November 2020 – An uneventful yet expensive month

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Mr. The Poor Swiss
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November 2020 is over, and it was another of these 2020 months. Nothing much happened during this month because we could not see many people and several things were canceled.

At least, we are both healthy. And this was the last month before we move to the new house. We are really looking forward to that. This will keep us occupied! And this will keep our mind off this boring virus.

We still had to buy quite a few things this month for the new house. But we now have everything we need except for the summer things. We spent much more than I anticipated.

So, let’s see what happened to us in November 2020 and the state of our finances.

November 2020

This month was not very eventful. A lot of things are still closed due to the latest measures regarding COVID-19 in Switzerland. We did not do much, and we did not see many people either. We still went to two meals with friends, but we limited each of them to four people.

Currently, the limit is still for up to 10 people, but we try to limit ourselves to a maximum of five. I think it is important to play our part. But it still sucks. Even for an introvert like me, it gets boring.

At least, we are both healthy, and our finances are okay. So, we cannot complain much about the coronavirus. But I wish our government did a better job at containing the virus, especially in the second wave.

We finished buying the furniture for the new house. We had to buy a washing machine and a dryer this month. This made a big hole in our finances. But at least, we found an acceptable deal on Black Friday. Normally, we are done with all the big expenses for furnishing the house.

Unfortunately, we spent more than I anticipated on this item. We went over-budget on several items. We will have to start being more careful again next year!

I hope that we will still be able to have some holiday parties with a limited number of people. But I am not sure this will be the case. But at this time, we will be in the new house. So, there will be enough to do not to be bored!

This month, we have started the last planning steps for the move to the new house. We have planned all the packing, the move itself, started some little packing and got rid of a few things that we will not move to the new house.

There is not much to report about this month, so let’s delve into the details of the month.

Expenses

Let’s see the details of our expenses in November 2020:

Overall, we spent 8699 CHF in November 2020. This is definitely not the level of expense that we want to aim for. We spent almost 1700 CHF on furniture this month. On top of that, there was a birthday and a wedding. Together, that is 500 CHF in gifts for a single month. Normally, these two expenses are extraordinary. But I am worried about our level of expenses. Our average expenses have been going up every single month this year.

We will have to be more careful next year!

Overall, we saved 38% of our income this month. This may sound high, but this month we had extra income coming in that will not be there next month. So this would have been much with lower income.

2020 Goals Let’s take a look at our goals by the end of November 2020: Next month is already the last month to make progress on our goals. But since most of them are doing okay and some of them are definitely lost, I will not do anything very different next month. The only goal that we need to work more on is our expenses goal. But given the end of year bills and this month, we are far from reaching it. But we are still below 5000 CHF expenses before taxes, so there is that at least. Other than that, our goals are doing great. We are well ahead of our targets. We need to make these goals a little more ambitious next year!

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Net Worth Let’s take a look at our net worth as of November 2020: We passed the next milestone in our journey, the 330K net worth. Our net worth continues its course in the right direction. Nothing special happened to our net worth this month. We had a large income, but our expenses were not very low either. The stock market did nicely, even though we are not fully invested yet. So this helps. For now, this net worth increase does not translate into a highly increased FI Ratio. Currently, we stand at around a 16% FI Ratio. Our average expenses are increasing, and I take our average expenses into account for this. Now, our expenses in retirement will hopefully not be that high since the taxes should be lower. Nevertheless, it is way too early to imagine them for now. So, as long as our net worth increases and we keep our expenses before taxes reasonable, we will be fine. Overall, I am happy about the evolution of our net worth. We can aim for 375K next year even with the large expense we will have for the house. But for this, we will have to put back our other expenses into a proper shape. So, it should be okay, but we will have to be careful.

Our Net Worth as of November 2020 - Click to enlarge

The Blog

Overall, the blog did relatively well this month. There was a slight increase in traffic for the blog. It is not a huge boost, but I will take it!

On the income side, it did really as we saw in the goals part. But this is extraordinary because it came mostly from a quarterly payment. But even if it is extraordinary, it is a great thing.

I have written many articles in advance. This is great because I have already written enough articles to not worry about them while moving to the new house.

Since some French articles started to get some traction, I went ahead and translated 10 more articles. This brings the total to 30 articles translated. I will wait again now to see if this gets more traction before doing the next batch.

Other than that, I have not done anything extraordinary on the blog. I have started planning the next steps for the blog for 2021. I am starting to have a better vision for the blog for next year. But it is not entirely there. We will see how it goes. In any case, I will continue doing what I like and try to help as many people as I can.

What did you think of my blog this month? As usual, your feedback is essential!

Next Month – December 2020

The major event for next month will be the move to our new house. We have been waiting for that for a long time. We will be moving in mid-December. And most of the month will be spent preparing for the move, moving, and then get installed.

Given the crazy year of 2020, it would have been so much better if we had moved one year earlier. We are thrilled to move now. And our budget will be happy once we will have finished buying the new furniture for the new house.

Financially, there should not be anything extraordinary about December 2020. I do not think we will start to see the big bills for the house coming before next year. On the other hand, there will be a few yearly bills to pay. The power bill is coming and the car insurance as well. December will be expensive.

Regarding the blog, there will be one small difference. I will not post between the 24th and the 31st of December. I do not think many people read blogs these weeks, and I want to have a buffer for moving to the new house.

If you had to read only one post from this month, I would recommend my post about broker bankruptcy.

I am starting to have the (probably stupid) idea of turning my budget tool into a Software as a Service (SaaS) tool. What do you think of this idea?

What about you? How was November 2020 for you?

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