H1-2019-financial update

Halfway the year, our first financial overview of the year is long overdue! One of the reasons not to write about our personal finances is that the road to FIRE is a marathon and we are just steadily moving forward. Our incomes are stable. We set up an investment system and we stick to it. Very effective but very boring. Still good to see our lines are moving up north steadily!

Our savings rate

is at an impressive 44.54%, well above the 35% annual target. We have had a few helpful events that boosted our savings rate. The costs of remortgaging are tax deductible. So our yearly tax refund was bigger than usual. I ditched my worst insurance ever. I had a one-off side hustle that paid out 700 euros in January. No surprises are expected from expensive holidays either in the remainder of the year. Our next holiday flights have been paid with KLM flying blue points. This severely dented our points total, so if you want to sponsor our travels, have a look here how and why you should get an AmEx flying blue credit card as well 😁. Or just click here to get one.

The mortgage

is boring. With a 1.8% interest rate fixed for over 9 more years there is no need for extra payments. So in H1 we simply paid our monthly instalments, resulting in a slightly lower remaining debt. We have paid off 32% of our mortgage by now.

FI percentage
is over 22% now. A stock market going bzrk is really helpful and is only getting more helpful now that we are playing the game with 6 digits at stake.

It's all relative
It is very hard to lower the amount of cash locked up in our house; 54% of our net worth currently. Putting substantial money into VWRL every month does not seem to help much. This calls for drastic measures! I added a new category to the inset of the figure. No money is in it yet but that might chance very soon. We'll keep you posted!