October 2025 – Always more taxes

October 2025

October is always an eventful and local month for us. We go to the Désalpes in Albeuve every year (this is when cows go down from the mountains). They have a nice party, and we always have fun as a family. Then we have the traditional Bénichon (party honoring the descent of the cattle), which we did in a smaller committee this year. And finally, we have the fair in La Roche. These three events are something we do every year that I really enjoy.

In the process of buying our house, we have not yet paid any of the major fees. We expect them in the next few months.

On selling our old house, nothing happened this month. We signed at the notary last month, and there should not be anything new until December. At this point, we will have to empty and clean the entire house. And finally, we will get the remainder of the money.

This month, I finished setting up the two shelves for which we had bought wood last month. It turned out really well in the end. I am glad I did this myself. It gave us a ton more space in the two rooms where I built them. And it was fun to do some woodworking again.

I also could finish my office shelf, a much more ambitious project. I think it looks superb, but I am far from a woodworking expert. It needs some finishing touches, but I will probably not have time for the finishing touches for a long time. I had to work a little here and there to complete this project since I never had even a few hours to work on it. For my next project, I will really want to have dedicated time to work on it without distractions. Otherwise, I will delegate it.

Next month, we should try to do something for our workshop. It is currently a mess because we do not have any furniture, and all my tools are on the floor or in a few boxes. I do not intend to build anything for it normally; I may only need to drill a few holes in the wall, so I should be good (but it will be more expensive).

We will have some concrete poured into our cellar to make a nice floor. Again, this is definitely not something we have time to do ourselves this year. Finally, we should also clean up the mess that has become of half of our garage.

As usual for me, with such stress and tiredness, I got sick. Fortunately, this time it only turned into a bad cough, but nothing like the pneumonia of last year.

Financially, it started out okay, and then we had to pay more taxes than expected. It turns out the advance we paid last year was not enough, and we had an extra 10K to pay this year between the canton and the municipality. I was really not happy about that because taxes are by far our biggest expense, and it keeps growing.

So, in the end, we did not save enough thanks to taxes.

Expenses

Here are the details of our expenses in October 2025:

In total, we spent 27195 CHF. Without taxes, this amounts to 8512 CHF. Given the current situation, I am fine with the amount without taxes, but when we add taxes, we reach an insane level.

Next year, we can expect to pay less in taxes for the municipality because we moved into a cheaper one. But the cantonal taxes will remain high. Our tax summary for 2024 gives us 2000 CHF lower in cantonal taxes compared with 2023. The difference is because we made a voluntary contribution to our second pillar.

Our food budget is significantly higher because we went to Aligro to restock our freezer with meat. We had emptied our freezer before moving, so now we can fill it up again. Our food budget should average out again over the next few months.

We had to pay the CECB certificate for selling the house. This costs us about 1070 CHF. We should probably have tried to find a cheaper one, but I was lazy on that one. At least, that is something we should only do once.

As for our personal budget, we had multiple extraordinary expenses:

• We did a large (1000 CHF) charity donation for an association that convinced us.
• We bought a pressure washer that we will need to clean the new house.
• We had almost 1000 CHF in expenses between Bauhaus and Jumbo for the house projects.

Overall, these personal expenses are fine because they should not repeat.

Except for taxes, I am satisfied about our expenses this month.

2025 Goals

Here is the status of our goals by the end of October 2025:

Overall, our goals are very mixed.

Our expenses were far too high (even without taxes) and increased our average past last year’s status. Our income is also not following our goal, so we will not pass these first two goals. On the other hand, we may still reach our savings rate goal depending on the next two months.

Even though I could not do much, my health goals are doing fine. I did not do as many strength workouts and especially cardio workouts as I would have wanted this month. In some cases, I simply could not because we had other things. But in multiple cases, I chose to focus on advancing the office project rather than working out. In the short term, this is not too bad, but I will need to get back to a proper routine next month.

As for water and power, it is unlikely that we will meet these two goals. The new house has a pool so our water consumption is increasing. And the new house has heat pumps, so our power usage is also increasing (but we will save on heating).

Overall, except for our expenses, I am fine with our goals. Given the move to the new house, it would be delusional to expect much progress.

FI Ratio

Here is the progress of our FI ratio as of October 2025:

As expected, our FI ratio takes another hit as we continue on this expense trend. That being said, I am now less convinced about the current expenses model. Our basic spending is rather reasonable. The only thing that increased too fast is our taxes. Planning for something like 100,000 CHF per year seems more reasonable now.

Overall, our net worth is doing relatively well. Even though we did not save money or invest more, it is still increasing. The stock market returns have been great this month. It will go back up again once we receive the rest of the house money after the sale. But then it will go back down again once we receive the fees for buying the new house.

Overall, I am not that convinced anymore that we will reach financial independence at this rate. We have some large expenses planned for the house that will impact our ability to save.

The blog – A new meetup

Overall, the blog did relatively well this month. I was able to continue writing enough articles, and I still have a small buffer.

Recently, I have switched the blog statistics to Cloudflare Web Analytics. I had too many issues with Plausible, so I switched to something simpler that also respects privacy. This month, I also did the same for the forum. I was previously using Google Analytics, and I replaced it with Cloudflare Web Analytics. This is better for the privacy of my readers, and it is simpler to maintain for me.

Under the hood, I also had to upgrade many small components running the blog and the forum. Readers are very unlikely to notice any difference; this is simply general maintenance work that is necessary. I had to rebuild a full server from scratch. This is usually a very fun experience, but one that needs time, which is precisely what we lack. I also finished my backups and security projects. These two projects also took a lot of time and were essential.

Finally, I want to organize another meetup for the blog community. Like the last few times, this meetup will be in Fribourg over lunch. You can hop on to the forums to register if you are interested. I would appreciate it if more people could join; there are already some votes on the forum, and I will close the thread in about a week.

Next month, I do not have much planned for the blog. Depending on the amount of spare time I have, I may start something new, but I am not sure if this will be the case.

Next Month – November 2025

We do not have much planned for November. I want to finish my office entirely so that it feels fantastic working there. I also would like to get back to a better health routine. Overall, my goal is to close open projects instead of starting new things.

Financially, it should be a normal month (but what do I know?).

What about you? How was October 2025?