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Author: Mr and Mrs DDU.
Perhaps the most important factor for how quickly we can reach financial independence and retire early is how much we save. The difference between saving $30,000 and $40,000 a year can snowball significantly over a decade.
We aren’t trying to save every last cent we can. We want to enjoy our lives and experiences now, not just when we reach FIRE. However, at the same time we recognise that living a simpler life means we save more, it also means we don’t need to accumulate as much wealth to afford the lifestyle we want of living off only our investment income.
We are currently aiming to save around 50% to 60% of our net income.
Most of the money we are saving is being split between our house fund and investments. We post any articles about our money savings choices or habits here.
March 2022 Savings Update
Dividend Income: $827.78
Regular Income: $7,988
Adsense Income: $0.00
Total Income: $8,816
Expenses: $4,780
Savings Rate: $4,035
Savings Percentage: 45.8%
Here is the graph:
We invested a total of $4,035 of our savings into shares (not including any Dividend Re-Investment Plans). We added $0 of this month’s savings to our house deposit.
Here are the changes compared to last year:
March 2021 rate: 75.4%
March 2022 rate: 45.8%
Un-Improvement: 29.6%
March 2021 savings: $11,224
March 2022 savings: $4,035
Un-Improvement: $7,189
Income
Dividend Income – In March we received $827.78. Our dividends covered 17.3% of our expenses.
Regular Income – This is the after-tax figure if you’re wondering. It is the combined figure of both our incomes plus any bank interest we have received. This amount also includes any government payment(s) we receive now that we have Little DDU in our life. Our superannuation (payments made for our personal retirement – sort of like 401k in the US or NEST in the UK) contributions are not included in our income or savings rate, but do help our long-term wealth.
Google Adsense – As the name suggests, it’s when Google makes a payment for advertising on the blog. We received a payment in November. Thanks for reading the blog and keeping the ‘lights’ on!
Expenses
Here we go, non-regular expenses that happened this month:
Car service – Our car is around 15 years old now, so taking care of it is important. We did our car service, with a few things needing fixing, so this one cost around $1,000. There will be more to come because some parts needed to be ordered in.
Laptop – Mr DDU’s laptop needed replacing. It’s important for us to have good ‘tools’ because they’re the key thing we use for work. We also spend around $1,000 on this.
Savings Tables
Here are our two savings tables since we started blogging showing the savings rate % and the savings rate in $ terms:
Final thoughts
We weren’t going to repeat the huge savings from 2021 – we earned less, while also having a couple of large expenses. It was still a decent month and the dividends are now building nicely.
The 3 key factors for us to become wealthy are:
- How much we earn
- How much of our earnings we save
- How hard we can make our savings/investments work
These monthly savings posts will track how good we’re doing with the first 2 factors.
How did your savings go in March?
Thanks for reading this article about our financial journey Down Under. Onwards and upwards!
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Image and article originally from dividendsdownunder.com. Read the original article here.