How to Live Well on an Annual Income of $30,000 Without Going into Debt

This is a true story.

Photo by Noelle Otto: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-wearing-gray-knitted-cap-906020/

Living well is not how much money you spend; it’s how you spend it.

In 2015 I was living with my mother in Porto, Portugal. At the time, she was 31 years old and working part-time in the fashion industry. She was responsible for online branding for a company based in Germany. This position earned her $30,000 annually, i.e., $1,600 per month.

I was in high school. My mother’s work week was 30 hours, five days a week, soon only four days. She lived only with me in a one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment.

Our Monthly Expenses

What we paid in rent:

After several emails with the property management and a lot of research on the Internet, my mother and I managed to reduce our graduated rent to 650 euros/monthly constant, including rent. We started with $700 hot and a 2% surcharge per year. In addition, there was $70 per month for electricity and $35 for very bad Wi-Fi.

In this same period, we were not paying a monthly loan or anything like that.

But my mother and I had a safe deposit box that we were able to put $5,600 into in 5 months.

We had a company pension scheme where my mother worked, and we had income and a private pension scheme. The costs were too high for us, but because it was so important, my mother took over the costs of the life insurance. We had no idea how much our exact fortune was. At the same time, we had a net worth of about $44,000 spread over several savings accounts.

What We Spent On Monthly Fixed Costs:

We had a family Spotify account, an on-demand training channel, and a cell phone contract, which cost $48 per month.