Moving Into My New Apartment

I like to move it, move it!

Long time no see! Even though I had a week off work, these past few days have been terribly quiet on the blog front. That’s because I’ve finally decided to move out of my parents’ house for good after 25 years. Even though I spent most of my time at university away from home, I decided to relocate back to my old room while searching for a job.

As it turns out my field of employment is almost exclusively based in Brussels, which is almost a two-hour train commute away from my hometown. That’s almost four hours every single day! Even though trains provide the luxury of being productive on laptops, four hours is too much.

Furthermore, most of my friends were still living near my university and much closer to Brussels. As a result I was constantly going back and forth between work, home and friends. Something had to change. Moving was, for me, the only option, even though it meant giving up my awesome savings rate.

I am happy to report that the entire operation went swimmingly – apart from one of my monitors that was killed in action and sent to Dell for repairs! Because my parents and sister helped me move the bulk of my stuff over past Saturday, I had the entire week to clean my new place and rebuild my furniture. My friend moved in the same day and together we made sure that the kitchen had an ample supply of beer food and that the bathroom was fully equiped.

Boring! Here are some pictures of my new room:

My new room

My new room

As you can see, it’s still a little rough around the edges, but I plan to fix that this weekend. I have to finish some of the cable management behind my desk and television, put up some decorations, clean everything again and put my clothes on hangers in the room behind my desk.

So what does all of this mean financially? I’ll probably be €500 more out of pocket every month, which reduces my savings rate by approximately 25% to 50% on average. The rent I payed my parents for my old room almost completely transfers over to my new apartment, but now I’ll have to pay my own utilities, internet access, home insurance and food.

A shorter commute sadly doesn’t mean reduced spending since my employer pays for all commute expenses. Even though my railcard used to cost over €2,500 every year and it now costs  a mere €1,000 that doesn’t affect me financially. Quite the contrary! Because I now live 25km away from work I can take my bike when the weather is nice. I expect non-reimbursed maintenance costs to be around €25 every month.

My best friends' teddy bear had to stay in Belgium after she moved abroad

Of course, that’s what I expect based on estimates my friends throw around and on my own gut feeling. I hope to give you guys a nice overview at the end of the month. Let’s hope I stay above the 50% goal! For now, enjoy this picture of my best friend’s teddy bear who is living with me and eating all my stuff since Tuesday. Sadly he couldn’t join her to Ireland to pursue a job opportunity.

Thanks for reading! Now I have to read through all of your awesome posts from the past week. Also, bonus points if you know who is guarding my collection of PlayStation 3 games next to the large window!

14 Comments

    1. That’s exactly the reason why I moved! It’s not worth the four hours and the relationship with my friends to stay at home any longer than necessary. And living on my own gives me a sense of accomplishment too in a way.

      Thanks for stopping by,
      NMW

  1. That looks like one swell bachelor pad! I thoroughly approve the double monitor set up! Hmmm only thing related on this end is that I’m finally about to upgrade my RAM from 4GB to 12GB, hoping to see some major speed improvement!

    1. I’m very pleased with it as well! Funny that you mention bachelor pad… That’s the one thing our landlord didn’t want us to turn the apartment into! 🙂

      And the double monitors are actually a triple monitor set-up, but the third monitor died during the move. I hope to have it back soon because I miss playing Skyrim in Nvidia Surround! First world problems, I know!

      You’ll definitely see a nice speed bump when going from 4 to 12GB, especially if you play video games or render a lot of videos. 8GB is the sweet spot at the moment, in my opinion, so you’ll definitely be future proof! Are you going for 3x4GB sticks? Make sure that your memory runs in dual channel and not single channel for optimal speeds.

      1. I’m keeping the 2X2GB sticks in and got a 4GB and 8GB stick to go in. Thanks for the tip on the dual channel issue, will make sure to be aware of it when I install!

  2. Wow, I love your set up! It’s very modern and retro at the same time. I believe you said you commuted two hours to work. That’s just insane. I’m sure your time is better spend moving here than commuting.

    Cheers!

    1. Thanks, Henry! The building is quite old and it shows in some places, but it gives a lot of the rooms a certain charm.

      Two hours without any delays is a really long time. I’m really glad I won’t have to go through that again. Thankfully my parents were cool about it and tried to make my time at home in the evening as pleasant as possible. I’ve gained two hours and a half at least to do fun stuff now, just by moving.

      Best wishes!

  3. Hi NWF,

    Congrats on the place:). 500 EUR rent isn’t to bad. My housing cost is almost the same after the woonbonus. A small place is good since it is cheap to heat, insure, etc…

    Good luck 🙂

    Cheers,

    1. Thanks, Geblin!

      The rent is great (only 420 including utilities, actually)! It’s probably the lowest you can find in a five mile radius for an apartment of this size and quality.

      €500 after your tax return isn’t much for a property you own, well done! Now if they just could eliminiate the ‘woonbonus’ entirely for future purchases so the real estate prices would go down… 🙂

      Have a nice sunday,
      NMW

  4. I would also welcome lower real estate prices since I’m looking for a second piece of real estate so I can become a land lord. Brussel isn’t the cheapest place to live in so you did a great job.

    Have a nice sunday to.

  5. “friend” eh? Friend who lets you watch her beloved teddy bear? Me thinks she’s more than that.

    But lol I think he’s in the sink 2nd pic.

  6. Haha, he totally is sitting in the sink! His paws were still wet from the washer so I put him there until he was all dry! 😀

    Nudge nudge, wink wink, know what I mean, eh? Having tons of girl friends is what I get for following literature at university! Tough life.

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