[OC] Unser erstes Geschäftsjahr als sparsames Paar nach dem Kauf unseres ersten Hauses. (Niederlande, Preise in Euro)

congrats on the pregnancy 🙂

Some notes:

* First a correction: I made this sheet last week (and lost the Sankeymatic file) and missed some costs from the times where I forgot the joint bank account card for groceries for example. This adds another €330 to the groceries, and €169 miscellaneous spending. Minor edit.

* Post was made with [SankeyMATIC.com](http://SankeyMATIC.com), and exported our combined bank accounts as a CSV file. Our banks automatically categorize things like „groceries“ in the banking app which is what I used to categorize some of the costs. Some of these might be 100% accurate, and may include some non-food stuff. I manually made the diagram.
* We live in rural Netherlands, and bought a 96 m2 house for €285k ($335k, 1000 sqft).
* Yes we’re quite frugal, we both come from families who weren’t necessarily poor, but cautious with spending money. We’re quite precise (okay, maybe frugal) with food. We basically never throw away any food, and plan meals for the whole week. We both eat free lunch at work.
* We put down over €50k on the house as a downpayment, but that all came from savings. I started the financial year the day after completing and moving into our house. No major DIY-projects had to be done the first year, except for at the end where we’re doing the babyroom.
* I just started working after college, and couldn’t find a full-time position yet.
* We have over 450 clothes for our upcoming child. We got over 90% free from people around us and second hand.
* We did 95% of the house, garden, and baby-room work ourselves, including installing solar.
* We only eat out like twice a year.
* It’s very uncommon here to take out a loan for your car. You either buy it or (private-)lease them. Though everything’s possible of course. Gas is quite expensive though.
* My wife paid off all (student) loans, and we have no other debt besides the mortgage. I only start paying off my student loans from 2026 onwards (0% interest).
* We don’t have a credit card (except PayPay / Revolut without any charges).
* Gas and electricity is quite expensive here, averaging €0,26 per kWh and €1,30 per m3 of gas. However, our home is well insulated and, combined with solar power, we only pay an average of €68 a month, which includes montly fees for the power company. We used about 1800 kWh of power, 321 m3 of gas, and generated 4150 kWh of power with solar.

I’m surprised you need so much health insurance in Europe. I’ve always assumed it would be free.

Your gas is so expensive. Get an EV, it will probably pay for itself within 5 years

Need to see a breakdown of savings