Talking About Personal Experiences

I first started a household budget book when I was around 18 years old. My parents gave me a monthly allowance of 50€, but somehow, my money kept disappearing—without anything to show for it. Frustrated and curious, I decided to track every cent I spent.

You can’t imagine my shock, dismay, and financial awakening after just one month!

At school, we had a coffee vending machine—each cup cost 50 cents. I had a routine: one cup during the morning break, another at lunch. That’s 1€ per day. Over 20 school days in a month? 20€ gone. On coffee!

I was spending 40% of my entire allowance on coffee—without even realizing it!

Thank goodness I learned this lesson before moving out for university and living on my own! From that moment on, my household budget book and I became inseparable best buddies - and still are more than 20 yrs later.

During my time at university, I had an average monthly income of around 1,000€. My rent was 650€, which, as you can imagine, didn’t exactly align with the "spend only 30% of your income on housing" rule. This left me with about 350€ for everything else. I allocated 100€ for food and set aside an emergency budget of 50€, which covered things like new clothes, shoes, detergent, toilet paper, and other essentials. Despite the tight budget, I managed to save 50€, with the remainder going toward service provider bills.

Quite frankly: this would have been an impossible undertaking without my best buddy.

My income during university came from a mix of a student loan, financial support from my parents, and earnings from part-time jobs. When I entered the adult working world, I had around 25,000€ in debt, including 5,000€ in credit card debt, with plans to pay it off over 12 years. Despite earning no more than 1,000€ per month, I managed to pay off the debt in just 8 years, with about 260€ going toward repayments each month.