Since I started tracking our net worth I have become more accurate and regular with the updates. The month of June will be the first month that I am able to compare my current net worth with 1 year before. I am happy to report that my net worth has increased by 10,788 EUR since 1 year ago! However, I do know some of this increase can be attributed to me including some additional categories into my net worth calculation. It still feels good to have increased my net worth by 5 figures, especially since I know that we only got serious about increasing our net worth at the beginning of this year and the majority of the progress has been over the last 6 months.


Another mile stone reached this month is we have officially earned more than 40EUR interest on the money we have saved up. So we are on the road to earn more interest this year than last year. This is mostly due to the higher interest savings account I opened at the beginning of the year and the additional savings amounts. The total projected end of year interest on that savings account, if the amount saved remains the same until the end of the year is 124.00 EUR. That means we are currently earning about 50 cents of interest a day on that account until the end of the year.

If I manage to met all the financial goals I set for us at the beginning of the year before we get to December, I'll increase my savings goal. For now I'm just going to try and keep us focused.

Ever since I starting working an office job at age 22, I have been piling on the pounds. So I recently took the decision to start getting more exercise. Now the cheapest option would be for me to either exercise outside or going to my company's gym. However as both entitle my very self concious self having to exercise infront of other people I have not been able to get up the courage to go to the gym and outside exercise works but I also sometimes talk myself out of doing it for various reasons. So I have decided to rent a treadmill. I know this sounds like an expensive waste of money and I'm not even going to try and justify it here as in all honesty I know I cannot. I feel as though I need to start getting more exercise and getting healthier and hopefully this will lead to me being less self concious. My aim is to eventually stop renting the treadmill and to go to my companies'gym.

In the meantime I have decided that I will rent the treadmill as long as I use it enough to justify it's costs. It will cost us 50 EURs a month to rent ( the treadmill would have cost 1200 EURs if I had brought outright, which means I would have paid the full price for it if I rent it for 24 months). I will attribute 5 EURs value to everytime I use the treadmill for 20 minutes and 10 EURs value for a 30 minute session. At the end of each month I will calculate if I used the treadmill for a value more than 50 EURs, based on the values allocated above. The first month I do not get 50 EURs worth of value from the treadmill, I will cancel my rental and return it. I this way I can be assured of not paying for something that I am not using.

I received the treadmill yesterday and have not used it yet. I plan on trying it out tonight and will let you know how long I am able to use it for. Wish me luck!

I have made an appointment with our garbage collection company to come and pick up several larger items which we can no longer use and which have been sitting around our appartment collecting dust. I've noticed a wave of blogs about de-cluttering and simplifying your life in order to be more effective on this website and have received some inspiration from them. I am now going to start accessing how I can de-clutter my life at work and at home.

First steps will be:

- List some of the important things that need to be done.
- Prioritise the line items.
- Then brain storm on how to achieve these things.
- Take action on each in turn.
- Re-assess progress.

I have no times lines for the above yet. I guess I'll start off by making a list of the things I need to get done.

Thank-you to those you have voted on my contest entry "10 things I wish I had known before I moved out of my parents house"! I am trying to work on my written communication as I have had to start doing quite a lot of it in my new job. I never used to have to worry so much about what I wrote before. It's difficult for me to constantly think of the audience I am communicating to, how they will understand my message, will they understand my message, whether I am making it interesting/serious enough and am I including all the necessary information. So I've decided to practise my written communication by writing more in my blog here. :-)

I moved out of my parents house to live with my boyfriend with only 1800 EURs to both our names. We both had fulltime jobs but that did not prevent us from getting off to a very rocky start. We lived in a one bedroom hole in the wall with a matress on the floor to sleep on and our clothes in suitcases. I'd like to share some of the things I learnt during that time and since:

1) You will survive.
No matter how tought it gets, the love you have for each other will get you both through it. No need to lay awake at night stressing. No need to over eat and gain weight. No need to lose your hair. You will be fine if you watch your pennies and work hard.
2) Know who you will owe.
One of the biggest stresses for me was the occassional large bills which came up, that we had no idea about and had to pay in less than a month's time. I have since found out about all the taxes, health insurance policies and other miscellaneous money suckers that are part of the grown up world. I now know exactly when large chunks of our hard earned money will be due for payment. I would recomend any freshly independant adult to ensure they know exactly what bills they will have to pay, how much they might be and when they should be expected to pay them.
3) Keep an emergency fund (in other words, that fancy furniture can wait).
We always kept an emergency fund avaliable, starting off with 500 EUR. Whenever we had to dig into this fund we would then spend the next few months building it back up to our minimum of 500 EUR.
4) Keep your monthly costs as low as possible.
The less money going out each month the more you will have to save/spend.
5) No matter how little start saving.
I did not start automatic monthly saving until recently and am still kicking myself for not starting this good habit earlier. This lead us to rely on the CC more than we should have.
6) Start a pension fund ASAP
Again, I waited until the age of 25 to start my pension savings, as that was the year it becomes compulsory in my company. I realise now that you should never trust other's with your savings decisions as they do not have the same passion for your own finances that you do. And 25 is not better than 22,23 or 24 to start your savings.
7)Don't rush moving out, you'll be giving up the cheapest rent you'll ever know.
Boy do I regret giving up that cheap rent, even if I could no longer bare being under the same roof as my parents. Sometimes you just need to swallow your pride and take the cheap rent ;-)
8)Accept offers of help from friends.
We received many offers from friends to have old furniture that they no longer used. We turned most of these offers down because we were disillusioned enough to believe that we would be able to afford some beautiful, imported, solid wood furniture within 6 months. OH sweet ignorance! 2 years down the road we were still sleeping on the matress on the floor.
9) Share your costs.
Try and split your bills with as many people as possible. Can you rent with someone else? Can you share the cable? Do you go grocery shopping with your neighbour?
10) Enjoy the time.
I wish I had relaxed alot more and just enjoyed the time, rather than freaking out about keeping my job and saving to buy that 600 EUR microwave oven, which lasted us just over 3 years before it broke down when we replaced it with one that cost less than one third of the price. I prefer our new ,icrowave too because I did not have any sleepless nights over buying it.

I worked during a bank holiday this week and am still debating whether to take the money or the days off. I've already handed in quite a few holidays days in the last year and feel I could do with the days off instead.
I'll need to think about this one.

Having posted 2 rants on this issue in the last few days, I am already feeling better about this issue and writing it out has also started help me understand that the problem does not lie with me but with Emma. One of the things that has become very important to me in the last few years, is being honest and consistent in the way I communicate to other people. As I feel I had a problem with this in the past as I tend to be a much more internal person and therefore have troubles trying to convey who I really am and what I really think to people. Because of this I tend to accept what people say to me and show a non-commital form of agreement, rather than show my true opinion. This can lead to confusion and people feel as though I keep things from them. So I have been trying to work on being able to communicate and connect with people in a more honest and consistent manner. It's hard sometimes to find words to convey what you truely mean if your not used to being verbal about your true feelings.
Anyhow, I feel writing this stuff will also help me in my quest of improving my communication skills.

Well the next episode in this saga continues:

After the episodes I described in my previous posts, we stopped talking in a social way and started only communicating when necessary. I thought it would end there, especially as I was already looking for another job, within the company and had decided it was my time to move on. I had been in the job almost 2 years and knew a substantial amount. I had obtained several skills and taught myself some others, I'd also received a glowing performance review and knew that I was in a good place to apply for a new job within the company. Luckily for me 2 positions became avaliable within my department around that time, one for a manager role and the other for a business analyst role. I knew people were discussing which one I would apply for, but I kept my decision quiet and played the whole thing down as I did not want to have to have the extra stress of being watched through the whole application and interviewing process.

However, these sort of things never remain secret for long and of course the rumour went round that I applied for the business analyst role, as did 5 other people from our department. We under went an initial test, during which 2 people were eliminated from the interview round. Then we had our interviews and for 2 weeks after we were told nothing. There were 2 positions avaliable for which 3 of us were interviewed. Finally one Friday afternoon I was chatting with 2 people from my team and my manager walks up and calls me to an office for an impromptu meeting. The 2 people I was speaking to did indeed realise what the meeting was about. I was told that I got the job, however neither of the other 2 candidates were accepted, however they were not going to be told yet so I needed to keep quiet about it. I agreed full heartedly that they should not hear from me that I had the job and definately not that they did not get the job.

So when I returned to the team I acted as though I was let down to the 2 people who realised I had been called to discuss the job. Emma overheard the conversation and spent the next few days boasting to some of our team members that someone had been turned down for the business analyst job.

A month later we announced to the team/department that I had accepted the position and was going to be moving to the role.

During that month I kept my distance and did not speak to Emma, as I just wanted to move on and forget about our differences. I felt then as I feel now that we have nothing to compete against each other as she is a very beautiful, slim, intelligent women whos dresses in expensive, fashionable clothes. Whereas I'm quite plump, hate shopping and hence wear the same clothes frequently and am not very social. I do however treat myself to the occasional extravangant item, which leads to the next event.

I own the gold Dolce Gabbana Motorola phone, which is very guady. When you switch this thing on or off it calls out Dolce Gabbana very loudly. The one evening after six o'clock, after most people had gone home, I switch on my phone. It called out it's annoucement and I hear one of my colleagues ask who's phone was that. Emma replies It's not mine, I would not have such a hooker phone.

I could have got up and pulled her weave off of her head, but instead I held my tongue and let it go, but I regret it now. That night she let open the doors for me to find out more about her life from the collegue she made this comment to as that collegue also found it an uncalled for comment.

I knew this information before, but the way the colleague explained it to me I could never have suspected just how far someone would go for their hunger for money. Emma, who is a recently divorced 27 year old women is now living with a 60 something rich jewish man. He has 2 children nearly her age and she is living the high life off of his money. She has taken up an assortment of different hobbies just so she can hobnob with the rich crowd ( sailing, flying lessons, tennis, golf etc). Somehow she has also managed to have this guy write her into his will so that if he dies, she will inhieret a holiday house he own in Switzerland.

At work, she spends her days trying to network with anyone who she meets. Her thing is offering to buy them lunch and she will never go to lunch without her note pad. She signs up for any event/organisation that she feels might help her meet the people she needs to meet to get where she needs to get in life. She is determined to move on up and she has stepped all over people in order to try and do so.

So here I will leave this entry, as I have strayed from the path a little. I question myself if this is how people get to the top? Is this how people make lots of money? Is Emma going to succeed in life and the rest of us going to fail because we're not willing to go that extra mile? Do people admire people like this? Should I admire her, or pity her?
I guess this is what I am trying to figure out in my own head.

I came across this documentary explaining the lead up to the current financial down turn. It is a UK documentary but it may be interesting to people in America as well as it talks about the crisis on a Global level.

http://bestdocumentaries.blogspot.com/2008/04/super-rich-gre...

Yesterday I received my annual pension overview from my employee's pension and I was shocked at the difference in the estimated end value from last year's estimate.

2006 estimated value: 297,636.91
2007 esitmated value: 195,572.63

Over 100 thousand difference. Then I read on to find out that they changed a few things in the calculations.

1) They did not include any predicted pay raises.
2) They used 4% standard interest rate instead of 5%.
3) The company has changed their percentages for contributions for the age ranges, favouring the older participants in the pension scheme. This is to try and combat the low amount of savings in that age group.

However, I think this really shocked me into realising we are not saving any where near as much as we should be for retirement. Something new to work on once we have built up our emergency fund.

This week I only had to pay for my own lunch at work 1 day as I was treated to lunch by the company for the other 3 days. The company was closed Friday so I was at home today for lunch.

We seem to have cut back our spending unintentionally this month as after all the bills are paid and our monthly extra expenses are covered I have been left with a large amount than I thought, so I'll be putting that money towards paying down the CC. We had several unexpected expenses added to the CC this month, so I'm pleased to be able to pay some extra towards it. We will not have it paid off by the end of March, which was my original goal at the beginning of the year. However I hope to have reduced it to just over 1000 EUR by the end of the month. It's still better than it was at the beginning of the year and on top of that we have made bigger strides in both our retirement and long term savings already this year, so I guess that I should not feel too bad about not reaching that goal.

While reading someone else's blog today I came across the below documentary which I would like to share with you all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-dib6hSlcU

I am wondering if we ever did reach the 15%?

So far 2008 has been throwing sh*t at us and most of it is sticking(excuse my language).

If I read around the blogs I get the general feeling this year hasn't started out very good for many people. Please feel free to leave your comment at the bottom of this post to let me know how your 2008 is going so far, because misery loves company...

Today I came across a blog of a couple that were both in their late twenties which caught my interest as there are relatively few young people who blog about their personal finances. However, the similaritites between my situation and this couple ended there, as they seemed to be so much further with their savings and in particular their retirement savings seemed to be the most important part of their current financial situation. They were saving a little over 20K a year towards their retirement to reach a goal of 3M at retirement. Even then they seemed to be seriously doubting whether or not that would be enough for them to retire on comfortably at 65.

This extreme difference between their view on their savings and my own, lead me to realise that everyone is different when it comes to their personal finances. My BH and I want to save a decent amount for retirement, but are not willing to go without everything in order to save for it. Whereas some of the happiest people on this site did just that and have succeeded in retiring at a very young age. However, if I was to aim for the same goals that this couple were, I'd be in a constant state of panic as the goals are literally unobtainable for us. So rather than slide into a downward spiral into depression about the state of our finances and inparticular our retirement savings when compared to these supersavers, I am going to take responsibility for our choices and aim for an attainable goal given our circumstances. That is the only way that I can ensure we both maintain a healthy state of mind.

In this case, I choose not to keep up with the Joneses, but I do wish them the best of luck!

************WARNING*********************
*************There is a frustrated rant below, read at own risk************

So this is the second part of our financial regrets. The first one covered the bad financial decisions we made ourselves; this part covers the bad financial decisions made by our parents which are affecting our current financial situation.

Hopefully, if this issue affects anyone out there then I hope it is only one side of the family. In our case we have both his parent and my parent’s bad financial decisions affecting our current situation. Both of our parents have not been very good with their finances through out their lives, despite being giving plenty of opportunities to secure their financial futures. His father always made a good income with whatever he turned his hand to, and he also won a lottery once, which if he had invested the money wisely, would have set his parents up for the rest of their lives. My father always had a good paying job to, both he and my mother received some inheritance money.

Despite their good fortunes, both sets of parents have unstable financial situations now that they are verging on retirement. Now I am aware that times have changed in the last few decades, whereas their parents before them did not have to worry so much about their pensions, as most pensions were provided by employers or the governments ( depending on where you live). However, this knowledge does not make me any less annoyed with their bad financial decisions and that because of them my BH and I may need to step in and help out.

What makes me probably even angrier is when they were younger and having financial issues, who did they turn to? They turned to their parents of course. However, now that they are grown and are parents themselves instead of turning to their parents, they will turn to their children. Which leaves the question for me of who do we turn to for help?

As you may see this is a sensitive topic for me right now....I'll return to it in a later blog.

Recently I have been posting about all the good steps that have been taken to secure our financial future. However, there have also been some bad steps taken in the past which are affecting our currently financial situation, which I'd like to record as a reminder and warning.

I will divide this topic into 2 parts. The first covering the decisions made by me and my BH with direct affects our financial situation and the second part will cover choices made by our parents which are directly affecting our current financial situation. I have decided on this split as I feel the first part is much more straight forward to explain while the second conjures up powerful emotions.

When BH and I first moved in together we both were very naive when it came to anything to do with money. We started off with about 3000 EUR. 1100 EUR went to pay the deposit and first's month's rent on our apartment. So we had very little left over and every penny was important. We were lucky that the apartment came with a washing machine and tumble dryer, fridge, stove and curtains. However, we still needed to buy a few household items like a mattress (we did not have a bed, we just slept on a mattress on the floor for about 3 years) and a microwave combi oven. In our very unrealistic view of the situation, I thought we'd only live in the apartment 6 months because by the time we'd have enough money to put down a deposit and buy a house. Little did I know it would take us 2 and half years just to have enough money together to place a deposit down on a bigger apartment and still just be sleeping on a mattress on the floor. So when we purchased the first few household items, we decided we needed to have the same sort of things we'd been accustomed to while living with our parents. This meant instead of buying a microwave for 150EUR, we brought the most expensive microwave in the store for 499 EUR.

We were so proud ourselves when we got that microwave oven home to our hole in the wall apartment. We made a fuss about setting it up in our tiny little kitchen ( it took up half the counter space available in the kitchen). It was so wonderful because we had brought our first grown up household appliance, one of many fancy ones to come. The first few weeks we kept admiring our new purchase and congratulating each other on what great taste we both had. We were like a right bunch of peacocks, pruning our feathers in front of each other!

Fast forward to last week, 4 years and a few months after our initial purchase and I am using the microwave to heat up milk, when it finishes it beeps, I take out my milk and close the door. As I'm preparing my milk I hear the microwave beep again. I've never heard it beep like that before, so I check this screen and see the screen has gone blank. So I check to see if I can change it back to normal. It does not work. So I try to reset it. No, that doesn't work. Eventually I unplug it then plug in the power cable again and no it still does not work! I checked the user manual but still it does not work!

So here we are, with no warranty and the decision to pay to have this expensive microwave fixed or to buy another one that is cheaper and more reliable. At this stage we are kicking ourselves; normally we would expect a cheap microwave to lat at least 5 to 6 years, at the very least! So an expensive should last longer, or at least you would hope. In the end we decided to buy another one, cheaper and more practical with a 5 year warranty. One very expensive lesson learnt by me and my BH.

Buy according to your budget. So all purchases we make now are carefully considered with a cost versus benefits calculation built in.

I wish I had realised this sooner, but I recently discovered two ways of benefiting from tax exemption, which will result in an additional 1020 EUR saved instead of paid to the taxman. So in effect, I found a way to give myself a raise curtesy of the government. I've done this by:

1) Enrolling into my employer's savings plan, which allows me to save up to a maximum of 600 EUR a year, pre-tax. The only catch is I cannot touch the money for 4 years, as if I do I will need to pay tax over the amount. At a tax rate of 34%, this means I earn an additional 204 EUR.

2) Maxing out our employer's pension plan contributions. This year I have increased our contributions by 2400 EUR, which means I will have an additional 816 EUR instead of ginving it to the tax man.


I love this tax exempt saving, as where else would I receive an annual return on investments of 34%?

Since I have found this site and several other personal finance websites, I have become more and more excited about creating a financially secure future for me and my BH.

When I first turned to the web for some help with our finances, I was very insecure and stressed about our financial situation. We always seemed to be so many steps behind everyone else we knew. I was faced with some pretty big anxieties about not only our financial future, but those of our families'. However, since being able to read about other people being in the same situation and how they are coping with it, I have managed to calm myself down from being worried and stressed all the time.

After reading so much about personal finance I have come to realise that I have managed to equip myself with some pretty hefty tools to use against even my worst money fears. This is itself is comforting. However, I have even gotten to the point where I can be so excited about new opportunities and goals that I find myself thinking about them over and over again. Budgetting, calculating, setting, re-setting and finally taking actions to make and achieve these goals. This excitement is a wonderful feeling and I hope that I never forget just how empowering it is to take charge of my finances and build something with them.

______________________________________

As an exercise to keep myself on track and also for records sake, I am going to list the steps I have already taken this year to achieve some of the goals I set for us at the beginning of the year.

- We have paid off 1200 EUR of CC debt.
- I have signed up for my company's saving plan. This should result in a saving of 600 EUR this year, tax exempt.
- My BH will start maxing out his contributions to his employer's pension plan, which should hopefully kick in this coming month. I already do max out my contributions.
- I have opened up a free internet savings account with a 4.5% annual interest rate.
- I have set up automated transfers for monthly savings and several bills. This means I have less stress each month when it comes to ensuring all bills are paid on time. Only 3 line items on our monthly bugdet are not automatically deducted from our account( groceries, travel and extras).
- We upgraded our internet and downgraded the monthly costs from 30 EUR to 23 EUR.
- Gas/electricity bill has been reduced from 148.01 EUR to 137.01 EUR per month.

Wow, even I did not realise how much has already been done until I just listed the items. Can you tell how excited I am?

----------------------------------------

One last note, I have found another goal I would like to track for 2008. Last year we earned 40.09 EUR interest on our savings. I am going to track what we earn this year and hopefully this number will start going up. Ultimate goal will be when we earn enough interest on savings that we can retire. Interim goal, try to beat the previous year's interest. Very optimistic goal, double last year's interest earned amount. We'll see what happens, but all in all I am quite happy about the progress we have already made. I feel we are on the right path.

I have been doing some research into the second question I had about pension savings, as discussed in my last post. I have found that it is better to contribute the maximum voluntary contributions to our employers'pension plans as the full contributions are tax exempt. WOOHOO!


I also need to make a correction, in the last post I mentioned we are taxed 38%, but if I take a look at BH's pay slip it looks more like 34%. I'll find out more from his next pay slip.

Even with just a 30% tax rate, that means we will be saving 420 EUR from his back paid contributions of 1400 EUR this month. Who does not like free money from the government, especially if it means you can save it?

The last couple of months BH and I have been focused on paying off our CC, with a goal of having it paid off by March. However just as that goal was within arms reach something came up. My BH's pension plan for his new job (new since August last year) has finally kicked in. This means that we need to back pay the monthly contributions for the last 7 months. As our pension savings are not very good for our age, we decided to pay the maximum voluntary contributions to play catch-up. This means we expect to pay a total of 1400 EUR this month to his pension. This is much more than we can afford to miss from his salary if we stick to the plan of paying off the CC by the end of March.

We have weighed out the budget and if we use the money we have stashed away in savings to pay off the CC to help pay the bills this month, we will be able to make it through to the next pay check. Hopefully we will also be able to keep our 1000 EUR emergency fund intact. The long term benefits of having that additional amount in his pension savings far out way the additional interest that we will have to pay on the CC ( about 20 Euros for the additional month).

Combined with his employer's contribution, that means his pension plan should receive a 2100 EUR boost in March. This will also mean that we would have already contributed a combined total of 2314 EUR to our pensions already in 2008. This will leave only 2486 EUR short of the goal for 2008.

This leads me to 2 questions that I have been trying to answer lately. The first is that due to my BH and mine's situation, should we save for our retirements based on the Dutch pension system or on the American pension system? This question is relevant for us as we both intend to move to the US to live eventually and because we will not be entitled to all the same benefits as Dutch people if we retire in the US. This question came up as I only realized we would not receive the same benefits recently.

As the Dutch pension’s savings schemes are calculated based on the Dutch retirement benefits model, much less personal savings are required for retirement income. However, if we do not receive the benefits, then we need to have saved ALOT more by now than we have actually saved for retirement (mini-freak out session). So I am currently adjusting my thinking to start saving as recommended by an American based retirement model.

Then the second question that has come up is whether I should be putting the additional retirement savings into a pension savings plan, or whether it would be better to save the money in a different way? I could open a trading account and have my bank invest the money saved up for retirement for us. I guess what might help us make the decision of whether we should be contributing more to the current employer pension plan or invest on our own would be what benefits the employer pension plan offers.

The plan is set up so that both the employee and the employer contributes a mandatory amount, then the employee is entitled to voluntarily contribute more up to a certain percentage of your gross salary. I am not sure yet if there is any tax relief on the voluntary contributions. I need to find this out as if there is tax relief, then the choice is already made for us. Considering we are currently taxed 38% of our earnings. However, if there is no tax relief, I ask myself whether it would be better to spread the risk and invest more of the voluntary contributions in a separate investing account with my bank.

As you can see I do not have the second question worked out yet, I still am lacking enough information to make an informed decision.

My BH and I were both paid on Friday, which means I have been able to transfer the amount I budgetted to pay off CC debt to our CC. 1200 EUR in total for this month ( roughly 350 of which was reflected in January's net worth update as that money was saved from January's budget and the rest shows on Feb's net worth report). This payment has meant we have surpassed 2 important (mini) goals that I had set for us.

1) Our total debt is now below 10,000 EUR

2) Our net worth is higher now that it has been since I started calculating it.

Both of these mini goals are not very spectacular in the grand scheme of things, but it makes me happy because I feel like we are definately moving in the right direction. It also makes me have hope that soon we would have a positive net worth.

_______________________________________

On another note, I found out today that the gas/electric company had already been by to read our meters. One of our neighbours must have let the meter person in to read our meters. I expect to hear from the company in mid-Feb, when they will send me the final bill for 2007-2008. I am hoping for some good news and that our monthly bills go down *fingers crossed*.

This year was the first year BH and I had to pay for gas and electricity, as in our previous apartment those costs were calculated as part of the rent. When we gave our initial readings through to the company, they carried out some calculations to estimate our annual usage and then based the monthly bills on those calculations. I know that we have used about half of the gas that they predicted (this is the most expensive part) and 3 times the amount of electricity (ouch, we definately need to re-assess this.), so I am really not sure which way the bills will go. It be nice to get some money back and have our monthly bills reduced, but I'm not sure. I'll just have to wait and see, at least I know now that the wait will not be for much longer.

BH was told today at work that he should expect a modest bonus in this month's pay package......but that was not the best thing about this news. The best thing was that as soon as he had mentioned how much he might expect, he added that it would all go to paying down our CC!!! That made me feel so good as I really feel we're starting to work from the same page.

We should both be paid this week (we both earn monthly salaries), and 5 days of vacation exchanged for pay from last year should be included in my pay check. So we should be waving goodbye to a sizeable chunk of our CC debt this month *fingers crossed*.

For the last year and a half I have been recording all our monthly bills at the beginning of each month in order to ensure that we put aside enough money to pay them. This year I am aiming to try and reduce our monthly bills. I have decided to list them on my blog for records sake and so that I may review any progress I make with them over this coming year.

Rent: 977.45 EUR
Gas and Electric: 148.08 EUR
Health insurance: 203.00 EUR
Telephone: 15.00 EUR
My cellphone: 19.50 EUR
BH's cellphone: 22.50 EUR
Personal property insurance: 13.00 EUR
Groceries: 200 EUR
Student loan payment: 63.11 EUR
Internet: 30 EUR
Train card for BH: 163.00 EUR
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Total monthly bills: 1854.64 EUR
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Rent should go up as of July 2008 due to an annual increment in line with inflation ( last year the rent went up an additional 13 EURs). As we pay an extremely good rent for our appartment, especially considering the area where we live, I do not see this changing much until we decide to buy.

Gas and electricity will start including water this year as well, however the water part will only be paid once a year and should be about 200 EUR. ( I will need to set up a monthly savings fund for this one). The gas and electricity bill I expect to go down by about 40 - 50 EURS this year, once we send in our actual meter readings for last year(finger's crossed).

Health insurance is going down in 2008 to 196.00 EUR per month. This includes both me and my BH. I have not adjusted the bill yet, as it is automatically deducted from my pay check every month and I will only know for certain how much it is then.

This year both of our cell phone contracts are finished. I want to keep my current phone, which I brought under the contract, and just start using pre-paid cards, as I barely use the phone except in emergencies. However, my BH does use his phone ALOT to call his family back home, so I expect we will either re-new his contract of if we find a better one deal, go for that.

I intend to upgrade my internet and I have not done this in 3 years!!! My BH recently found out that we could upgrade our account free of charge to a faster connection, but pay less per month. 23 EURs instead of 30 EURs. So once I have some time this week I am going in to upgrade our contract as it is in my name.

Well that's all the things I have thought of so far. Let's see how we're doing in a couple of months with these babies!

As I have emphasized in my previous posts, I am determined to pay off our CC debt by March. However, like most couples my BH and I have differing points of view when it comes down to how we spend or save our money.

When we first started living together, we could hardly ever discuss financial issues, as it would always end up in us fighting over mis-communications. Once we realised that BH was very nervous about discussing finances, as he had experienced various problems with them in the past and because of trust issues that existed between us, we were then able to build up a healthier manner of communicating about finance. We keep our finances in seperates accounts, however, I basically do all the bugeting and ensure that the right bills are paid at the right time etc. Any money that we do not need for bills is then up for discussion between the both of us.

Now, he likes to have nice things ( nice things = expensive, big brand name products), whereas I have always been a functional person who occasionally will splurge on nice things if there is the money for it. However, as we have been very strapped for money since we've been living together I have increasingly more brutal with my commitment to purchasing only functional items and reducing our monthly bills. However, I have been unable to say no to his wants and as I mentioned earlier, his wants can be quiet extravagant.

So finally, after months of talking to him about frugality, net worth, saving, investing and my financial goals, I have slowly started winning him over to the idea that we should be doing more with our money than spending it on immediate wants. However, there is still alot of work to be done, in the meantime I am trying to siphon the extra I can off of the top of our budget in order to achieve my financial goals for us.

This month, I have found that we have some money left over after all our bills, not as much as I was hoping as we have brought several items which were not budgeted for. As I have kept this extra money in my account, and he never looks at my account, he does not know. Infact I have lead him to believe that we are strapped for cash and even managed to say no to one of his wants this week, without caving and telling him about the money.

This puts me in the moral dilemma, as I would love to keep this extra money to pay off the CC, however I do not like to lie to my BH, nor deny him his wants if we can afford it.

I am absolutely determined to pay off our credit card debt as soon as possible and to maintain a zero balance on a month to month basis( in other words use the CC for purchases but pay it off in full each month). I have discussed this with my better half (BH) and we have agreed that we both want to be in a situation where we are ahead of our purchases, rather than constantly running behind them trying to catch them up, and never quite getting there.

I did a rough calculation of how much playing this silly game cost us last year and I am still reeling from the result. We carried a balance on our CC through out the entire year, which peaked at about 5,500 EUR and never fell below 1,800 EUR. Our CC has an interest rate of 17.5%. So we paid about 600 EUR in CC interest alone last year!!!!!

To put this amount in perspective, BH and I live in a one bedroom appartment and we pay about 688 EUR a month rent, so almost an entire's months rent for nothing. We have a scrubby second hand couch and I would love to buy new couches, which if I got a very cheap new 2 seater and 3 seater set, I would be looking at about 650-700 EUR. Instead we paid 600 EUR to Mr. Visa for nothing.

Oh, I do beg your pardon, the 600 EURs was not paid for nothing, it brought us the comfort of not having to be patient as we got some things we wanted quicker because we could buy them on credit, BUT it has delayed the purchase of my couches! It has cost us the peace of mind we would have if we had an extra month's rent sitting in the bank, plus interest!

So this year, I refuse to be impatient. Ths year I am going to pay off Mr. Visa and when I can afford it, we are going to get my couches and build our savings and laugh in the face of Mr. Visa and the oxymoron which is CREDIT card DEBT.

Although I have coming to this site religiously and hungrily gulping down all your posts, I have been avoiding posting as I have been ashamed.

In my original posts I was pretty certain that I would have managed to pay off my credit card by now, however due to life happening I was not able to do so and I did not want to mention it to all you people who are doing so well. It just puts me so much to shame. But as it is a new year and I am truely optimistic about this coming year I thought I'd start a fresh and write down the things I have been planning in my head for months.

My goals for 2008 are:

- Pay off my credit card once and for all (currently at 2109.14 EUR @ 17.5% --ouch!). I have a payment plan in place which should have this debt paid off by March'08, but I keep aiming for February. However. I know that this is a very optimistic goal and we are very unlikely to reach it.

- Add another 4800 EUR to our pensions and max out any additional contributions. In Holland pensions are set up differently to the states and we do have a much lower cap on how much we can contribute.

- Save at least 3000 EUR for long term savings.

- Add at least 2000 EUR to the current EF which is currently at 1000 EUR

- Keeping paying down my student loan with minimum payments as the rate is very lower (just above 3%). 8716 EUR currently and although this will keep me in debt for the next 14 years, I believe I will start paying it off quicker later, once I have managed to pay off my credit card and save up a bit for investing.

- Our net worth is currently at -5,650 EUR. My goals concerning this this year is to aim to increase it by at least 10,000 EUR.
My two step plan to do this is by decreasing our debt and increasing our savings. This co-incides with all the goals mentioned above and when calculated out would look like this:

Current Total Debt: 10,825 EUR
Minus
Credit card: 2109.14 EUR
Amount of paid off student loan excluding interest paid: 480 EUR
EOY Total Debt: 8235.86 EUR

Current Total Assets: 5,175 EUR
Minus
Pensions: 4800 EUR
Long term savings: 3000 EUR
EF: 2000 EUR
EOY Total Assets: 14,975 EUR

Assets - debt = net worth
Current: 5,175 EUR - 10,825 EUR = - 5,650 EUR
EOY: 14,975 EUR - 8235.86 EUR = 6,739.14 EUR

Diff. in net worth = 12,389.14 EUR

I believe with our current budget and annual income that this goal is attainable. We just both need to try and control our impulse spending. We managed to do this over Xmas. I think this last Xmas it the frugalist I've ever had, and we both enjoyed it tremendously. So we'll see how this goes. I still need to work out the fine details, but I do have some plans in mind to help reach this goal, which I'll detail in a later entry.

Well good luck to everyone in reaching your goals in 2008!

****READER BEWARE*******
****Long whiny, moaning, vent ahead***

I been feeling very frustrated the last couple of months, partially due to my job and partially due to the constant nagging feeling that if my fiance and I lived somewhere else (inparticularly Tampa, FL) we would be doing a lot better than we are now. As explained in my first post both of us are living in a country that is not our homeland. He is Puerto Rican and I hail from the deepest, darkest Africa ( in otherwords Zimbabwe). English is my first language, and he speaks Spanish, Italian and English fluently. We live in Holland.
As neither of us speak the language, this limits our job and education possibilities drastically.

We had a plan in place, but that was thrown up in the air several weeks ago when we found out that my fiance's job was no longer secure. If he needs to find a new job, it will delay the plan. This makes me want to just up sticks and move yesterday! But we both know that is not a solution to the situation and that it is not financially viable at the moment.

Ever feel like the rest of the world is running far off ahead and leaving you behind? That's how this makes me feel, although I know it is just the frustrations coming out. After all, what goes down must eventually go up....if you wait long enough.

So in the meantime, I am trying to focus on an immediate goal, to reduce the amount of stress eating I have been doing and to eat healthier in general. I do not need my unhealthy habits to place me in an early grave. I find if I focus on the day to day achievements, but at the same time keep placing them in the overall picture of the long term, it helps.