Gijs Heerkens

Budget driven expenses 💸

Gijs Heerkens

Being an entrepreneur is great because you have lots of freedom. But you don’t have the certainty of a fixed income. In my case, it fluctuates greatly depending on success achieved and investments made.

This requires another mindset regarding money. Being able to manage your budgets well is very important and can help you live a careless life without having to worry about money.

You can keep your expenses under control like this, without living frugally. If you know what your budgets are, you know when you need to stop spending. It’s as simple as that. And you can adjust your goals on it to have more peace of mind.

Budgets

I use seven budgets to live my life. Each of them has a monthly maximum amount to be spent.

The budgets are:

Housing 🏠

I’m spending a maximum of €1.500 per month on housing, mostly on Airbnbs. This is 60% of my total expenses but I believe housing is one of the most important factors for happiness.

By the way, I earn reward points by paying with my American Express Gold Card. With those points I’m able to buy flights or rent Airbnbs. So every euro spent has double value.

Leisure 🍸

For leisure I’m spending a maximum of €300 a month. This includes gym subscription, Spotify, ebooks, concerts, eating out sometimes and having drinks with friends.

Groceries 🛍

My groceries budget is €400. Eating healthy (e.g. grass fed beef, organic eggs, wild caught fish) is more expensive than eating crap nowadays and health is the last thing you should save money on, in my opinion.

Clothing 👕

I estimated a maximum of €50 for clothing per month. Since I cut down my belongings to only a backpack, this is more than enough.

You don’t use as many clothes as you might think. Just check your wardrobe and count the clothes you are really ever wearing.

Healthcare 🚑

My €50 healthcare budget is intended to pay my physiotherapist’s and my dentist’s bills.

I don’t have an insurance for these kind of costs because in long term you always end up paying more than you would have ever claimed in total. Otherwise these insurances wouldn’t exist.

Transport ✈️

I increased my transport budget this year to €100, as I started to travel more. This includes flights, public transport and gasoline when I borrow a car.

Insurances ⛑

I’m spending €100 per month on insurances.

I only have the obligated insurances; a liability insurance and a standard health insurance with maximum own risk. This is the cheapest option in the long term.

Bunq

So the budgets are:

So I’m spending €2.500 monthly, maximum, meaning I need to make €2.500 or more each month. That’s €83 on a daily basis. I don’t have a problem achieving this every month with my products and some consultancy.

When I make more, I put all remaining money in my retirement account to invest strategically or buy Bitcoin, and I’m planning to buy some real estate.

I use Bunq bank to manage my budgets properly. This Dutch fintech startup offers 25 bank accounts within one subscription. I’m using one bank account for each budget.

Automatic payments are made from the right account. My health insurance fee is being paid from my insurances bank account, for example.

It comes with three credit or debit cards and an unlimited number of virtual credit cards that you can connect to each account instantly within the app.

In the accounts overview I can see how much budget is left on any given moment, at a glance.

At the first day of each month the budgets are being topped up with an automatic payment from my main account.

Adjustments

Each month I monitor my expenses and add them to my Google Spreadsheets mastersheet, in which the monthly and yearly expenses are being calculated and compared with my budgets. I can make an empty copy if you want to use it, just contact me.

Finally, every year I evaluate and adjust the budgets based on my expenses and start all over again.

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