Ladies and gents, another month went by, which means it is time for another monthly portfolio & savings update to count in September 2021.

September In A Nutshell

September is normally one of my least favourite months. The feeling that you are slowly leaving the summer and warmer temperatures behind depresses my mood, however, September 2021 has been rather special with loads of fun, new experiences and some BIG news!

If you paid attention to this post cover, then you may get an idea of what that big news may be about?

That’s right! I asked my GF for marriage during our two weeks road trip in Spain. Obviously, the answer was yes, as I am way too handsome to be rejected! ;-P. (the ring shown on the cover picture is not the real one).

Albeit it was originally not in my plans (it is becoming less and less popular to marry in Spain), in the Czech Republic they are very traditional in this matter, and I sensed that I should take a step forward. So, there you have it, from now on I won’t be referring as to my GF anymore but my fiancée!

Out of the ordinary this month was, as I’ve mentioned, the two weeks intense road trip in Spain. That was the route: Tarragona – Valencia – Benidorm – Alicante – Murcia – Granada – Malaga – Gibraltar – Seville – Córdoba – Madrid -Zaragoza – Lleida. Roads in Spain are well maintained, so they are easy to drive, I actually enjoyed being behind the wheel most of the time, I thought it would be more tiring than it was.

I am not going to describe the whole journey because this is not a travelling blog, but I feel I can’t continue without mentioning our visit to Gibraltar, and yeah that I had fish and chips? 😀 I liked the rock pretty much because of the Spanish and English mix and also the history behind it. It was impactful to hear kids speaking both in perfect English and Spanish to their parents. That reminded that occasional conversation with Spanish in the UK commenting they like the UK but missed the sun, so why not live in Gibraltar? A thought that fades quickly when looking at property prices, though!

Anyway, did I mention that I had fish and chips? Let me just remind you again! Shame about the Carlsberg though, not my favourite, but there was no better choice!

(I must admit that fish and chips are one of those things I miss a lot from the UK!)

Moving to Portugal

Wait, Tony Pepperoni and his fiancée are moving to Portugal?

Yup! I made no mistake there! But it’s only going to be for a couple of months.

The reason being though is very simple and will be easy to understand for the FI community. If I stay more than 183 days (6 months) in Spain, then I legally become a fiscal resident of this country. So I used an online IRPF calculator to get an estimation of how much I will likely need to pay in taxes out of my salary from the UK, and that resulted in almost 8,000 Euros!

But wait, can’t I claim a tax refund from the UK?

I surely can, but when considering that tax allowance in Spain is ZERO Euros and that the tax rates here are higher than in the UK, then there’s a mismatch of close to 2,700 Euros. On top of that, I would need to add the dividend income, interest earnings from P2P and also reporting all my accounts.

So, instead of having all the extra hustle to end paying these 2,700 Euros, why not move abroad before crossing the 6 months mark and return in January of next year?

So, that is what we are going to do. We were between moving to France (2 hours drive) or Portugal (12-13h drive). We decided on the south of Portugal (Faro), not only because of the warmer temperatures but also because of lower accommodation prices, cheaper day-to-day costs as food and hopefully Diesel, and the welcoming feeling you get from Portuguese people.

Accommodation for two months with all bills included will be 1,500 Euros, so we still have 1,200 Euros of budget left that we could use to explore the surroundings.

Altogether it’s a move that will make us both happier and richer at the same time, and that’s a no-brainer I’d say!

What do you think?

That’s been the recap of the month, let’s now get to the numbers?

Quick Recap of September Numbers

  • Portfolio value: €158,120 (-0.78%) – details HERE
  • Contributions to the portfolio: €1,059
  • Monthly growth from investments: €-2,669
  • Passive income: 1,207 € – details HERE
  • Savings Rate: 57.2%

Are we (finally) facing a stock market correction? In September, it seemed so, and October’s trend looks on a similar path. Every year around this time is a similar story, though, a small correction occurs before the Santa’s rally taking place at the end of the year.

Despite contributing some funds to the portfolio this month, the total value is still below last month. This was one of these months in which I would have pumped in more money, but our holidays did a good job at disconnecting me from everything, so I didn’t follow the markets and missed it.

The rest of the figures look good, keeping my passive income steady and savings rate close to the 60% despise the extra costs of travelling.

Monthly Income and Expenses

In September, the family income was £6,491.95 (7,595 EUR).

Great month for income, mainly because I received 2,000 Euros extra as a down payment agreement for selling my garage. I managed to increase the selling price of the garage from 16,000 to 18,000 Euros in a bit of a dodgy move that luckily worked well for me.

Why I counted the down payment agreement as an income? – Simply because I take it as a capital gain profit since the price I had accounted for it in my net worth value is 12,800 Euros net, when the real selling price will be 18,000 Euros.

As selling continued, I managed to make £285.

My passive income covered 37.1% of all expenses, way below the exciting August’s 65%.

But, in spite of spending more than usual this month, £2,778 to be precise, the extra income was helpful to keep my saving ratio in a respectable look.

Savings Chart

Saving rate september 2021

Portfolio Performance

As I like to do on a monthly basis, this is a breakdown of all my current and past investments:

Please note, links containing a star (*) are either affiliate or referral links. P2P lending is a risky business, so you could end up losing all your invested money if you choose to join any of these platforms.

** 20 % discounted to estimate future withdrawal tax payments

The total return in September was negative, putting me back closer to the level I was in June this year. No problemo though, as I am confident I will safely reach the target if I continue with my current investing strategy.

Alternative Investments Portfolio

My alternative investment portfolio provided me with €91 (€69.6 last month) of passive income. So far this year, my alternative portfolio has generated €608. That could well pay me for another 2 weeks road trip holiday. I love investing when I measure returns this way!

I haven’t done any transactions or made any new investments in this portfolio, so there’s nothing to add up for this month.

Estateguru* and Reinvest24* are the platforms I like the most at the moment. Estateguru is completely hustle-free if using the auto-invest feature, so I just keep it on and look forwards to earn interest payments every month. On Reinvest24, I am always looking forward to new rental property investments. If you would like to know more about Reinvest24, why not check out my review and personal experience with the platform?

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Join REINVEST24 and earn a 10 Euros bonus

Dividend Portfolio

My dividend portfolio this month generated €50.18 of passive income.

This was the outlook of my holdings at the end of the month:

Dividend portfolio
Holdings September 2021

No additions to the dividend portfolio this month, I only reinvested the dividends to buy more of the same stock.

The data shown may be slightly outdated, as I have not checked it out for the last couple of months. Despite the drop in stocks, I am not anxious about my holdings, I am convinced most of these stocks will do well over the long term. However, I’ve had some thoughts about selling my Danone shares as I am starting to doubt its capability to compete with other strong businesses such as Oatly Group AB and Chobani in the U.S. The new CEO – Antoine de Saint-Affrique, commented Danone had several challenges ahead that were not easy to resolve. I will keep a closer look at this company during the upcoming quarters to see whether the new CEO is having any real positive impact on the future outlook.

Dividend Payments

I received dividend payments from a total of 8 companies:

  • 3M (MMM): €6.89
  • Johnson & Johnson (JNJ): €6.22
  • Walgreens Boots (WBA): €5.75
  • Unilever (ULVR): €11.95
  • Kroger (KR): €3.83
  • Microsoft (MSFT): €1.01
  • ExxonMobil (XOM): €11.08
  • Realty Income (O): €3.45

Total Dividend Income: €50.18

Here’s an update on my year-over-year dividend comparison:

dividend income chart

The €45K Project Fund

Another month has passed which means I saved another €60 as a non-smoker, cash that goes into my 45K Project Fund.

In September, I contributed all non-smoked funds to the Global Clean Energy ETF.

So far The 45K Project Fund consists of:

  1. Abundance Investment: €1,476.6
  2. Kiva: €442
  3. Qardus: €224.2
  4. Global Clean Energy ETF: €746.1

So far, I have recovered 6.14% of my loss = €2,888.9

42,111.1€ left to go.

Related content: How I FIRED 45k with algo trading, Investing Ethically, Recovering €45K through Investing in Myself First

Goals and Habits 2021

It’s time to have a look at how I am doing with my 2021 goals and habits for 2021.

All my goals are monthly measurable, so I’ve built a table to keep an eye on the progress, this is how it is going so far:

Goals and Habits This Month

Goals and habits september 2021

Goals and Habits Previous Month

Goals and habits august 2021

As I projected, the road trip was full of walking fun. I precisely walked slightly over half a million steps during the whole month, which was great to catch up with my steps goals after a bad start to the year because of a foot injury.

On the contrary, I didn’t do well on any of my other goals. I put on 2.5 kg (although I’ve already lost 1 kg since back), only meditated 95min and barely did any weight lifting or read as much as I’d normally do.

Same as the new CEO of Danone – Antoine de Saint-Affrique, I seem to have some challenges ahead!

That’s all for this month. Thanks for reading and take care of yourselves.

Cheers.