Like most people, we can’t believe it’s 2020!
2019 was an exciting year for us, but we spent a lot of it not blogging. The break was a good one and helped us to re-establish our goals and what part we want to play in the Australian FIRE community.
However, part of us losing our way, even if temporarily, is that we didn’t have a very good year when it came to saving.
For anyone new to the blog, we are high income earners. We should be able to save a high percentage of our salaries with very little effort.
And yet, year after year, we fall short of that. 2019 was no different, in fact, it was our worst year yet.
While we are a little late to the party releasing our 2019 savings data, Michelle over at Frugality and Freedom has released a post featuring a bunch of Australian bloggers and their 2019 wrap up posts. Check it out!
We Bought a House
As we shared in this post, in 2019 Poopsie and I bought a house. While we didn’t include any of the purchase costs in our expenditure (eg. stamp duty etc.), we have since done a number of renovations.
We completely gutted and renovated our ensuite bathroom. Poopsie did all of the demolition and he also put up the new walls. We hired a tiler and then Poopsie installed the vanity and new toilet. We had a shower screen installed. Despite Poopsie doing a lot of the work, it still cost us money. It was definitely worth it as we love our new ensuite and it’s an enormous improvement on the old one.
Poopsie installing our new vanity.
We have also paid 50% of the cost of installing new bedroom cupboards and shutters. These will occur in the next couple of months which means we will have to pay the remaining 50%. Both will make a big difference to our home and we are really looking forward to them being complete.
We have a long(ish) list of more renovations we want to do but we won’t be doing anything major in 2020. Our focus will be on reducing our mortgage (more on that below) and saving up for those future renovations.
Travel
It was a big travel year for us!
In March, we went to New Zealand with my brother, his wife and my two nephews. We explored the North Island and had a great time. We will of course write a Where We’ve Travelled post on our trip, but needless to say, we will be going back.
We also took a trip to Melbourne which was Poopsie’s first proper visit there. We had a couple of trips to Sydney and one to Townsville to attend a family event.
We spent Christmas and New Years in Singapore with my sister, her husband and my nephew. We had a great time and will definitely return. The highlight for Poopsie was definitely the food.
Food, Glorious Food
This was definitely the area we fell down. We spent around $13k on groceries (including alcohol) and another $7k on eating out.
That’s right, we spent $20k feeding ourselves. There is no doubt that this is shameful, given we are just two people. This will definitely be a focus for us in 2020.
Our 2020 Goals
We only have one goal for 2020: to get our mortgage to under $475k.
This is definitely a stretch goal for us, but we are determined to get there. Every spare cent will be going onto the mortgage and with some tightening of the belt, we hope to get there.
Our 2019 Savings Rate
So now the figure you’ve probably all been waiting for as you read this post, our 2019 Savings Rate:
This is by far our worst savings rate since we started tracking it. Here’s a graph showing our savings rate decreasing (almost) every year:
We want to start turning that around so hopefully next year we can show you a graph that has an uptick.
How did your savings go in 2019? We’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!
Definitely not your best year of saving, but at least you had a good time and still managed to put aside a fair amount. We managed a savings rate of about 50% this year which was pretty much as expected!
Sounds like you had a wonderful year of adventures and life experiences.
I’m interested to know where you buy your groceries and what you get? Even though you stopped posting, keeping track was a great way to see how you went and identify an area you can hopefully easily focus on to reduce in 2020.
Would love to see a post with more reno before and after details if you are keen to share.
Best of got luck with this year’s goal of reducing your mortgage!