December 2014 – networth and expenses

A favorable tax return leads to a very positive month. I came close to the September value (after the disastrous October hit), but over 4k were still missing. I will create a separate yearly report, so this post only focuses on the monthly figures.

  • brokerage account 107,2k
  • mutual funds 63.1k
  • cash 13.2k
  • alternative investments 29.1k
  • total 212.6k

This is a gain of 14.1k (+7.1%) over last month. And I’m glad, I’m back above the 200k level. Compared to my figure at the beginning of the year (180.3k) it’s +17.9%.

I have summed up the gold coins and the “bonds” under alternative investments.

Monthly expenses

  • January -2.7k
  • February -3.1k
  • March -3.0k
  • April -3.2k
  • May -3.8k
  • June -2.4k
  • July -2.6k
  • August -2.8k
  • September -2.4k
  • October -2.4k
  • November -2.9k
  • December -2.0k

Wow, I easily hit my goal of below 2.5k expenses. I even hit (almost) my goal of below 2.0k expenses. I was just 8 Euros above it!

June, September, December – the end of the quarter seems to be a good month without “special” (or yearly) expenses. There was just a payment for the pension, but I spread this over all months, so it’s already included in the monthly figures.

The most savings (compared to last months) were housing, groceries and children. The big outlier were presents (of course – christmas).

Last month I spoke about cancelling some insurance policies. Turns out this will be even harder than I thought – and we got one more! It’s about 400 – 500 Euros yearly. Wish me luck that I can convince my wife to cancel at least one.

 

Update: I made a mistake (booked 20 Euros too much). I’m actually below 2.0k expenses. Wow!