Total Balance

June has flown by, and it’s thus time to look back at another record-breaking month. – Not in terms of my finances though, but the heat is breaking all sorts of records, frying the Europeans to a crisp these days!

It’s been so hot (even in Denmark) that my faithful buddy, Russel the LEGO mascot, has moved out of his green garden, and into the Frozen castle! (I cannot take credit for this – it was my daughters idea…).

Something pretty significant did actually happen in the Total Balance household this month (besides the scorching heat), as I had to “rob” the bank to pay for the final part of the Property #1 deal…

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Another month in the Total Balance household has flown by!

As per the standard; it’s thus time for another riveting update, on my quest towards Financial Independence.

I’m joined today by my trustworthy friend, Russel the Total Balance mascot, who in the spirit of this months headline is Taking the plunge (into a pool! – Of Money!). I apologize for the poor picture quality, but I was in a hurry – and 2 seconds after this picture was taken, Catzilla dropped by and destroyed the whole scene – so a re-take was rendered mute! HAHA!

Anyway, Catzilla and Russels shenanigans a side, this month was a pretty eventful month – so let’s get to it, shall we?!

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Hello dear readers and followers!

Guess what?! – You guessed it 😉 Another month has gone by, and it’s thus time for the obligatory monthly update that we all love so much (I personally love both writing them and reading them).

As you might have already noticed, this month debuts a whole new character to the Total Balance universe! Inspired by Marc from financeyourfire.com (thanks, Marc!), I decided to build a physical representation of my Total Balance progress (together with my 4 year old of course). Being Danish, I could not think of anything more befitting, than to build it out of: LEGO!

Give a warm welcome to Russel – the new mascot of the Total Balance blog! I’m sure we will do great things together! Be sure to follow his shenanigans every month going forward 😉

Anyway, enough mumbo-jumbo – let’s look at the numbers for April 2019!

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Greetings and salutations, dear readers. It’s time for another monthly update (already!). Time is fun, when you’re having flies, as Kermit would say 😛

It’s been an eventful month in the Total Balance household! We spent some of our hard earned cash on some new (old) furniture, and I put some of my stash to work as well. There were no major breakthroughs or massive investments made however (still waiting on that big whale to beach!), so all in all the month of March did not deliver any major surprises. BUT WAIT! – Another massive deposit to my stash was made! Surprised?

Enough small-talk already, let’s look at some numbers!

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It’s my favorite time of the month! – Time to look back on the month that passed!

I was really feeling the heat in February (it was double digits outside!) – and it was not just because of my vacation. The weather once again broke all sorts of records. On the financial front however, no records were broken.

February proved to be yet another stable passive income stream month – while not quite reaching the all-time high from January.

It’s also the blogs 6-months anniversary (YAY! I’ve made it this far, and I feel like I’m still going strong! No blogging fatigue here!). My visitor stats however DID break a new record, albeit my views dropped significantly. I think this is to be expected. It’s my first time really tracking these metrics, and it’s really only due to my competitive nature that I even bother looking at these figures.

Anyway, let’s get to the fun stuff!

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Since I started this blog back in September, the monthly updates has been my absolute favorite posts to write. They basically write themselves, right? So, what happened in January 2019?

I have to be honest with you: I hate January. January is my least favorite month of the year. It’s cold, dark and summer and daylight in general seem like so far away, that even dreaming about it makes me uncomfortable. It’s the longest month of the year! (or so it feels, anyway…).

This particular January should turn out to be one of my least favorite of all times (now that I think about it, all the bad shit that ever happened to me, always happened in January – or so I remember it anyway…). Luckily I now have two different perspectives to view my life – a financial and a personal – and much to my surprise, January turned out to be a record-breaking month in terms of passive income (thanks to a little help from my friends! 😉 ).

Enough jibber-jabber – let’s get to the good stuff!

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My first year on FIRE has come to an end! It’s time to look back on December 2018, and the year of 2018.

I started my journey back in September, and it has certainly been an eventful few months! 3 (full) months on FIRE has really helped change my perspective on life (for the better).

I set out with a (fairly) conservative goal of adding DKK 5.000 (€667 / $770) to my Total Balance each month, and then ultimately invest the better part of my nest egg (DKK 400.000 when I first began my journey) in some sort of real estate project.

Here we are, 3 months+ later, and I’ve (unfortunately) yet to find that one perfect real estate project that I feel confident investing in. In my last update I touched (a lot) on the subject of impatience – my arch nemesis! It might be due to the Christmas holidays, but I definitely feel a lot less impatient, going into 2019. I’m sure the right real estate opportunity is going to present it self in 2019. I’d prefer it to appear in the first half of the year – but I think I’ll be just fine, even if it doesn’t appear until later in the year (the new me: ultimate zen 😎 ) (not really…)

Anyway, enough gibber-gabber, let’s look at the numbers!

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It’s December 2018, and that means it’s time for another monthly update!

The month of November 2018 was pretty good to me, in terms of returns from my investments (yea that’s right – I don’t have stocks, remember?). – However, I’m now starting to battle my patience a little, in regards to finding my first real estate investment project…

Patience is not my strong suit!

My impatience often lead to doubt! And when you combine doubt+impatience, you get a dangerous cocktail. I keep having to remind myself of the great words from Gandalf the Grey: Do not stray from the path!

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October has been a pretty eventful month for me. I made my first crowdlending investments, I found new investment opportunities, and I landed myself a new job.

Technically, I landed the new job already back in September – actually on the same week that I decided to start this blog! – but since we typically have 1 months notice in Denmark, I just started in my new job on November 1st. It doesn’t change a whole lot on the financials (unfortunately), but I get paid in advance in my new job (typical for the financial sector), so I got two paychecks this month! (It’s not fun going the other way – I did that a couple of times).

So my savings are booming this month! I managed to tuck away a whopping 40.000 DKK (€5.333/$6.154). Obviously, this is due to the double-paycheck situation primarily, so lets not dwell too much on that number. Lets look at my investments instead!

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The titles just keep getting better and better, don’t they?…

Here’s a small update, on my first month on FIRE:

If you’ve read The Plan, you know that I plan to turn my original nest egg of 400.000 DKK (approx. $62.000/€53.000) in to 3.000.000 DKK (approx. $470.000/€400.000). If you’ve also read The Dough, you know a little bit about, how that is even going to be possible!

However, I’ve yet to disclose how I plan to diversify my portfolio (currently I’m still in all cash), in order to secure an interest rate of more than 8% on my hard earned cash. …

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