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June 2022 – Taxes and heat

Baptiste Wicht | Updated: |

(Disclosure: Some of the links below may be affiliate links)

I can summarise June 2022 in two extremes: heat and taxes.

It has been too hot this month. I do not handle heat well, so it has been hard for me, especially adding on top of sleep deprivation.

As for taxes, as I expected, we did not pay enough last year. Our income increased significantly but not the prepayment. So, we are left with more than 10K taxes from last year. I was a bit surprised by the amount. I was expecting less than that.

Aside from these two points, I would say it has been a routine month. So, we will see in detail what happened.

June 2022

During the month, we had a big heat wave. I dislike heat, so it was not the best part of the month. I am thrilled to work at home since my home office is much colder than the actual office.

Talking about working from home, I still have no idea when and if I will have to return to the office. For now, we still have several months without needing to return to the office. I hope it stays that way indefinitely.

As for sleep, we had a few better nights of sleep this month. It is still not great, but there may be some hope.

As mentioned in the introduction, we had to pay extra taxes this month. As usual, our paid taxes are lower than the final amount. It is excellent in a sense because it meant that our income increased significantly. But it also sucks to have so much money to pay in taxes in one month.

However, the extra amount is lower than last year. So, at least, this is getting smoother every year. Hopefully, we will break this cycle by next year.

On top of that, we had to pay the notary for the house. We received the bill almost two years after the signature. That is crazy. I almost forgot we had to pay this bill.

Aside from the heat and taxes, this was a fairly standard month. We had some friendly events, mostly bad nights and ordinary income and expenses.

Because of the taxes, we did not save any money this month. But since I paid both canton and municipality taxes the same month, I will not have extra taxes next month.

Expenses

Here are the details of our expenses in June 2022:

Category Total Status Details
Insurances 1205 Above average Health and household insurance
Transportation 57 Average One tank refill and some parking
Communications 152 Above average Internet and a new phone plan for Mrs. The Poor Swiss
Blog 1154 Above average Internet services and the first pillar
Personal 2367 Above average health bills, some gifts, expenses for a family weekend (reimbursed), toys, clothes, …
Food 572 Above average Usual groceries and a trip to Aligro
Housing 4428 Above average Notary, power, interests, and heating
Taxes 17153 Above average Unpaid taxes and new taxes for the year

In total, we spent an insane amount of 27091 CHF this month.

Without taxes, the blog, and notary fees, this comes down to 4440 CHF, slightly below our goal of 4500 CHF per month.

We paid about 3400 CHF in notary fees for the house. The bill came almost two years after the signature. I was expecting a worse bill, so I am not too shocked with this bill. Compared to the land transfer fees, this is still a reasonable fee.

When we exclude taxes and notary fees, it was not such a bad month. I feel like we could have spent less, considering the significant expenses, but it was still not that bad.

Overall, almost everything is high this month, but most are due to yearly or quarterly fees or exceptional events. I still feel good about this level of expenses.

2022 Goals

Here is the status of our goals by the end of June 2022:

Goals as of June 2022
Goals as of June 2022

Overall, my goals are doing okay.

My FI ratio has seen mixed progress, as you can see in the next section.

I am seeing great progress with my walking goal. With the weather this month, we did many walks, in the evening or early in the morning. On the other hand, my working out goal is doing poorly. My motivation is at all times low for this.

I am finally done with redesigning my office. I should never have tried to do with a non-sleeping infant at home. But I am delighted with the way it turned out. There are a few minor things I would like to tweak, but this is not part of the redesign. And several things will have to wait until later in the year.

I am also done with the investigation into my knees. I went to see a professional, and it turns out there is nothing wrong with them. However, due to my sedentary lifestyle, there are many problems with inflammation mostly. I need to move more and not keep the same position too long. I do not know exactly how I will achieve this, but at least I know what is wrong.

The only goal I am slightly worried about is our spending goal. It looks like we have unexpected monthly expenses that make this goal difficult to achieve. At least it is easy to maintain 5000 CHF per month, and we are not too far from the goal. So, our spending is still very much under control.

FI Ratio

Here is our progress toward Financial Independence:

Our FI Ratio as of June 2022
Our FI Ratio as of June 2022

If you are investing in stocks, you probably know that June 2022 was not a great month for them. All major indexes are down significantly for the month. Since a large part of our net worth is invested in stocks, our performance this month was terrible.

On top of that, even our budget is negative this month. This means we spent more money than we made, making another dent in our net worth.

But you can see that at the beginning of the month, our FI ratio went up significantly. What happened? I am using a running average of 12 months for our spending. And we just avoided a costly month when moving from May to June. These bumps will often happen around  June since these are the expensive months for taxes.

Overall, I am not worried about our portfolio or our progress toward Financial Independence.

The Blog

I managed to do a little more for the blog than in the previous months. I was able to update some articles and improve the blog on top of keeping up with my weekly schedule. This is good because it has been a long time since I did these tasks this year.

I have many tasks late for the blog, but I am starting to be able to do some of them again. I have very few articles scheduled for next month, so I am not sure I will be able to keep working on these tasks. But at least the blog tasks went nicely this month.

Overall, the traffic on the blog went up slightly this month, which is a good sign. On the other hand, the income is way down, likely due to not having updated content and not fixing minor issues in a long time.

Hopefully, what I was able to do this month will pay off in the following months.

Next month – July 2022

In July 2022, we do not much events planned (thanks for that). We have a wedding to attend and one event, but I will keep the number of events low. I want time to do things late in the house and the blog. But as usual, my plans will probably go poorly.

Financially, I do not expect anything special next month. It will be interesting to see where the stock market is headed.

What about you? How was June 2022?

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Baptiste Wicht started thepoorswiss.com in 2017. He realized that he was falling into the trap of lifestyle inflation. He decided to cut his expenses and increase his income. This blog is relating his story and findings. In 2019, he is saving more than 50% of his income. He made it a goal to reach Financial Independence. You can send Mr. The Poor Swiss a message here.

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21 thoughts on “June 2022 – Taxes and heat”

  1. Hi Baptiste

    It seems to me that you are regularly surprised by the final tax bill. Do you never check ahead with tax declaration software, how a significant change like increased income or the house will affect your taxes? You can preemptively pay more on your provisional tax bill, you are not bound to the amount they bill you at the beginning of the year. If you pay too much, you get it back with interest.

    I would personally always prefer paying a little more each month than one lump sum, especially if I’m surprised by the amount. That’s similar to the Heating etc. costs of your rent that are settled once a year. If the amount I’m owing is too much, I increase my pre-payment per month voluntarily. So it’s more even across all months of the year, I don’t like spikes in expenses if they can be avoided.

    1. Hi,

      Yes, I look at the tax declaration estimation. But in 2022, there was about 5-6 months in between my tax declaration and the final tax bill, so it is slipping my mind. And any time I am paying taxes, I am surprised by the insane amount we are paying. In 2023, we are paying more each month in taxes than all other expenses combined.
      I know I can pay more each month but that would mean increasing the opportunity cost on my end, which I don’t want to do for the tax office.

  2. Hey, I was wondering what health insurance do you have?

    I have Swica for the basic and supplementary, and I was thinking if it makes sense to change the basic for cost optimization.
    Thanks!

    1. Hi,

      We have currently Assura for the base and Helsana for the supplementary, but we’ll switch everything to Assura next year.
      I think it’s worth comparing at least. And then it’s up to you to see if the reduction is worth the change.

  3. Congrats on the office re-design, not an easy task with an infant around for sure!

    Yes, Switzerland is a weird country when it comes to bills in general. It’s generally just assumed that you will be paying whatever the cost happens to be for a service and bills can arrive at any time and you are just expected to pay them. Where I come from costs are always agreed upfront and you know what to expect and you usually pay for it in advance anyway. It’s like they don’t really like to discuss money too much and just assume you have enough for whatever the situation.

    I’m curious, what does the 1st pillar have to do with the blog and why are there so many costs in a month associated with the blog?

    I often wonder how people keep groceries to such a low amount. If I add up costs in any given month between Lidl/Coop/Migros it’s frequently above 1300, rarely below. We are 2 adults + 1 5yo 😄

    Good luck for July!

    1. Hi Daniel,

      Thanks :) I am so happy with the result, but it was not an enjoyable experience to do it whenever I could steal an hour here and there.
      Yes, in Switzerland, people don’t like to discuss these things :)

      Since my blog is bringing in income, I have to pay 1st pillar contributions for it. And I get one bill every three months. So, every three months, the expenses on the blog go up significantly.

      As for our groceries, we almost only have Lidl, most of our meat is Chicken from Lidl and Pork from Aligro, we don’t eat much beef. We don’t buy bio often and we cook everything ourselves (almost nothing packaged).

  4. Why do you account your first pillar under your blog expenditures ?
    « Internet services and the first pillar »

    1. Oh :)

      Good question. For a side hustle that has more than 2300 CHF per year in income, you need to declare it to the first pillar (AHV/AVS) and they send you bills. Since this is directly taxed as a bill, I add it under blog (a percentage of the blog income).

    1. I am not sure I understand your question.

      Do you mean moving? I am not counting the blog expenses into our own expenses for the goal only. But it’s being counted in our savings rate, taken into account for our retirement and everything.

      1. I think he meant that there is “Internet services and the first pillar” while the category is “Blog”

  5. “I can resume June 2022”. Incorrect
    “I can summarise the month of June 2022”. Correct

    The word “resume” can not be used like that.

    1. It crossed my mind too but I am so used to hearing French people in work say this that I am immune to it haha!

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