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Drive is Back
Last year was though at work - I was losing my motivation. I got promoted the year before and therefore missed some reachable target in the near future. Probably the COVID19-situation certainly also not contributed positively I assume. On average I worked 33 hours 27min per week in 2020. All that while having an all-inclusive contract, which means I was paid for 40+ hours.
This year is completely different: end of last year I got offered a new opportunity.
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How much should we spend on Rent?
We’re skimming the market for a new flat currently. Not looking to move immediately - we just want to get a feeling about the market and our priorities. What is nice to have for us? What is a must have? Do we need a balcony? How important is the location/ area? Is an open kitchen or a balcony more important? Which tradeoffs can we make? Etc.
So of course one important question came up: how much should be spend on rent?
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Bottom Line of 5 Days Quarantine
Today was the last day of our 5-day mandatory quarantine. We had to quarantine after we entered Austria from abroad (if you remember our strange flight) and on the 5th day (which was today as the day of entrance is day 0) we’re allowed to get tested.
So what’s the bottom line?
I tried to keep walking 5.000 steps a day. My better half almost killed me when walking up and down for 30min+ - 15 steps in one direction and 15 steps back.
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Salary Increases
In one of my first posts I stated that I reached my goal of € 80k gross salary per year end of last year. In 2017 I started with less than € 50k as my target salary, now in 2021 I’m around € 85k.
That’s quite a good development in my opinion and working at a big IT consulting company paid off for me (literally). The following table is showing my increases year over year as salaries are adapted per January at my current employer.
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I eventually filled the About Page
Today I eventually equipped the About page with some information and contact detail. Not very detailed yet as I don’t want to completely deanonymize me. Therefore I’m struggling a bit with which information to provide.
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I switched my ETF(s) to Vanguard
As of February 2021 I switched my savings plan from 70% MSCI World and 30% MSCI Emerging Markets ETFs to a FTSE All World ETF. I had the switch on my mind since a while and a recent post from Banker on Wheels finally pushed me to do it.
The why is quite easy:
Simplicity! One ETF instead of two so I don’t need to care about rebalancing anymore - super-simple.
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Recommendation 📖 Retire in Progress
I felt a bit sick today and therefore was not doing much, mostly sleeping or consuming my (well maintained) news feed.
One of my favorite bloggers currently is Retire in Progress. He is blogging about detailed insights on his financiel situation, his view on FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early), as well as a bi-weekly monthly learning journal with well curated content and a lot of long reads. Most of his posts are rather long but definitely worth the time spent.
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Monthly Portfolio Update 📈 Jan 2021
To give a bit more detail on my portfolio I thought I could share a monthly update. It should also help me to track the history and contemplate about my portfolio.
What is the monthly portfolio update showing? I created a view in my tracking tool which is split up into 5 columns and will be filtered on the last month:
Entire Portfolio is the 1st column, showing the summary of all other 4 columns.
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Today we had a strange Flight
We just finished our staycation after 40+ days and our way back was really strange. We were booked on a theoretically existing but physically non-existing flight. The website of the airline and all portals (e.g. Google Flights) were still showing the flight (until the time of departure), whereas on the local airport nobody knew about this flight at all.
There was the “same flight” (same number, same destination, same airplane) 3 hours later but via airline hotline nobody could tell us anything about it and they just told us that our initial flight will happen.
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200km 🏃 in January 2021
This month - January 2021 - was my first month where I reached 200km with running. Until now the most kilometers ran during a month were around 185 km. The distance gathered during my 7 runs in 7 days definitely helped and the 7 consecutive days are clearly visible in the summary graphic from Garmin. Quite a nice summary: 200km in 20 activities, each lasting around 1 hour and 10 kilometers, resulting in a pace slightly lower than 6 min/km (which means average speed slightly above 10 km/h).
