Aussie Firebug

Financial Independence Retire Early

My Savings Rate 15/16

My Savings Rate 15/16

Lets talk savings rate for a second. It is in my opinion THE most important factor to FI (financial independence) and determines a lot of things like:

  1. Whether you actually reach FI
  2. How long it will take you to reach FI
  3. Gives you a clear indication as to what your FI number is

It’s really the foundation for the concept of financial independence retire early (FIRE) which is what this entire blog is about.

There are only three things you need to do in order to become extremely wealthy:

  1. Spend less than you earn
  2. Invest the rest
  3. Wait

The very first step in becoming rich enough to retire early is to save your money. The second step is what gets most of the limelight and chatter.

Investing.

But don’t get it twisted. You won’t EVER invest your way to FI if you don’t spend less than what you earn, because that’s… you know…impossible.

And finally the third step is the time you have to let compounding interest dominate for you.

There could be an argument made for the amount of time you have as the most important factor but it’s kinda out of your control as in you 1. don’t know how much time you have (could die tomorrow) and 2. Can’t change it even if you knew you had X amount of years left. You have a lot more control over whether you spend less than you earn.

 

Savings Rate For Last Financial Year

Let me cut to the chase.

My savings rate for last financial year was…

74.39%

Last financial year I made $72,105.04 (after tax) and spent $18,468.42.

One of my top ten tips (LINK TO TIPS) I suggest to people trying to save money is always, always track your spending.

As the old saying goes ‘A goal without a plan is just a wish’.

You cannot set a plan of attack without knowing exactly how much you spend. You know roughly what your income is going to be, you then need to plan for the amount you want to spend each year to achieve your goal of whatever spending rate you choose.

 

 

Breakdown Of Spending

There are two ways you can track your spending:

  1. The hardcore way = manually inputting ever transaction into an Excel spreadsheet
  2. The easy way = Using an online service that feeds into you bank account (something like pocketbook)

I use the easy way but there is absolutely no problems using the hardcore method.

Let’s have a look at where my cash went last year

SavingsRateoverallBar

 

Below is the same data but represented in a pie chart.

SavingsRateoverall

One of my favorite features of Pocketbook is its ability to create sub categories. My biggest expense is my car for example. I spent a  total of $3,385.61 dollars on it last FY. But that’s a little vague isn’t it. Luckily I recorded sub categories for it and can dig deeper into the overall ‘car’ category to see it.

CarSpending

Pretty cool huh.

The software lets you see where the costs came from and even what months you spent the most amount on. The above are screenshots only, but this graph is actually interactive which is pretty cool because you can un-select multiple sub categories from above and the pie will change and you will see the spending per month change on the fly. This sort of stuff really excites my inner finance geek (what a sad existence I live lol)

 

 

Before You Ask

There are a lot of things missing or not quite right with my above spending, so before anyone points it out let me set the record straight!

  • I only moved out of home at the start of this year hence why my rent is quiet low and overall expenses
  • Everything above is only my income and expenses. I do however pay for me and my partner some times (like for dinners and what not) but she also pays for things too so it’s hard to keep track of that. We have not yet joined finances
  • My rent ($110 a week) covered gas, electricity , internet, and water. This was a room share deal in the county (cheap as chips)
  • I don’t pay a phone bill…sorta. I pay the minimum which is around $20 bucks I think, every six months so I can keep my number from Telstra, this small expense falls under utilities. This means a don’t have credit and can’t call people when I’m out and about. It usually blows people minds when I tell them I don’t pay for credit and am not on a plan. But with the availability of open wifi’s increasing, it is my opinion that we will see less and less people buy cellular data/credit unless they’re in a remote area. Nearly all calls and messaging will be done through the internet in the future
  • I have not included the costs (or incomes) of my investments
  • I have not included my accounting fees because they are a deductible expenses associated with my investments. In the end I plan to transition completely to index funds and will be doing the accounting myself. Anything investment wise I keep off because I would then need to include the income generated by those investments to be fair and that would get tricky
  • Costs associated with this blog are not included
  • Going out to eat as an activity fall under ‘Entertainment’, food is where we had to eat somewhere but not as an activity (like at a petrol station) and groceries are anything bought at the supermarket
  • I group ‘Holidays’ as one big expense and than create sub categories for each holiday. Anything that is spent on the holiday falls under that sub category holiday. If we buy groceries during a holiday, it will be categorizes as the holiday and not as groceries. Gives me a better indication about how much the holiday costs me
  • ‘Presents’ covers gift to myself and others (Christmas, Fathers day, Valentines day etc.)
  • ‘Personal’ covers health related things like physio, dentist, ambulance insurance etc.
  • And no I don’t have any kids. The one expense for ‘Kids’ is because I recently became an Uncle

 

 

How Do You Compare?

I like to compare the savings rate to the nutrition for a professional bodybuilder. Some people say that Bodybuilding is 80% nutrition and only 20% the other stuff (training and sleep). You can’t out exercise a bad diet. Period.

You can train the house down 6 hours a day 7 days a week, but if you’re not fueling your body with the right amounts nutrients it needs to function and repair itself then you’re not going to see results.

This is the same for those striving for FIRE. A healthy savings rate enables you to invest capital. The better the savings rate, the better the results are going to be.

It’s a rookie mistake among first time gym goers. They concentrate so hard on their routine and make sure they put a solid 2 hours in, only to swing by McDonald’s on the way home from the gym thinking they have improved their health.

You would have been better off simply eating a healthy meal and NOT going to the gym!

Optimism your savings rate first, and then concentrate on the investing part.

A dollar saved is a dollar earned. Where as a dollar made isn’t really a dollar, it’s more like 0.70c because of tax. Think about that for a moment.
I would love to know what your savings rate looks like. Have you optimized your expenses so much that my measly 74% savings rate pales in comparison? Maybe this was an eye opener and now you have something to aim for?

Thoughts, feelings and emotions in the comment section below.

 

 

 

 

June 2016 Net Worth $211,010 (+$28,599)

June 2016 Net Worth $211,010 (+$28,599)

Woah!

Big jump this month with over $28K…well sort of.

Let me explain.

 

Firstly, I finally got around to updating my Super which has gone up around $6K since I last updated it. So that’s quite a jump there.
Secondly, my properties have rebounded a bit.

 

 

Prop3.NetWorth.June16Prop2.NetWorth.June16

Prop1.NetWorth.June16

*sourced from Commonwealth bank valuations/RP Data

I have not been one to get valuations done monthly or anything like that. I usually try to do it annually or if I’m applying for another loan (in which the banks usually do a reassessment of the valuation anyway).

However, over the last couple of months my online valuation tool offered by Commbank has been very active. Sometimes the tool (which gathers data from various buy/sell information of similar properties and using RP Data) would not change a valuation on a properties for over 12 months! But lately it has been very active. Majority of the time you won’t see a change in my properties value in my monthly net worth updates because they usually don’t change that often. But when they do I include them in the update because as you can see, the swings they created in my net worth are substantial.

 

I managed to save a bit of cash too which was nice.

And I managed to break into the $200K club Woohoo!

 

I set myself the goal of reaching quarter of a mill ($250K) by the end of the year which seems more achievable now.

Time will tell.

 

 

NetWorth.June16

 

 

Networth

 

[wp_charts title=”linechart” type=”line” align=”alignleft” width = “100%” datasets=”-36000,-36000, -32000,-7000,20000,32000,45000,65000,83254,130000, 187910″ labels=”1-Jan-2011,1-Jul-2011,1-Jan-2012,1-Jul-2012,1-Jan-2013,1-Jul-2013,1-Jan-2014,1-Jul-2014,1-Jan-2015,1-Jul-2015,1-Jan-2016″]

Date Rolling NetWorth $ Change % Change Notes
 1-Jan-2011  -$36,000  $0  0.00% HECCS debt
 1-Jan-2012  -$32,000  $4,000  0.00% Started Full-time work late Nov
 1-Jan-2013  $20,000  $52,000  0.00% Built property and recieved FHOG ($21,000)
 1-Jan-2014  $45,000  $25,000  125.00%
 1-Jan-2015  $83,254  $38,254  85.01% Bought second IP
 17-Feb-2015  $110,215  $26,961  32.38%
 18-Feb-2015  $121,541  $11,326  10.28%  IP’s re-valued
 4-Mar-2015  $123,715  $2,174  1.79%
 18-Mar-2015  $122,128  -$1,587  -1.28% Paid for holiday
 15-Apr-2015  $125,906  $3,778  3.09% Withdrew equity from property
 14-May-2015  $127,906  $2,001  1.59%
 18-Jun-2015  $131,904  $3,998  3.13%
 21-Jun-2015  $152,904  $21,000  15.92% IP’s re-valued
 12-Jul-2015  $159,904  $7,000  4.58% Paid 4K off HECS Debt
 23-Jul-2015  $161,904  $2,000  1.25%
 31-Aug-2015  $167,904  $6,000  3.71%
 31-Sep-2015  $170,110  $2,205  1.31%  Car went out of Portfolio, Bought IP 3, Super went up and one IP went up
 31-Oct-2015  $171,376  $1,265  0.74%  Big bills. Not much saved.
 30-Nov-2015  $173,263  $1,887  1.10% Super went down slightly
 31-Dec-2015  $186,910  $13,648  7.88% IP went up in value
12-Jan-2016  $187,910  $1,000  0.54%  Some big bills
2-Feb-2016  $189,910  $2,000  1.06%  Bills (again)
1-Mar-2016  $191,410  $1,500  0.79%  Didn’t save very well
1-Apr-2016  $193,410  $2,000  1.04%  Steady month
1-May-2016 $182,410  -$11,000  -5.69%  Two IP’s went down.
1-Jun-2016  $211,010  $28,600  15.68%  All 3 IP’s went up and super was updated

 

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