December 2024 – A month sick and horrible expenses

December 2024

We had three nice family events this month. It was good to see everybody again and to celebrate the holidays with them. We also had a nice end of the year dinner from my employer.

I was again sick for most of the month. I do not think I was ever sick for that long. It started with a standard cold, which turned into something like a sinus infection. I went to the doctor, and he prescribed several small medicine. And then, when this first phase passed, I got a cold again and ended up with an ear infection. My wife and son also got coughing and my son got conjunctivitis. So, that part of the month was not fun. As of writing this article, I am still sick.

The only good thing is that the timing of the two sick phases was good. In between the two sick phases, we had my employer’s end of year dinner and a meetup for the blog. And I was not too sick for Christmas celebrations (my wife missed one of them, unfortunately).

Financially, our spending was out of control this month. I was thinking we would not spend that much, but we ended up finishing the month on a sad note. We still managed to save 20% of our income, but given how much we spent on avoidable expenses, I think this is a bad result.

Expenses

Here are the details of our expenses in December 2024:

In total, we spent 12631 CHF. Without taxes, this is 6088 CHF. This is one of the worst months of the year. I was expecting a result slightly above average, but this is not slightly above, this is highly above average. I am very disappointed in our expenses. All our categories are well managed, but the Personal category is just an excuse for buying everything.

Of course, some expenses cannot be avoided. We had to pay for daycare, and we had to pay for the kindergarten. There were also some subscriptions coming at the end of the year. And we paid several hundreds CHF at pharmacies this month. And we can expect some gifts around Christmas.

On the other hand, my wife did a ton of shopping this month. I also bought a new hat and a new video game. We also bought probably too many firecrackers for New Year’s Eve.

We will have to drastically change our spending habits in 2025. Our expenses are not sustainable at all, that way. I keep seeing this pattern where we simply do not count anymore and this is not healthy. Continuing that route would entirely jeopardize any chance at becoming financially independent.

2024 Goals

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

This is the last update on our goals for this year. And this result is quite mixed. Our financial goals are in disarray:

• We wanted to spend less, but we spent more
• We wanted to earn more, but we earned less
• We wanted to save more of our income, but we saved less of it

On the other hand, our final personal goals are not too bad.

This month was a bit hectic for my schedule. I had to spend some days in the office where I cannot work or walk on my treadmill. I also spend one day a week at my mom who takes care of my son, and again I have no equipment there. Some days, I was simply too sick to work out. And finally, there were multiple holidays (a good thing) and I do not have any routine on days off, so no working out either. As a result, I worked out less than I should and walked much less than I should.

We did not manage to save 10% power, only 4%. It is not too bad, I think. For some unknown reason, December is also the month with the highest power consumption of this year.

Overall, I do not want to go too much in details over our goals since I will soon do a full review and present the new goals for 2025.

FI Ratio

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

Our net worth did not move much in December. The stock market started the month strong, but then declined to end up slightly lower than when it started.

Strangely, our FI ratio still went up. The reason is that we replaced a more expensive month by a slightly less expensive month in our 12 months average (used to estimate our current expenses, for our final target). I am bit torn about that because December was terrible, but compared to the average, it was not too bad.

Overall, given everything else, I am happy about our progress towards FI, even though I feel like we did not do anything to reach it.

The Blog – Meetup and new comparators

In the middle of the month, we had a small meetup, organized through the forums. Even though not many people could join, it was nice to see people and discuss money subjects. I did not organize it very well, but it will be better next year. I hope to organize again something in early 2025.

Early in the month, I wrote a new comparator for the blog: a credit card comparator. The idea is to be able to find the cheapest credit card for your exact needs. This comparator is simple, but it fits perfectly within all my comparators. I have also upgraded the design of all my comparators to make it look better. And later in the month, I was able to write a bank comparator as well. I may continue that route in the future for third pillars if people use these new comparators.

On a very minor note, I also upgraded the forum to PHP 8.3. This should not make any difference, apart from using a more recent version of PHP. The transition went very smoothly. I hope to be able to do the same for the blog next year.

Other than that, I did very little for the blog this month. I was not very motivated to work on the blog. Hopefully, my motivation will rise next year. And at the end of the year, I was simply too sick to do much.

For the second month in a row, the traffic on the blog is still 30% below last year’s level. Even though traffic is not the most important metric, this is slightly concerning, and this decline can also be seen in the blog results.

Next Month – January 2025

At the end of next month, we will go back to China. This will be the first time our son goes to China and meets the other part of the family (also the first time with such a long flight). This will likely mean I will not be able to access the blog for a while. I intend to try a VPN, but my last experience with VPNs in China was awful.

Financially, it should be a decent month. We will likely pay for the hotels at this point, so that may weigh a lot in the balance.

What about you? How was December 2024?

Recommended reading

• More articles about Updates
• One Day in Washington D.C. – Frugal and Awesome
• June 2019 – Holidays, Taxes and Insurances!
• April 2024 – Another expensive month