Monthly Update #8 July 2019 – Hakuna Matata!

Hola amigos y amigas! 🙂

Another month is in the books here at the one million’s Spanglish portfolio 🙂

July is by far my favourite month as it gives that feeling of being fully immersed in the summer with good vibes all around us. Some enjoy a few well-deserved days of holiday or wait for them to come with excitement, a few use the heat as an excuse to drink and eat ice-creams more often (and think they will burn the extra calories when they get back to their normal daily routine – I could include myself here! Mr. Belly is having good times!). Some will also spend more time enjoying the nature, in the garden, by the sea or on the mountains, connecting with the earth instead of Netflix.

That’s the sort of things I’ve been doing this month 🙂

In July I also turn older. More details and some pictures of our holiday in my beloved Costa Brava down the bottom of the post.

Half Year Net Worth and FI Update

In July I updated my net worth, I didn’t write a blog post but just updated my NW page with some written thoughts added on it. You can read them here if you want.

Summarising, it has increased by +2.5% compared to last quarter, which satisfies me. The current value is 410K EUR (400K EUR before). From now on I ‘ll update it twice per year, as I think it is enough for me. Next time it will be at the end of 2019.

Consequently, after updating my NW, I went into the FI Score Test (FIST) excel sheet to get my new updated card. According to the results, I’ve got 8.58 (8.69 before) years to go before reaching 100% FI. I will retire at the age of 42 (before 41) years. The mismatch comes after the Pound Sterling has dropped considerably from 1.16 to 1.11 1.1, lowering my annual income value (I get paid £ but still make the numbers in EUR). You can check my new card here.

I removed my transactions page from the menu as I don’t update it anymore. I am constantly taking money out of Mintos and Property Partner, so it is too time-consuming for the job it does and info it provides. I also removed my Vanguard and Property Partner pages, which won’t be updated anymore neither. Let’s say that I am applying minimalism! 😉

Monthly hightlights

• Portfolio value: 92,999 (+2.3 %) – details HERE
• Monthly Transactions (Deposits – Withdrawals): -134 €
• Monthly growth from investments: 2700 € (+3%)
• Passive income: 497 € (+27% ) NEW HIGH 🙂 – details HERE
• The €45K Project Fund value is 378 € (+16%)
• Weeks as a non-smoker: 9

Monthly earnings by platform

Both of my stocks, AMAT and FSLR are doing very well and raised my experimental Trading 212 account by 15.3%. The semiconductor industry seems to be outperforming the market in 2019 so far after the last year’s big drop.

My alternative investments have performed excellently, being Envestio, Grupeer and Fast Invest my top performers.

The GBP/EUR currency ratio keeps decreasing from 1.11 in May to 1.1 affecting the value of my portfolio 🙁

Platform	Inception date	Value June	Transactions	Value July	Earnings	Return July	Cumulative Return
Property Partner (£)	21/01/2018	6,894 (7,652.34 €)	-1,017 (-1118.7 €)	5,894 (6,483.4‬ €)	17 ( 18.7€)	0.25 %	7.6 %
Vanguard (£)	14/03/2018	43,060 (47,796.6 €)	+1,300 (1.430 €)	46,360 (50,996 €)	2000 (2,200 €)	4.6 %	19 %
Housers	26/03/2018	6,701	0	6,710	9	0.14 %	4.8 %
Grupeer	19/05/2018	11,424	-1,300	10,272	148	1.3 %	18.9 %
Mintos	05/08/2018	5,295	-1,200	4,128	32	0.61 %	9,7 %
Crowdestate	16/08/2018	2,016	+1,000	3,028	12	0.6 %	9.6 %
Envestio	15/10/2018	5,410	0	5,481	71	1.3 %	14,1 %
Fast Invest	29/10/2018	1,090.4	0	1,078	12.4	1.1 %	10.3 %
Trading 212	03/2019	1,209	0	1,394.3 €	184.8	15.3 %	28.5 %
EstateGuru	10/05/2019	2,013.4	+1,000	3,024.6	11,2	0.56 %	1,23 %
Abundance (£)	31/05/2019	294 (326.3 €)	50 (55 €)	344 (378.4 €)	0	0 %	0 %
TOTAL		90,934.04 €	-134 €	92,999 €	2,700 €	3%	-39.3% *

*Includes Algotechs loss

Stocks & Shares ISA

My Stock & Shares ISA portfolio increases by a whopping +4.65%. As I shared on Twitter, my US bonds and tresury bills ETFs shares value increased substancially. Investors seem to be allocating more money into these assets amid the FED decreasing rates, the stocks all time high, the global market uncertainity and the deceleration on the econonomic growth.

I am increasing my monthly contribution. I paid myself £800 instead of £500. If I can keep with this rate, I should be able to max out my ISA and enjoy from the full £20K allowance. There won’t be algorithms to ruin my plans this time!

So far this year:

• S&P 500 Index : +18.7 %
• My balanced Vanguard ISA: + 16.21 %

Related content: My little British Empire as an Expat

Property Partner

Property Partner managed to return £17.

As you may know, PP has introduced a new fee structure. I was expecting an annual return of 7% in my calculations, which won’t be happening after the changes – not at least in the short-term.

Unless you plan to invest over, £25K and pay lower fees, or invest in their development loans (you need to be a sophisticated investor in order to do so) I don’t recommend PP anymore.

Considering the new Brexit scenario and the Property Partner’s negative income sheet, I’ve decided that I am no longer investing more money with them as it is not risk-rewarding from my point of view. I will try to sell my shares and hopefully, experience no loses. Wish me luck!

So far I have just sold shares from one property at a gain and total return of 11.32%. I still have 11 properties to go before I can exit the platform.

This is how the process is looking:

Down below you will find a screenshot of the shares price volatility over the last 30 days of one of my properties. As you can see, the new terms and conditions had an emotional impact on investors, making a panic selling. On the other hand and same as in stocks, others saw value after the sudden drop and purchased some shares, stabilizing the price thereafter. I enjoy watching and analysing these situations, when our natural investing human behaviour gets actioned! – as long as it doesn’t affect me negatively or make me lose money obviously!

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

Housers

Net income from Housers in July was 9€. This is just getting better and better, isn’t it?

As I explained in my March update, one of my development loans of 1000 EUR defaulted. The developer has sent a proposal that offers a schedule of payments of principal and interest in arrears. Investors this month had to vote online on whether we wanted to accept the proposal or to transfer the debt to a specialized funds recovery company, accepting a possible partial or total loss of our money.

97% of us accepted the developer’s proposal with a new schedule. The first payment date was the 31st of July. Guess what? It is delayed.

Related content: Housers Review

EstateGuru

My three months old EstateGuru account returns 11.2 EUR. So far I have a portfolio of 45 loans, where only 1 is being delayed on payments.

Estate Guru does not offer buyback guarantee but their default rate is very low so far. The loans are property backed with low LTV. The company has also reached profitability and has some track record which is also important.

The average rate the investor can get here is between 10-12%.

There is a special campaign for all investors in August, offering a 0,5% cashback on all investments made into Lithuanian loans until the 31st of August, so if you were thinking about joining, now may be a good time.

Here’s a screenshot of my dashboard with the 0.5% bonus included in the returns:

Some useful resources:

A blog post for the overview of the Lithuanian real estate market:
https://blog.estateguru.co/lithuanian-residential-market-overview/

Estate Guru latest financial reports – Here

Crowdestate

I did finally added more funds to Crowdestate, +1000 EUR. These are not fully invested yet. Loans get funded very quickly, so it is better to keep them in there and have them ready to avoid missing a good opportunity.

As per my graph down below, Crowdestate returned 12 EUR in July, lower than June as some loans pay the last day of the month and were paid late.

Mintos

Mintos makes me 32 EUR richer.

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

I think that other investors shouldn’t worry much about it, as with or without the UK, the platform seems to be crashing their statistics. Read the last update as follows:

• 2,868,335,073 € invested in loans since 2015
• 12.22% average net annual return
• 162,530 registered investors from 75 countries
• Loans available on the Primary Market: 595,000+
• Loans available on the Secondary Market: 372,000+

Related content: Mintos Review

Grupeer

Grupeer has manufactured a welcoming 148 EUR of passive income in July.

Some of my loans matured, which allowed me to keep diversifying. I am now down to my 10K EUR initial target. My investments in Grupeer have been running spotlessly since inception, but I think that I am still a bit overexposed, so I will be trying to hit down to 8K.

Envestio

Envestio returned 71 EUR in June. There have been finally a few new opportunities this month which have flown by. I was lucky to be fast enough to invest in one of them. The platform has introduced a new auto-invest feature with a 100 EUR of minimum investment. Envestio offers a relatively small loan book, so unless you are faster than algos, I assume that investors won’t be able to invest unless using the new feature, which will force us to carry a 100EUR of cash drag in our balance account, so make sure you set your auto-invest strategy.

Fast Invest

Fast Invest returned 12,4 EUR. That is a new record on monthly earnings!

Some users are raising concerns about Fast Invest lack of transparency, as they seem to hide their loan originators.

I don’t think this is enough reason to say that Fast Invest is a scam. I had the “luxury” to deal with a real one and it’s nothing alike, although I dislike their lack of transparency too.

The platform has so far provided me with over 100 EUR of passive income and crossed the 10% ROI in 10 months, so I will let the power of compounding to keep doing its job for now.

The €45K Project Fund

This month I saved £50 as a non-smoker, funds I transferred to Abundance and used to invest in the Pax Apartment development loan as I explained in my previous post.

No match betting income this month as I am having a break. After the summer I’ll give it another go and I’ll see how it goes.

So far, I have recovered the 0.84% of my loss = 378 EUR

44,622 EUR left to go.

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

Savings Rate

My total net income in July was £1,998 (2197.8 EUR). This is slightly higher than usual as my GF paid me some money from holiday bookings.

Expenses are lower than I originally had thought, being only £1106, that’s a 44.6% savings rate for this month! Not bad for a week in Costa Brava! 🙂

Health after non-smoking

I lost my Fit Bit charger somewhere, so I have no clue about how my heart rate is doing until the next one arrives, but it is hopefully doing alright?

I keep running often, I try to do it on a daily basis now as long as the weather conditions allow me. It is challenging to run against the wind. I am bald and somehow aerodynamic, but I’m still far off being a Formula 1.

The donation milestone

Some more people usde my links this month, thank you so much for contributing.

I wasn’t sure weather to donate the money on a monthly basis or at the year end. As the value is still low, I will donate it all at once at the end.

I have a new donation target in mind:

1000 EUR

It looks like a lot of money to raise to me right now. My goals up to date have been easy, so it’s time to add some challenge on them.

Besides this income, I’ve got £3 from Property Partner.

Joining links and offers

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

Housers (50 EUR cash back on your first investment, applies until 31/08/2019)

Estate Guru (0.5% bonus on your investments made during the first 3 months)

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)

Grupeer

Fast Invest

Crowdestate

Crowdestor

Robocash

Oddsmonkey (UK residents only)

Trading 212 (Free shares worth up to £100 for UK resident only)

Extra summer mode pictures

As I said above we spent one week in Spain (or Catalonia, however you want to call it). We took the ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe (I was driving my EU car and had to return it after 6 months of usage in the UK).

It took the ferry 4 hours to get us to France. I used some of this time to think about why I wanted to be financially independent. Water calms me down and gives me inspiration, so that was a good time for me to think deeply about it.

Related content: My 10 reasons to Pursue Financial Independence

Once in France, the temperatures were much higher, 33 Deg. (25 Deg.) – what a surprise, right?

We drove for 5 hours and stopped in Chateauroux to get some rest.

Some more hours of driving next day until we reached my home town.

We didn’t have time to visit friends but we visited my mum, renewed my passport and ID (this time everything worked out, surprisingly) and we stayed a few days in Tossa De Mar, our favourite place in Costa Brava. Most of the tourists there are French or local, so it was good to disconnect from the English speaking environment. On other occasions, when I book something from the UK to stay in Spain, we end up surrounded by Brits, which feels odd.

In there we had time for ourselves, we relaxed by the beach, enjoy ice-creams, ate Mediterranean food, read and practised some hiking and enjoyed some stunning views.

That didn’t last long though and we were soon heading back to England, were routine and stress at work was waiting for me impatiently!

For my birthday I had a especial request.

To watch The Lion King in the cinemas, which was released on my BD. So you can imagine, me and my GF having fun with other people’s kids, hehe.

The Lion King was my favourite Disney film when I was a kid, so it was a great experience to watch it again in a newer version!

Here it goes the best part of the film

Until next time, Hakuna Matata amigos!

… and once again, 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 for your contribution.