking it slightly better on my knees, but I am not even sure. And it did not do anything for my back. So, at this point, I am back to square one with my back and nothing seems to help. At least, the pain does not increase more, maybe thanks to all the exercises I am doing.

Starting this month, two things will impact our budget moving forward. My wife has quit her part-time job as a day mom. The conditions were really not that good considering the bad hours, the amount of work and the stress. And while she is looking for something, we decided to put our son a second day a week in daycare. So, from now on, we will get about 1500 CHF less in income each month and pay about 500 CHF more for daycare monthly.

We have also finally moved forward into buying a new car. I will share more about this next month once I have all the details.

This month, I got some RSUs vesting, so we had a higher than average income. Our complementary health insurance also reimbursed my insoles from last month.

Our son started school (kindergarten) this month. This is a great milestone. This was only the first day, with both parents present. We will see how this goes during the following months.

Overall, with relatively reasonable expenses and high income, we achieved a nice savings rate of 56%. This savings rate is a very nice result for a month with taxes.

Expenses

Here are the details of our expenses in August 2024:

In total, we spent 11802 CHF. Without taxes, we spent 5157 CHF. This is below what we spent last year and below our goal, so this is good! I was expecting worse results with the short trip to Germany, but it turned out great.

The vacation added a bit to our expenses, but not much, since it was a very short and frugal vacation. This vacation added expenses to our transportation, food and personal categories. And the Airbnb was paid last month already. Furthermore, as mentioned before, the daycare bills will double from now on. We expect to pay about 1000 CHF per month on average.

Our transportation is higher than usual because of more fuel than usual (going to Germany) and because we had to renew the half-fare for my wife.

Overall, I am pleased about our budget. We were quite frugal (without any privation) on vacation, and our budget looks good this month. The last few months, we had been spending too much (for our goals, nothing catastrophic). So, it is good to see that we are still capable of doing better.

2024 Goals

Here is the status of our goals by the end of August 2024:

Our goals are looking a bit like a rainbow now. Some goals are doing really well, while others really not so much.

Our spending goal is currently negative because we increased our average spending instead of decreasing it. Our income goal is brown because we increased our average income but less than 5%. Since we do not expect any special income in the upcoming months, I do not think we can reach our income goal. Our savings rate is almost exactly on target. And our optimization goal is still failing short, but we should be able to find one more bill to optimize in the following months.

I missed multiple workout days when I was on vacation, one when I was sick and one more when I had to go to the office. But I feel like the quality of the workouts keeps increasing. I have consolidated everything into one better workout. I have probably reached a good place for each of my workouts. Currently, I do the same workout three times a week. I may try to change it slightly for each of the days, but this is good.

Given the heat, we did not walk much outside these days. This is compensated partly by the walking on the treadmill. But I have yet to find a good balance. Whenever I have a meeting at work, I have to stop the treadmill and I sometimes forget to go back.

Finally, we will likely not meet our energy consumption goal. The last two months are well above target because of the A/C.

Overall, I am fine with the state of our goals. We will not meet them all, but we are in a decent situation and we have done what needed doing.

FI Ratio

Here is the progress of our FI Ratio as of August 2024:

Overall, the progress on our FI Ratio is quite mixed this month:

• Our investments increased but the USD/CHF rate went down again, so our investments went down in CHF.
• We increased our net worth, but by a lower amount than what we saved this month.
• Our average expenses increased slightly this month, leading to a higher target.

At this point, we have reached a point where our average expenses are almost increasing as fast as our net worth. This means our FI ratio progress is not huge. However, we hope we will not spend that much in retirement. And while our CHF investments are not growing, our number of shares is growing, so over time, this will work out.

Our FI ratio basically did not move this month. However, when considering the USD/CHF exchange rate, I think we are doing well.

The Blog

After receiving some feedback, I have improved the e-book a little by adding more information for IB from people who followed the e-book. I have also bundled together the PDF and epub. The process is not ideal on SendOwl, but it is much better to be able to sell them both together.

For months, I have used a different design in my reviews, with sections separated differently. I am now thinking of doing the same for articles. This will allow me to keep a single style and will make it easier.

Here are the two different versions:

• Article with current style (the current version)
• Article with another style (the reviews style applied to an article)

I would appreciate it if you could either vote in the forum survey or comment below to let me know which you prefer.

I also wrote a new calculator: The Robo-advisor Comparator. It is very similar to the broker comparator I talked about last month. This gives you the fees you are going to pay with a given Robo-advisor for a given portfolio value and monthly investment. I have also considered the dividends lost for Robo-advisors without a way to reclaim them. Please let me know what you think if you try it out.

Since I now had multiple calculators, I decided to ask for help to improve their design. I found someone on Fiverr that refreshed the design on all my calculators. He provided a nice updated I think, and I have implemented it on each of my calculators. I hope you will like it.

Other than these, there was not much happening on the blog, apart from the usual writing of articles, answering to emails and comments. For next month, I am currently discussing with a designer how to improve the calculators. Other than that, I do not have any large projects ongoing for the blog. I want to keep it lighter for at least one month.

Next Month – September 2024

We have a few events planned in September 2024, including the next birthday of our son. With this and other events, we will have a rather social month, which is good.

Financially, we should not have much special planned next month. Normally, it should be a standard month, with the new lower income and the new higher expenses.

What about you? How was August 2024?

Recommended reading

• More articles about Updates
• March 2018 Update – Excellent month
• May 2021 – The house strikes back!
• January 2022 – A poor start of the year