Municipalities love forcing ex-partners to pay alimony to avoid one person ending up on welfare. That said, getting married for tax reasons is probably not a good idea :).
Woa, really? I already hate the fact BF is forced to pay for me being unemployed because we live together, but we are not allowed to file taxes jointly. But this... how hypocrite! Not marrying is not because we don't love each other though, it is thee institution of marriage that doesn't seem to fit us. However, I am willing to reconsider my principles if it improves our possition. BF on the otherhand is more of an idealist and kind of strongheaded sometimes. Still love him though, married or not ;)
Maybe he can be dissuade to getting a registered partnership or a prenup of sorts. We'll see.
As for your budget: If I'm correct, you can offset your asset tax with your student loan so you don't pay that, correct? As for the general budget, it seems extremely frugal (I would have a hard time living on so little money, but then I love buying good food). There might be 30 a month in getting Internet only and ditching cable and 30 or so in getting the dog food online, but that won't make a huge difference.
Thanks :) Good to know we are on the right track regarding expenses. I maintain a vegetable garden, we eat vegetarian and cook 90% made from scratch, so that might explain the low groceries costs. Unfortunately, our hairy friend is pretty big, young and very active. So even though I buy dogfood in bulk online, it adds up. Also, she is our first dog so we bought some items that will hopefully last a dog life (bike trailer, leash, crate etc.). On contrary, when I start working full time and BF goes back to working more hours, dog walking service for the afternoon seems pretty inevitable. 9 euros a day, 4 days a week equals 162 euro a month. A doubling of doggy expenses, outch...the things we do for dogs...
On the bigger ticket items, I can think of three things:
1) You save at 1.5%. That is quite abysmal. Yes, you collect on the carry with your student loans, but a 1.5% return on investment is not a lot. I would suggest investing at least half in stocks/bonds
2) As an alternative: In rural Brabant, the housing market has not recovered yet. You can buy a very nice house for not very much money, and you have the downpayment. With interest rates what they are, you stand to save hundreds of euros.
3) Utilities seems a bit high - is your place poorly insulated?
1) Definitly agree I should get over my "do not invest/gamble with borrowed money"-dogma. However, life long drilling is not erased quickly. Will start with MrFrugalNL's suggestion: reading up on investing for Europeans, start directly with some deposits and than start investing approximately 20% of the borrowed sum we I get over myself ;)
2) Yep, this is the plan for now. I am looking around at real estate in the area to get a feel for the market. We are not in a rush to buy, when we do we plan to live there for the rest of our lives. First, we'll see how are incomes develop in the coming months and we are not decided yet how much contruction work we can handle (in other words: how "finished" the house must be for us).
3) They are high, I noticed as well. There are a few explanations I can think of:
- Poor insulation. Our living room windows were really drafty and thin glassed (as in: billowing curtains, never comfy). Fortunately, they have been replaced this summer. Also, the central heating boiler was a very old inefficient model that had issues for months. It broke this year and was replaced with a high efficiency type now :). Still, this place has moist issues that undoubtedly influence heating efficiency and also prevent me from linedrying in wet winters :( As the moist is due to poor wall construction in this old house, I don't see any way to fix this without breaking the bank.
- Being home a lot. As mentioned, BF has been sick for most of 2014, spends many hours gaming online and this will cost quite some kWh I guess. I'm also home a lot, do batch cooking / conserving. Could be this uses up some additional gas.
- Frogs. We breed poison dart frogs, housed in lighted and mildly heated terraria. A lot of kWh there, but we keep track of this and they are profitable (by a margin) so they can stay to earn their keep :)
However, I didn't come here to give excuses, so from now on I will take a closer look to our current usage of utilities. Hopefully we will get this down.
Thanks for sparring with me guys, I really appreciate it!