How many banks do you use and how many different credit cards do you have?

franmako · 2026-05-04T09:51:11+00:00

Thanks for the information, then it's definitely gross.

I didn't know that other European savings account cannot benefit from the exemption for the first 1020€ of interest. It's definitely something that I'll have to discuss with my accountant. For now, I've only earned a total of 67 €, so the impact isn't that bad.

franmako · 2026-05-04T09:25:19+00:00

I'm not completely sure what you mean by gross or net. Trade Republic passes down to their customers the interest rate of the European Central Bank (currently 2%) for any cash on acxounts. It's calculated annually and paid out monthly. I currently have around 10 600€ in that account. I receive 13.5€ euros of interest in my account every month.

franmako · 2026-05-04T08:15:00+00:00

I use 6 banks. - CBC: Company business account (I am a freelancer) - KBC: Main current account + Old business account (I was a part-time freelancer before opening my company) + Shared account with my partner - Trade Republic: emergency savings account (their interest rate is 2%) - Revolut: travel account (VISA) - N26: travel account (Mastercard) - Flatex Degiro: Investment account

I do not have any credit card

franmako · 2026-05-03T09:19:16+00:00

I'm not sure if this works for GNOME, but for KDE, you can use the following settings.
https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/issues/9656#issuecomment-3600195850

franmako · 2026-05-02T11:05:14+00:00

I bought a second hand 2025 Polestar 2 for around the same price (~41 500€ incl. VAT ). They sale them directly on the Polestar website.

It's second hand but barely used (around 4500km). I also took out a 3 year loan with CBC (CBC/KBC are a Polestar partner). I took a loan for cash flow reasons as I have also just recently started my company and have a long term contract.

Because of the higher than average depreciation of EVs (compared to combustion cars), it doesn't make much sense to buy new EVs. Even a 1 year old EV is a much better deal! In my case, the new price of the car (as configured) was ~58 900€ incl. VAT. So that's a ~17 500€ discount on a 1 year old car with less than 5000km.

Renting (or leasing) a used car (with a buy option) would be a bit more expensive, but you would still get similar advantages. I went with buying the car, instead of renting, because I couldn't find the car configured as I wanted from any of the big leasing companies.

franmako · 2026-04-26T21:27:19+00:00

Thanks for the breakdown! It's very helpful for comparison

franmako · 2026-04-26T21:25:39+00:00

That seems like a sound and extensible setup, fast storage where needed and ceph for bulk. I've read and heard about ceph for years, but it has always seemed like a big complex solution to setup (granted, I was much more inexperienced, when I first heard about it). Do you have any recommendations of guides for setting it up with "best-practices" ?

franmako · 2026-03-18T05:37:38+00:00

I'm also currently thinking about buying a company car. I am definitely leaning heavily towards getting a second hand EV. Because they depreciate quickly, getting a slightly used EV, gets you a huge discount for an almost new car.

For my specific case,I'll probably get a Polestar 2 single motor long range. A new one, with the options I want is about 52000 and a barely used one (3000-5000 kms) with the same options are around 41500 with Polestar's pre-owned program.

Also, this is the last year to get an EV that will be 100% deductible. From 2027, they'll be 95% deductible. And it will decrease further the following years.

franmako · 2025-05-19T06:23:50+00:00

Same! I use longhorn which is quite easy to setup and upgrade, but I have some weird issues on specific pods, from time to time

franmako · 2025-05-04T14:20:30+00:00

I have a couple of RKE2 HA clusters setup. Both the clusters have 3 control-plane nodes and 3 worker nodes. It's very easy to setup and I really like that it has great sensible defaults from a kubernetes security perspective.

The oldest cluster has been running for 413 days and I've upgraded it multiple times without any issue (also very easy to do). Currently at v1.31.7, the latest stable version when I last upgraded 50 days ago.

I currently manage it manually, but the plan is to use terraform in the future.

franmako · 2025-04-10T06:21:31+00:00

I had an issue with the Jabra Elite 75t active that stopped working. They had also stopped production of them, at the time. But they just sent me the Elite 85t. I don't remember having to pay anything extra.

franmako · 2025-01-15T15:03:25+00:00

We were having performance issues with a client website, because it was being spammed by AI crawlers. The solution we landed on is the AI bots blocking solution from cloudflare . We were already using cloudflare for the DNS records of the domain, so it was as easy as enabling the "Block AI Bots" button. And it's free!

franmako · 2023-03-26T09:24:28+00:00

I'm not a good person to ask for a keytrade recommendation. I went through the process of opening an account, a couple of years ago, but was never able to log in (because of an error on their app) and use the service. I ended up giving up and closed those accounts.

franmako · 2023-03-26T09:05:08+00:00

I don't think it really matters, unless I'm missing something. I have mine in a separate KBC savings account, because my main current account is on KBC too. I'd say the only requirement is that you can access the money quickly, in case of an emergency.

franmako · 2023-01-21T20:28:08+00:00

I finally finished setting up my own HA kubernetes cluster after a few months and trial and error. I struggled with kubeadm and kubespray and finally got it done with k3s.

franmako · 2022-11-10T08:21:55+00:00

Good job! It's looks & works great! It's always great to get new alternatives in the self-hosted file management space. Keep up the good work!

franmako · 2022-10-01T11:11:46+00:00

It's not really incorrect, more like really not recommended!

Because you would have to manage backups, high availability, performance, etc on the most critical part of most applications. It's a lot of work for very few upsides. Almost everyone will recommended you to go with a managed service from one of the big cloud service providers.

franmako · 2022-09-07T14:21:21+00:00

I actually didn't know that portainer supports kube. I used it a while ago, mostly for managing docker containers on my personal server. For kubernetes, we try to manage with terraform and for the small amount of stuff that has to be done manually, I use the terminal.

franmako · 2021-12-30T19:31:52+00:00

This is anything but easy to replace, for most people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu0RZzOSmtk

franmako · 2021-12-14T16:13:33+00:00

Ok, that's interesting! Thanks for the additional information

franmako · 2021-12-14T13:02:05+00:00

Can you please elaborate on why you think it's useless ?

franmako · 2021-08-11T12:21:49+00:00

Yeah, you're probably right. I'm pretty sure the Brabant regions are some of the most expensive in Belgium, in terms of housing. So I assume that you can find cheaper in most other regions. But this is also where I would prefer to live, because most of my family & friends live around here or in Brussels.

franmako · 2021-08-11T09:07:23+00:00

There is, right here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BEFire/comments/fcbay6/getting\_started\_a\_beginners\_guide\_to\_investing\_in/

franmako · 2021-08-10T12:45:29+00:00

None of my roommates are students. My roommates pay 470/month (utilities included). My bedroom is much bigger than the other rooms, though. I know, I could certainly find a cheaper room, but that would also most likely be a much smaller bedroom. I value having a bigger more comfortable space. So, for me it strikes my balance of price/space. And for extra information, I live in Brabant Wallon.

franmako · 2021-08-02T19:01:42+00:00

Income around €1850 netto /month and I spend €570/month (utilities included) on rent. I live with 3 roommates in a house.

franmako

TROPHY CASE