Temperatures are increasing, the barbecues are being installed again, it’s becoming summer. It’s June, so May is over! And what a month it has been.

Finances

My finances in May have been amazing, both on the income side of things as well as in my investment portfolio.

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Income and Expenses

In April I made my regular net salary (this month 2,634 euros) and received my travel bonus (we get a daily bonus for working abroad) of 360 euros. Also, I received my tax return of a whopping 1,986 euros. This brings my total income for May to 4,980 euros! Now I know the tax return is maybe a waste of money, loaning it to the government and blahblah. But this was a one-time thing, since I got to deduct all kinds of costs from last year’s apartment refinance.

On the expenses side, I spent 1,566 euros which is less than average, but this was only because I quit my funeral insurance. I have been paying 9 euros a month into this but decided to quit. I mean, when I die, my net worth will be liquidated to some extend, and a 5-10k funeral can easily be paid from my estate. That’s the current situation at 26, let alone I continue doing this for the next decades. I don’t think money will be an issue when I die. Anyway, this insurance paid out 126 euros to my bank account, which is nice.

My savings rate this in May therefore is 68.6% which is my second-best month since I track my finances! Only July 2017 was better with 72%.

Year to date my savings rate bumped up to 47.4% or comfortably above my 41% conservative target and close to my 48% optimistic target.

Investments and Net Worth

This month I’ve added over 3k to savings, but my investments (including retirement accounts) went up a whopping 9,400 because of investment returns!

After a great April, my stock portfolio didn’t generate returns this month. I had to book a loss of almost 1,000 euros! Maybe the crazy saying “Sell in May” isn’t that crazy after all.

Luckily, cryptocurrencies exploded in May and more made up this loss in the stock market. I could book a return of more than 7,000 euros this month, which is incredible. My portfolio is now back into the range

In total, this made my net worth grow to an all – time high of 104,496 euros. It also makes me 9.54% FI, in other words, I am FI every year until February 3rd!

Blogging

Fire The Boss went up as much as bitcoin to a new all-time high in terms of views and visits!

I got 7,132 views from 2,761 visitors (2.58 views per visit). I published 12 articles in May.

Views and visits to an all-time high in May

Just as last month, I notice that Google is sending me more and more visitors. I got 933 views from Google in May, versus 604 in April and 424 in March.

It’s funny to see that most of my viewers still come from The Netherlands, which I get since I started blogging in Dutch, but the second country is the United States! For a blog focusing on Europe, that’s maybe a bit odd. I guess there are more FI -minded people in the US.

How did your April go?