Hi Everyone,
I found this blog a few weeks ago and it has already helped me a lot. I'm 25 years old, live in the Netherlands (but I'm using numbers in dollars), started working a year ago and I would like to increase my 'stash'. Here are my details:
Income
My net income last year was 36,000 USD after taxes (are high here; about 56,000 USD before taxes), which is 3000 USD per month
Current expenses
1000 on rent (incl. electricity/water/internet)
200 on groceries
110 on health insurance
25 on mobile phone
10 on other insurances
35 on sports
20 on newspaper
680 on all other things, including vacations (averaged over last year, was already less this month after I found this blog)
TOTAL: 2080 USD, which leaves me about 900 to save each month.
Assets
I now have about 24,000 in savings. I don't own a car, house or anything else of significant value.
I'm automatically saving up for my pension, but I have to admit that I have no idea how much, or how much I have right now. I can't get to it before I'm 67 years old.
Liabilities
I don't have any student loans or any other debts.
I can and will cut back on the 'other expences', those are a bit too high I think. I started tracking my money when I got my first job (1 year ago), but I just started really looking at my expenses after reading blogs like these.
Specific question
I'm now renting an appartment, but I would like to buy a house of my own in about 3-4 years. Currently my money is in a savings account, where I only get 1.5% interest. When I read about investing (I don't know a lot about it already, but I'm currently reading about index investing) they all say that you should think long term. So do you think it is wiser for me to keep on saving towards a deposit for a house in 3-4 years, or should I already start investing altough I do not have a lot of money already.
Thanks for reading!
Paulie
ps. Sorry for the possible grammatical mistakes.