It’s hard to believe a month has gone by already! The sun is out and summer has finally arrived. Although there are 34 months left until our departure date, it moves all too quickly. Let’s take a look at where we ended up after our first month.
June was a good month. Alison has been updating the ‘dream porn’ on the site over the past month, highlighting some of the places we would love to visit. She’s been finding some really inspiring places which you can check out on our Travel Map. We also decided to challenge ourselves even further by visiting at least 5 UNESCO sites per country. Crazy? Maybe, but that’s why it’s a challenge!
Beyond feeling excited about our goal, we also managed to make a dent in our debt to the tune of €1,477. Woo! For some, that may be a drop in the bucket, but for us, on the first month, it’s a great start towards our goal. Only about €17k left to go before we can actually start saving.
June 2013 Spending
Our biggest expenses are what we call Financial (34.5%), Rent/Bills (31.6%), and Groceries (10.8%). Financial is our retirement savings plan, our insurance, bank fees, etc. The category “Rent/Bills” covers what it says, plus other incidentals related to living in our flat. Groceries, Alcohol, and Eating Out combined are 20.3% of our spending, which is a lot, but food is something we enjoy.
There were no big surprises in June, so our costs were pretty much as expected. We saved money by minimizing our travel, sticking closer to our food budget than usual, and reducing our spending across the board. There is still more we can do, but if we can stick to our budget we’ll save close to €1000 per month.
Looking ahead to July, it should be similar to June. We don’t have any big travel plans at the moment, but knowing us, that could change at a moment’s notice. We will be making a quick trip to Paris to meet a friend we’ve not seen in a long time, but we will minimize costs by using points or other travel hacks.
Further out, we have plans to visit Hasselt in August and then we look forward to welcoming Warren and Betsy back to our flat, sometime in late August or early September. They will be staying in the UK for a month before joining us, so maybe we’ll try to get up to visit them as well. We’ll have to check the budget to see what we can afford!
Andrew
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