Cost of Living

Well, we've been here a year, and you know what that means: It's time to assess how well my projected budget is holding up!

Can we afford to keep living here? Will we blow through the rest of our savings in the next couple years? Are we overspending on flødboller and øl and softice? Where do we need to rein it in? Let's find out together! (Seriously. I'm writing this intro before even attempting to go back through and compare it with the costs I predicted we would incur. What a rush!)

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I originally considered two categories for income (mine and Zac's) and 15 categories of expenses ranging from rent to streaming services. I estimated the amount of each category before we moved based on info I got from a couple of colleagues, articles on the internet, and other expat blogs.

(I didn't include the cost of our life and disability insurance, because those are U.S. expenditures and we keep a bank account in the U.S. with enough money to cover those bills for two years while we decide if we are going to stay or move back.)

For this assessment, I have decided something is "on target" if it is within 10% of my original estimate. Over or under budget would mean that the actual cost differs by more than 10% from my original estimate. I have also included a list of things I didn't account for!

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On target:

• Rent
• Gas
• Electricity (mostly)
• Waste disposal
• Annual heating system check
• Internet
• Cell phones
• Water
• My salary
• Zac's salary

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Under budget:

• Dining Out and Entertainment
• Travel

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Over budget:

• Groceries
• Streaming services and subscriptions
• Transportation
• Education

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Things I didn't account for:

• Car-related expenses (hence the "over budget" categorization of Transportation)
• Class fees, class trips, P.E. kits, laptops, and before and after mandatory child care fees for Harrison
• Weekly "salaries" for the kids
• Kids' sports and activities
• Pet food, litter, toys, treats
• Vet and vet medicine costs
• Gifts (friend birthdays, kid birthdays, family Christmas, etc.)
• Dentist
• Pharmacy
• Bank fees
• Taxes
• Miscellaneous (including clothes and shoes, postage, haircuts, bike helmets, etc.)
• Household items (including re-purchases of furniture, dishes, kitchen utensils, tools, etc.)

* * *

It's clear to me by looking at month-to-month expenditures that we do a good job during the winter staying well under budget overall for our total expenses, and when the weather turns nice, we just start rolling with it and spending some of those savings. I have, of course, updated our budget from my initial pre-move estimate, and I try to track where our money goes each month, so we can always get a better picture of where we need to pull back a bit, and to be fair, I've only tracked 6 months of expenses since the major overhaul of the budget spreadsheet. I will certainly reassess after I have a full calendar year of data!

We do spend SO much money on groceries here. Part of it is our beer and ice cream spending, but groceries are also just really expensive. If we ever start going broke, this is where we will start our cut-backs. Our transportation budget had to increase because of the car, and there were so many education-adjacent expenditures I hadn't planned for that really threw me for a loop when we arrived.

It's very hard to think of everything that you'll spend money on in a new place, especially a new country, and I think we have just really been trying to ensure our quality of life hasn't changed drastically from what we had in the U.S. We also want to ensure everyone gets to do the things they want to do and have an opportunity for new experiences, so I think we spend a little more than we should on paper in that regard.

We are happy and getting to do a lot of things, and we still do put money away every month. We have a savings account, we have 401Ks in the U.S. and pension accounts here in Denmark. We are set up with life insurance and disability insurance, and I think we are well prepared for a lot of different scenarios. We could certainly cut back our expenditures, it looks like, but we are in the black, as they say, and I'm glad that moving to Denmark, though expensive, hasn't destroyed us financially.