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May 2023 – Good month and small vacation

Baptiste Wicht | Updated: |

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

May 2023 was quite a good month. We had a short vacation in Annecy during a long weekend. And we had many events during the weekends.

Our son started sleeping better. Even though it is far from perfect, it is much better. This makes a huge difference in our quality of life.

Financially, it was also a great month with a nice income and low expenses. As a result, we saved almost three fourth of our income.

So, we will look at all that happened in May 2023.

May 2023

In May 2023, we continued having many events again. We had lunches and dinners with family and friends. We will continue to have many events in June, but this will slow down in July. It was great having all these events, but we also look forward to some quiet weekends.

During the long weekend of May, we spent three days in Annecy, France. We drove there outside of the rush hour and had almost no traffic. Once there, we did not touch our car and only walked around.

The city of Annecy is quite lovely, and we spent almost all our time close to the lake. We went on a boat with our son, and he was pleased. We will probably return there outside such weekends because the city was quite packed, despite the not-great weather.

Financially, it was a great month. The stock market recovered again, and we could save much money. This made a nice increase in our net worth. Overall, we saved 74% of our income, an excellent result!

Expenses

We can go over the details of our expenses in May 2023:

Category Total Status Details
Insurances 762 Average Health insurance for the three of us
Transportation 63 Below average Gas once and some parking
Communications 99 Average Phone and internet
Blog 954 Above average Many small bills and fees for the LLC
Personal 1953 Average Vacation, kindergarten, and various bills
Food 640 Average Groceries and one lunch out
Housing 525 Average Heating and mortgage
Taxes 2044 Below average Only cantonal taxes

In total, we spent 7043 CHF. Without taxes and the blog, this comes down to 4045 CHF. This is an excellent result for us. Our goal is to stay below 5000 CHF. March 2023 is only the second month where we have reached that goal.

We started paying taxes for the canton again. But we will only start paying for the commune again next month.

We still have not received the taxes summary for 2022. This summary should come in June. We will likely have to pay extra taxes. So, June is likely to have a worse savings rate.

Despite the vacation, we had relatively low expenses. About half of our personal expenses went through the vacation. The rest is various bills and the larger kindergarten bill.

So, overall, it was an excellent month for expenses.

2023 Goals

Now, we will take a look at our goals by the end of May 2023:

Our goals as of May 2023
Our goals as of May 2023

Our goals are going great this month.

Financially, it was a great month, contributing greatly to our financial goals. Our savings rate average is still excellent in these early months,, and our income is well on track to meet the goal.

With our low expenses this month, we finally reduced our average expenses. But I am still not sure we will meet that goal.

The LLC project also saw a lot of progress. The notary side of things is done, and all the documents are in the hands of the Registry of Commerce. We should soon have to pay it, and the creation will get done. The next step will be for me to use the LLC instead of the sole proprietorship.

Our personal goals are also reasonable. I did more workouts than usual which is great. I moved my workouts to the morning after my daily walk, improving my consistency. For the first month, I walked more than 6000 steps on average daily. The yearly average is still much lower, but this is a good result.

Finally, our energy consumption is quite good in May. This was the month with the lowest energy consumption.

Overall, I am happy with the progress of our goals. I need to keep improving on my health goals, but they are also improving.

FI ratio

We can look at our FI ratio until the end of May 2023:

Our FI Ratio as of May 2023
Our FI Ratio as of May 2023

Our FI ratio went up nicely this month. We could save a lot of money, and the stock market recovered well too. This means our net worth has increased significantly.

On top of that, our average expenses have slightly gone down this month. This is causing our target to move back as well. So, this is good news because this average is usually only increasing.

So, overall, I am pleased about our progress toward FI this month.

The Blog

Not much happened on the blog this month.

While not visible on the blog, we have made much progress regarding creating the LLC. We have blocked the necessary capital and sent all the required documents. At this point, we are waiting for the Registry of Commerce to register our company.

Once this is done, we can create a bank account for the blog and start invoicing from the LLC. Transferring everything to the LLC will take a while, but the main thing is its creation. Things should move fast after that.

Other than that, I wrote the usual weekly articles. And I was able to update quite a few older articles. This is good because I have not had much time to do that this year. And several articles are pretty out of date, unfortunately. I need to find time to continue that effort in the coming months.

Next month – June 2023

Next month is again quite packed with events. We already have things planned every weekend. And we will have a family weekend with my siblings. On top of that, I will return to the US for work for five days.

Financially, it should be significantly worse. We will start paying each level of taxes again. And we also expect the 2022 tax decision, which will likely result in extra taxes.

What about you? How was May 2023 for you?

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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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10 thoughts on “May 2023 – Good month and small vacation”

  1. I really enjoy your blog, I finally opened my fin pension 3a account (at age 50 :( ) thanks to you.
    I am a little confused by some of the figures though. Saving 74% and spending CHF7043 means more than CHF27K of income per month.
    Is that correct or am I being dumb?

    1. Hi Denis,

      You are math seems correct. This month was an exceptional month for the blog with several quarterly payments, making more than 12K, the average being 3K-4K.
      My regular (employment) income is about 13K.

  2. Hi,

    Thanks for sharing, interesting to see the huge difference with us. We just bought a house and the interest rates are very high. We are at CHF 9000 expenses in total per month in total, no kids, without holidays. We have a lot more on insurances, transportation and house interest rates. We go rarely to restaurant, maybe one per month. I’d love to know how much more your expenses went up having a kid? Some say about CHF 800 more per month. I guess it’s less than that, maybe 500 CHF? Have you done this calculation? Thanks!

    1. Hi martin,

      Now that we have kindergaten one day a week, I would say our expenses went up about 800-1000 CHF per month with our son. Without kindergaten, I would have said about 500 CHF per month.
      Keep in mind that we did not buy a very expensive house and that our mortage is currently at 0.64%.

  3. Congratulation for the great month.
    The LLC topic is very interesting. Do you plan to write an article about how to create one and why it can be useful?

    1. Thanks Attila!

      Yes, I will write an article about how to create one. And in the future, once things are setttled, I will try to write a little more about it.

      1. Insurance? On May?
        I thought you paid once at the begging of the year.
        What kind of insurance is if you don’t mind me asking?
        And where are the groceries?

        Have a good one Baptiste!

      2. Hi Ian,

        I have stopped paying once a year because I get better returns in the stock market than 2%.
        It’s health insurance only this month.

        Groceries are in the Food category.

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