Moving expenses from Toronto to Dublin
Moving countries usually rock the boat when it comes to personal finance. Dealing with all sorts of fees, making sure services like mobile contracts are all paid for and cancelled, buying new items, visa fees and other related costs, cost of flights and luggage, the list just go on and on.
I decided to sit down one night and keep track of all incomings and outgoings during the ‘approximate’ time of moving.
Overall my expenses* that are in direct relation to moving from Toronto to Dublin was CAD$3113 incurred over the timespan of about three months.
The top three expenses that I can cut down on comprised of 44.7% of total expenses:
- 17.34% due to my travel insurance. This is 6 months only and I want to switch providers.
- 13.86% was due to the GNIB.
- 13.5% was my one way flight.
*These included insurance, flights, buying new luggage, buying new adapters, visa fees etc. This excludes housing, bills etc here.
How can I cut out the costs for the next move?
- I am moving within the EU so travel cost won’t be a trans-Atlantic flight, instead it will be easier to cut down.
- I am looking at other insurance providers. I didn’t do my research and I’ve been with them since my early 20’s. They were actually my first travel insurance provider. So now is a good time to look into other providers. Personally I don’t think I am getting much out of them.
- My associated fees when I am getting my next visas should be lower. As far as I am aware, Ireland has been the only EU country that enforces large fees as part of their immigration system.
Maintaining savings rate
Despite these life changes, my net savings rate overall is at 30% which in itself is a very good rate. Earlier I also wrote a bit about financial goals (here) where I wanted to increase my savings rate to 40% and maintain it throughout 2017. We’ll see how it goes!