Monthly Update #10 September 2019 – Life Volatility

Shapers… Welcome to another monthly update. It’s great to see you back amigos, as always! Hope your shaping things alright? Haha… 😉

September has been a little awkward and somehow volatile in my personal life – I think that’s why I actually like the stock market so much, as it seems to resemble with my own life. It’s been a month of some positive and enlighting achievements and other delicate and sensible negatives news.

Let me summarise it for you:

• We initially continued with our house buying research. We studied different possibilities, such as using the help to buy government scheme from the UK (it must be a new building = overpriced), buying only shared ownership (same conditions as HTB) or buying directly the whole property. Mortgage agreements differ among these, so different quotes were asked. We also visited more properties. I must say, researching is a pleasure in the UK, when there’s money between everyone seems to be helpful, in Spain though, this would have become my worst nightmare!

• We opted to go for buying the whole property without the HTB. Quickly summarising the HTB consists in the government lending you the 20% of a new building property value with a 0% interest for 5 years. You need to repay this back before the 5th year besides your normal mortgage with the bank, or interest increases will tighten your budget (all info here). I would have had to rely on my peer to peer lending investments to pay this back on time, these are in Euros, adding an uncomfortable currency risk between.

• But wait, we are not millionaires yet and borrowing a high amount of money in a country which isn’t yours is double scary! So the idea was to buy an old two bedrooms flat or terraced house with some DIY rebuilding works needed. That would have meant a lot of YouTube videos to watch and busy weekends labouring at home, but same as Brexit, a Million means a Million!

• But wait again, now comes the turning point! A sudden call from a family member would stop the whole process immediately. Now you go and guess it, what can stop such an important decision that only took us three years to make?

• Health. Not mine but my mum’s. I was let known that she was in the hospital…

• Hurry Tony! Book a flight, rent a car and run run run!!

• It resulted to be something related to her mental illness. She is fine, I’m ok, everything is cool now, but such days I’ve been through! Phew!

• This moves us back where we were before – without a plan! – Excellent!

• I do confirm that aiming to become FI without a proper stable life is such a challenge! But at least not boring I’d say! 🙂

Now, before I continue with the numbers there were some other good news though!

I managed to get a pay raise! Yaaa man! 🙂 My annual gross income was £30,000 and will now be £32,500, that’s an increase of 8.3%, well above the current inflation. I also negotiated a future pay raise of another £2,500 after buying my property, but this is now unlikely to happen after the latest unfortunate event…

The last time I asked for a pay raise was while smoking a cigarette with my employer. This time I’ve followed a different way – by writing.

I wrote a powerful email that transmitted determination and confidence in a clear and straight forward way. Literally, my boss had no other choice than pay me more money! I think this differentiates who I was and who I am becoming, which leads to the conclusion that blogging is doing what I wanted it to do; Improve my confidence with writing and get myself surrounded with like-minded people that are better and more successful than me, helping me to become the better possible version of myself. These people and their knowledge are my real blog income, this is the main takeaway. Thanks!

Right shapers, it’s time to get the numbers done, grab a coffee if you haven’t fallen sleep yet! 🙂

Or just jump to whereever you want and keep the cofe for later on 😉

Monthly hightlights

• Portfolio value: 98,553 (+3.9%) – details HERE
• Monthly Transactions (Deposits – Withdrawals): 1,350 €
• Monthly growth from investments: 745 €
• Passive income: 403 € (-0.2% ) – details HERE
• The €45K Project Fund value is 574 € (+33%)
• Weeks as a non-smoker: 18!

Monthly earnings by platform

My experimental Trading 212 fun account outperforms all my other investments once again (+5.6% Sep) as my two little stocks Lam Research (LRCX) and Micron (MU) keep growing in value. Total return since March 2019 is 46% 😮

I made my first deposit to Freetrade. As I explained in this post I want to start investing in REITs and especially student accommodation ones in the UK. I bought 4 shares of Unite Students (UTG) and 33 shares of GCP Student Living. They have both performed well though dividend yields aren’t extraordinary. For now, I want to use Freetrade to invest in REITs only. I joined the platform via a referral link, so I was given a mistery share of Investec (INVP) worth over £4 – that gives me for an extra beer next weekend 🙂

I also joined another P2B lending platform Wisefund transferring 1000EUR. It looks quite promising, offering business loans with up to 19% interest. I especially like that they have their own provision fund and also insured all their loans with a third party buyback guarantee. To my surprise, they were able to share their provision fund with some bloggers so that gave me the confidence to start investing with them. Envestio will have some serious competition from now on.

On the alternative side of my portfolio, Envestio, Grupeer and Fast Invest are my top performers, the same as in August, July, June,…

The GBP/EUR currency ratio grows from 1.1 to 1.13. That’s given a positive impact on the value of my portfolio. Deposits + Earnings equal 2050 EUR but my portfolio has grown by 3714 EUR

Check it out yourself:

Platform	Inception date	Value August	Transactions	Earnings	Value September	Return September	Cumulative Return
Property Partner (£)	21/01/2018	5,767 (6,343.7 €)	-133 (-150.3 €)	6 ( 6.8€)	5,640 (6,373.2‬ €)	0.1 %	8.3 %
Stocks & Shares ISA (£)	14/03/2018	46,766 (51,442 €)	+780 (881.4 €)	287 (324.3 €)	47,833 (54,051€.3)	0.6 %	17.6 %
Housers	26/03/2018	6,725	0	20	6,745	0.3 %	5.4 %
Grupeer	19/05/2018	8,407	0	91	8,498	1.1 %	21.9 %
Mintos	05/08/2018	2,149	-562.2	20	1,607	1 %	11.6 %
Crowdestate	16/08/2018	3,048	-300	28	2,766	0.9 %	11.3 %
Envestio	15/10/2018	5,562	0	81	5,643	1.5 %	17.5 %
Fast Invest	29/10/2018	1,115	0	12	1,127	1.1 %	12.7 %
Trading 212	03/2019	1,500.8	0	84.2	1,585	5.6 %	46.1 %
EstateGuru	10/05/2019	3,038.8	0	25.5	3,064.3	0.8 %	2,6 %
Abundance (£)	31/05/2019	394 (433.4 €)	50 (56.5 €)	6.15 (6.95 €)	450.15 (508.7 €)	1.4 %	1.9 %
RateSetter (£)	04/08/2019	1000 (1100 €)	0	0	1000 (1130 €)	0 %	0 %
Crowdestor	12/08/2019	2004.2	273	13.13	2290.3	0.66 %	0.9 %
Robocash	15/08/2019	2010	0	19.44	2029.4	1 %	1.5 %
Wisefund	11/09/2019	0	1000	7	1007	0.7 %	0.7 %
Freetrade (£)	09/2019	0	100 (113 €)	5.4 (6.1 €)	105.4 (119 €)	5.4 %	5.4 %
TOTAL		94,839 €	1305 €	745 €	98,553 €	0.8 %	-37.4 % *

*Includes Algotechs loss

Stocks & Shares ISA

My Stock & Shares ISA portfolio increases by +2.4%. The stock market bounced back up from the August decline but it seems to be losing momentum again.

As usual, I paid myself £780 out of my payslip as automatic regular monthly payment.

My best performer continues to be USD Corporate Bond UCITS ETF (VUCP) 23%. Really? Yes, really!

The worst performer so far is Global Value Factor UCITS ETF (VVAL) -0.5%

So far this year:

• S&P 500 Index : +18.8 %
• My balanced Vanguard ISA: + 14.65 %

Related content (though a bit outdated): My little British Empire as an Expat

Property Partner

Net return from Property Partner is only £6 as transaction fees were changed from my latest property acquisition in Aberdeen. Remember that student party we had in June? So that’s the one amigos ;P. The purchasing has been completed this month.

I managed to sell some more shares, but still got a lot to be sold! My net rental yield is 4%, which is miserable but still above the 3.24% (2.84% if taking the 0.4% expense ratio into account) of the iShares UK Property UCITS ETF.

It may turn out that Property Partner will be even a good investment after all when looking into the current UK property market outlook? It’s hard to say for me, but from now on I will be able to compare my property investments in Property Partner against my student housing REITS in Freetrade investing app. Which one will be performing better over the next few months ? I think I am becoming a data addict! Is that an illness or something?

Anyway, for any new readers, I wouldn’t still recommend investing via Property Partner platform if you are a new investor unless one of these two conditions are met: 1) You are willing to invest over £25K in equities or 2) Invest on developments loans (you’ll need to be a sophisticated investor in order to so).

This is the general outlook of the value of my investments:

Related content: Property Partner Review & Property Partner Stabs Their Samall Investors

Housers

Income from Housers in August was 20€. This is income after-tax.

For the first time over the last six months, only one of my properties isn’t generating income (not rented). That explains the slight raise on income. How long it will last is unknown I am afraid though.

On the chart we can appreciatte that the portfolio value is growing slowly but it’s at least growing! haha

Now seriously, I’m actually looking forward to seeing how Housers performs in front of a recession.

Spanish GDP keeps growing but it’s losing momentum. What I think I may do in the near future is to invest only in buy-to-let opportunities and avoid development loans. That will lower yields even further but it would generate a more conservative Housers portfolio.

Related content: Housers Review

EstateGuru

EstateGuru returns 25.5 EUR. That’s another new record for this platform. I have a portfolio of 57 loans (54 last month), where 7 are delayed on payments (3 last month). Most of them are delayed between 16-30 days. No loans are delayed over 60 days or defaulted.

EstateGuru is running an October campaign where you can get a 1% bonus if joining through my affiliate link. More info on the joining links and offers section down below at the bottom.

Crowdestate

My Crowdestate portfolio earns 28 EUR. This platform seems to be going through a period of darkness.

Last month I had 7 delayed loans, this month 6. I managed to sell the worst looking one at a premium price – that was luck! This has given me a boost in earnings this month. Most of these delays come from businesses loans.

I love Crodwestate and its transparency mainly, but these delays are a real concern to me.

As a consequance, I am considering to set a sell order on the marketplace for any delayed investment.

For the time being, this is how the portfolio looks:

Mintos

Mintos makes me 20 EUR richer.

UK residents are still not allowed to invest in Mintos, so I am just withdrawing any free cash until further notice.

Besides that, I don’t have much to say about Mintos rather than I am getting a bit impatient with this matter. Will I actually be able to invest in this platform anymore? I’ve put now all my loans on the marketplace to sell. Hopefully, they will sort out the new license before I exit the platform?

Related content: Mintos Review

Grupeer

Grupeer has performed smoothly, manufacturing another welcoming 91 EUR of passive income in September.

The platform has introduced new loan originators, including the British Cube Funder from Windsor.

Grupeer has updated its terms and conditions in regards to buybacks guarantees. They plan to introduce some loans without buyback guarantee in the future. There will be a new option in the auto-invest feature that will allow us to select on whether we want to include no buybacks in our loan portfolio. If interested, all info is on this blog post.

Grupeer chart:

Lastly, I’d like to thank those who participate in my August raffle. I can’t display the names of the winners due to privacy rules, they have been let known from Grupeer agents. Congratulations 🙂

Related content: Grupeer review after 15 months of investing.

Envestio

Envestio returned 81 EUR in September. As usual, it’s the best performer within my P2P/B lending portfolio.

This month we’ve seen two completely new projects on the platform, which is great, but we’ve also seen new refinancings from three existing old projects.

I’ve avoided the later ones as they were tiers 7,11 and 12. I’m hoping that Envestio will focus on adding new investments rather than keep refinancing older ones…

Fast Invest

Fast Invest returned 12 EUR.

No problems at all so far. Interests remain at 13%.

Can’t wait to see the power of compounding coming into effect, it does seem to take ages, though I remind myself that patience is key. I still got 10 years to go before I reach 1 million, so there’s plenty of time to show compounding effects 🙂

The €45K Project Fund

This month I saved another £50 as a non-smoker, funds I transferred to Abundance and used to invest in their latest ethical investment opportunity listed on the platform.

I finally received my first interest payment of £6.15, the first return out of my savings on stop purchasing tobacco (and some funds earned on match betting)

It bloody feels awesome! 🙂

I craved nicotine badly after receiving that call from Spain and visiting my mum. I have always fallen back to the trap after facing a difficult situation, but this time I haven’t!

I reminded myself: Tony if you smoke a cigarette you’ll have to scrap your 45K project fund. If you have to scrap it you’ll will quite possible have to scrap the blog, failing on not only recovering your money but also your one million goal.

Let me tell me something to myself:

I haven’t lost 45K EUR to F*C*I*G FAIL! NO F*C*I*G WAY!

Finally, here you have what I promised you last month, say hello to me €45K Project Fund Chart.

So far, I have recovered the 1.13% of my loss = 508.7 EUR

44,491 EUR left to go.

Related content: Investing Ethically, Recovering €45K through Investing in Myself First

Savings Rate

My total net income in September was £2,051 (2,317 EUR). This comes all from my job and includes my latest pay rise. It still feels low when I compare it with other star bloggers.

My savings rate this month is 53.7%, a new record since I started tracking.

My average increases from 39.56% to 41.14%. My goal is to get it nearer to 50%.

Health after non-smoking

I think that I have officially become a running addict. I’ve been basically running nearly every single day 5-6 km, as long as the weather conditions allowed me. As soon as I stop running for over 3 days I feel more anxious. Now that winter is coming I’m worrying that I won’t be able to run as much as I would like to. I will have to consider other options as joining back to the gym but it won’t certainly be te same.

My heartbeat remains at 58 bpm in September, the same as in August. I guess I will have to push myself further if I want to improve this condition. So far, I’m safisfy with it though.

The donation milestone

Some more people used my links this month, thank you for doing so.

September has been a good month for the blog. My total income from Targetcicle is 115.57 EUR.

Besides this income, I’ve got £3 from Property Partner and 50 EUR from Housers.

That makes a total blog income of 168.96 EUR, that’s getting closer to my 1000 EUR donation goal.

I think this jump on blog income this month is partly thanks to Elis from The Wealthy Finn kiitos ystävä!

Joining links and offers

Property Partner (share up to £1500, details here)

Estate Guru (October campaign: Get 1% bonus on your investments made during the first 30 days and 0.5% for the next 60)

Mintos (1% bonus on your investments made during the first 3 months – UK residents temporally not accepted)

Envestio (5 EUR first deposit bonus + 0.5% bonus on your investments made during the first 270 days)

Wisefund (0.5% bonus on your investments made during the first 270 days)

Housers (25 EUR for a minimum investment of 50 EUR)

Grupeer

Fast Invest

Crowdestate

Crowdestor

Robocash

Trading 212 Trading platform (Free shares worth up to $/£/EUR 100 )

Freetrade Trading platform UK (Free share worth up £200)

Arrivederci, see you next time

Thanks for reading! :D

You can follow me on twitter where I share some thoughts from time to time and connect with other like-minded people and now even on Facebook too.

Disclaimer: Most of the links on this post are affiliate or referral ones. If you join to a platform using my affiliate links you may get a bonus or commission and so could I. I’m going to donate any commission I get throughout 2019 to a charity. You can read more about the purposes of this blog here and where this money is going to go here. Thanks.