Barcelona Trip & Raise: February Monthly Report

Oh February, a very short month that literally flew by! Only four weeks, which felt like only two. Well, in my first monthly report in January, I talked about My Obsession with Money. For the February monthly report, let’s look at business travel.

At the beginning of February, my managers asked me if I would like to go to Barcelona for a week – well, that’s all I heard. I didn’t even listen to what I should go and do there – HELL YES!! I was leaving 5 days later, so that went really fast.

Monday evening I arrived at my hotel in Barcelona, it felt really fancy to fly without having to pay for my own flight. The entire trip felt like going on vacation, but then without the time off, I figured later.

It’s Exhausting and Amazing

It was amazing, the week flew by. It was totally exhausting me because of a few things:

• My colleague that I worked closely with on-site only spoke Spanish, no hablo Inglés. My Spanish is pretty decent – meaning I can understand most of what people say, but actually talking back and constructing sentences is something else. I am much better at saying words, but yeah that doesn’t always work out so well.
• I made extremely long days, I was there to bring some sense in their administration. The only thing that we had were printed receipts, dating back to 2017. Yeah, I had a lot to do!
• When I was having some time off in the evening, I went to the nice restaurants and see something of the city. So I adjusted to the culture, had dinner between 9 pm and 10 pm, which meant I went to bed late.

Traveling for work is fun and exciting, but it’s also extremely tiring and you make really long days.

I came back to the Netherlands on Friday evening, totally exhausted. On top of that, Saturday my very best German friend celebrated her birthday. Meaning a 3.5 hour drive one way, wayyy to much sugar and food on Saturday, and driving back on Sunday on too little sleep.

So, last week I’ve been fighting off a cold. Nothing can hold me back, I’m determined not to get sick. At the beginning of the week I had a couple of 10 hour nights, which were amazing.

Because of the travel and long days combined with my full weekends, it felt like February only lasted about 2 weeks instead of 4.

February Monthly Report: Spending

Let’s go into the February spending of the February Monthly Report.

In February I’ve got a very good savings percentage, caused by a few things:

• During my business travel, I didn’t have to pay for my food
• I’ve had busy weekends where I’ve been at a friends’ house or at my parents’ house, which also means that I don’t have to pay money for groceries
• February is a week shorter than January, so I have less time to spend my money (literally)

My spending in February is broken down as follows:

Of which my fixed expenses:

• Rent €280 – I still share my apartment with other people, which is a good way to keep spending low for sure!
• Travel Insurance €2.07
• Credit Card Monthly fee €1.25
• Phone plan €8

My other expensese:

• Sports watch €11.99, I still had a gift card from Christmas and decided to spend it this month.
• Dining out €3.40. We went out for dinner for my friends’ birthday, I only paid a small part and the rest I will pay to her in March.
• Gifts €10.31
• Concerts €72, for a concert in 2020 and after we bought tickets is was already sold out. Crazy things!
• Groceries €61.05, again a cheap month, since I spend all my weekends away from home and also I was in Barcelona for one week where my work paid all my food expenses.

As you can see, no crazy things happened this month. I love to spend money on experiences, of which concerts are definitely the experiences I love most.

This totaled me for a savings rate of 74.5%, which is even more than last month. It’s awesome! Especially since I’m planning to go travel at the end of the year, my savings rate will most likely be negative or very low. I’m happy to make up for it by saving a lot at the beginning of the year.

February on the Blog

One important thing to mention in my February monthly report: I’ve decided on my WordPress theme! It’s so hard to find one that you truly like and fills all your needs. Even though the one that I currently have is not perfect, I’m still very satisfied with it for the upcoming period.

I’m still very excited for my blog baby although February was much harder than January. Less time to work on it, equal output I expect of myself, so it’s not always going as planned. I’m still getting up every day, at 6 am currently, so that helps a lot to keep going!

My most popular blog posts of February:

1. The Waiting Game – Feeling Impatient on the Road to Financial Independence You’re getting impatient on the road to financial independence? Me too! Learn how to deal with the waiting game, to make the process sustainable.
2. How to be Like Warren Buffett – 11 Powerful Lessons Learned Warren Buffett one of the people on the planet who is blessed with so much common sense it’s insane. Curious what Warren Buffett can teach you about investing and about life? Read the 11 lessons that I’ve learned from Warren Buffett.
3. 88 Life-Changing Money Affirmations to Attract Wealth and Abundance Affirmations really helped me get to where I am today in terms of my money mindset. They speak to your subconscious mind and activate it to receive. Do you want to attract money, wealth and abundance in your life? 88 money affirmations to help your brain open up to all the possibilities of the universe. (This is one of my articles that did well on Pinterst, my first one actually to get some clicks. If you’re interested in learning more about Pinterest you can let me know, so I can write an article or something like that!)

February Monthly Report: Goal Setting

February Goals

I have to admit that I’ve not always looked at my goals and forget about half of them. In March I will print them out so that I’m reminded of them daily. Let’s see if that will help!

My February goals:

• Write my first review-post – FAIL. One of the goals I’ve completely forgotten about, so let’s try again in March.
• Write one guest post – PASS. I’ve written my #1 money tip for Thrifty Thrivers in an awesome interview series.
• Create Pins for every post I have – FAIL. This goal I remembered, but I simply didn’t have the time to do it.
• Choose my WordPress theme – PASS. I’ve finally settled with a WordPress theme and I’m so happy about it! It’s so so good to finally have that off my chest and go on to optimizing the rest of my website.
• Sell my old study books – FAIL. It wasn’t really a priority this month, so I’ll put them online this month and see how many I can sell!
• Get rid of items I don’t use/love/need – PASS. I’ve cleaned my room where I currently live last month, when I also wrote my post about minimalism. I’ve visited my parents’ house the past weekend, where I also have a room full of stuff still. Over the weekend I managed to get rid of a lot of stuff, which I mostly donated to friends/family/the homeless. I could sell them, but most of the things weren’t worth more than a few bucks, so that’s not worth my time for me.
• Increase my salary by €400 gross – PASS. I’ve even gone over my expectations. I got my promotion, including a gross salary increase of €477 monthly. In March I’ll get the increase from the months January to March, so I’m expecting a great income in March. If you want to read more about how I did it, you can read my article about How to Get a Promotion When You Just Started Working or Stop Being Afraid to Negotiate Your Salary.

March Goals

For March I want to keep connecting with all of you through Twitter mostly. Twitter is the medium for me where I feel most connected, and it’s the connection that really brings me energy! I’m also trying to step up my Pinterest game, see where it gets me!

• Write my first review-post – this month I really want to do it!
• Create Pins for every post I have – let’s try again.
• Sell my old study books – I think that I can really get some money from that, so this month I’ll put them online.
• Write another guest post – it’s really motivating to me to write posts for others. I’m much more committed and trying to put my all into it! If anyone is interested, let me know!
• Submit my taxes – I always postpone this, so let’s get started
• Get my personal email box to 0 – I’m currently having >200 unread emails and it’s literally driving me crazy!
• Go to 500 Twitter followers – it’s the first time to set an arbitrary goal for the blog, so let’s see where we end up!

All in all, February was a good month with lots of exciting things! From getting a promotion to a trip to Barcelona, from my first guest post to decluttering. Let’s see what March will bring us, I’m ready!

How was your February month financially and personally?