Monthly updates

Monthly Update #24 (August 2020) – The Beginning of The End

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Hello! Again! Still reading, eh? 😉

Welcome to another monthly update (number 24! – Yes, this means the blog is turning 2 years this month!). It’s been a fairly slow month, so there’s not a whole lot to report.

Business as usual, I guess. I’ve been withdrawing from crowdlending for a while, and it’s now at a point where I’m getting bored with reporting about it, so I don’t think it makes much sense to continue to report the numbers. However, I will do it for now – just for the sake of my own bookkeeping 😉

It seems like ages ago that my monthly dividends was in triple digits. Fortunately, because of the monthly income from my REIT (still going strong!), it’s not gonna end in single-digits at least! HAHA. But it now appears to be in permanent double digits, and it’s making me a bit…annoyed. However, it’s all part of the “master plan”, so I somehow need to find a way to stop focusing on the short term dividends, and focus on the long term plan instead. It’s been nice to see a little monthly income, but in the grand scheme of things, whether I make €50 or €200 per month isn’t going to drastically help me reach my FI goal – it’s not until I see dividends in the excess of €1000/month that it’ll really make a dent in those deposits.

Property #1 income isn’t set to arrive before 2023, so I’ve got some time to kill before that…

The month in review

The most interesting thing that happened this month, was that I finally decided to lock down a 3-year lease for a new car! *drumroll*

I decided to go with the (new) Renault Zoe with the 52kWh battery (385km range). I’ve now been driving the older model for 2 months (22kWh, 120km range), and I’ve kind of fallen in love with the little car. The new one is significantly better than my current one and I think the lease deal is fairly cheap, all things considered. It’s going to run me DKK 100.000 (€ 13.333) over 3 years, which doesn’t include insurance or fuel (electricity in this case). My old diesel ran me DKK 110.000 over 3 years, but my new EV is significantly cheaper to drive than my old diesel car, so I will be saving about DKK 5.000/year in fuel cost. So all in all, a cheaper and CLEANER car than the one I had before. I like it.

I sold my small silver holdings again (on Revolut) and made about €35 in total on that deal, so that was fun – but that was about all the “action” that happened in August on the investment front.

Last week I alluded to fact that Property #2 was in my sight. Well, I received the initial evaluation of the project and it turns out that it’s WAY too expensive for me, unfortunately. So a Property #2 is still on the horizon, but probably not this year…

I’m happy to report though that my Pension portfolio continue to perform fairly well, so I’m now at a 2.6% gain for the year so far. Given the “difficult year” I don’t think that’s too shabby. I’m hoping to finish the year around 3-4%, then I really don’t think I can complain. Next year we’ll shoot for the stars then! 😛

Actually now that I think about, something else did happen this month. We went to a (garden) party and met an interesting young couple that we somehow managed to just sit and chat with – for 8 hours. I think maybe the rest of the party thought we were being a bit dull HAHA. But we had a blast. They’re an artist couple, and thus live lives that are drastically different from ours (living in a warehouse, often on the road, not knowing if they will be able to make ends meet next month). We talked about a lot of different subjects for hours and hours, and I’ve never quite had such an experience before where you meet two people so different from yourself – and yet somehow find a common ground instantly.

He’s a visual artist (painter) and she’s a musician. They “perform” individually, but also has a visual performance art act together. It’s quite interesting. I felt like I wanted to give them a huge shout out, to help them “become famous”. Although I have a limited audience on this blog (3-400 people/month currently – huge thanks for that btw!) I hope some of my readers might find the “project” interesting. Have a look here: www.linebug.net I’m especially fan of the new single “White Nights”. Unfortunately due to the current dispute between Youtube and KODA (the Composer rights association of Denmark) all danish artists are currently “banned” from Youtube. True story. It really sucks. So yeah – Fuck you, Google!

Anyway, so he makes paintings and music videos for her songs, and I kinda fell in love with a couple of his early paintings, and am now considering making an(other) alternative investment… 😛 What do you think?

My favorite one is the colorful one (A Young Idealist), but unfortunately he has SOLD it! 🙁 That leaves me with “A decadent eccentric”, which we’re going to be seeing LIVE this weekend…Not sure I’ll buy it, but at least we’ll get to enjoy some of his art work and maybe have a(nother) chat about life, death and everything in between.

You can check him out at www.christiangundtoft.com

I know it’s not exactly your typical FIRE lifestyle, to be buying paintings from an unknown artist – but what do you know? – What if he becomes the next big danish artist?! It might become the best investment you ever made…

His style has changed over the years though, and I’m more into his early stuff than his current to be honest, but that’s what I love about art – you don’t have to love it all.

The pretty graphs


If nothing else, at least I have my Pension to look at. That’s about the only thing that’s really going places these days. Next month is the mortgage payment month, so our equity is going to take another jump again. It’s uncanny how my Pension and equity just continue hand in hand – if only my Total Balance would follow them, I’d be thrilled. I wonder if that will ever happen…We shall see 😉

The boring income statement

Platform Invested Transactions Last month Current value Monthly income
Crowdlending
Crowdestate € 100 € 0 € 100 € 100 € 0
Crowdestor € 1.008 -€ 102 € 1.118 € 1.023 € 5
Fundbricks € 1.333 € 0 € 1.333 € 1.333 € 0
Mintos € 290 -€ 110 € 613 € 508 € 5
TFGCrowd € 100 -€ 207 € 306 € 102 € 3
Wisefund € 475 € 0 € 514 € 518 € 4
€ 3.306 -€ 419 € 3.984 € 3.584 € 17
Commodities
GOLD (Coins) € 5.333 € 0 € 5.333 € 5.333
Silver (virtual) € 0 -€ 275 € 275 € 0 € 0
€ 5.608 € 5.333
Stocks
PROREIT (PRV.UN) € 2.018 € 0 € 2.115 € 2.131 € 16
Properties
Brickshare € 1.333 € 0 € 1.333 € 1.333
Property #1 € 68.667 € 0 € 68.667 € 68.667
€ 70.000 € 70.000
Cash
Bank #1 cash (main savings) € 1.994 € 1.133 € 3.127
Bank #2 Opportunity money -€ 500 € 500 € 0
€ 1.633 € 3.127
Total balance € 83.340 € 84.175

Slow and steady. Not much to say about the income statement this month…

The Classic Growth Chart

As always, I include my “Classic growth chart” for tracking purposes.

Last month I gave the Classic Growth Chart a little overhaul, and I think it came out OK. I now include the value of Property #1 on the chart. Dividends from Property #1 won’t arrive until the year 2023, but it’s going to be a pretty massive payout, so by then it’ll probably go off the charts 😛 (can’t wait!).

In Conclusion

Another slow month in the books. Hopefully the coming months will see more action than this one, because I’m starting to get bored, and there’s no telling what I might do, when I get bored! HAHA

Anyway a decent month in terms of savings and a pretty bland one in terms of passive income. At least I get to look forward to receive my new car in September! YAY!

The most notable thing that happened this month was that we met a young artist-couple, which was a really pleasant experience, and we’re hoping their upcoming move (they’re moving to Germany) is going to help them progress onto the “big stage” 🙂

So I guess that’s it for this months update! See you next month (maybe…).

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