Monthly updates

Monthly Update #28 (December 2020) – Return of the Jedi

5 min read

Happy new year!

What a year. I think we’re all pretty happy to leave 2020 behind.

2021 is already looking significantly brighter, and we all have high hopes that this new year will be more normal than the one we just left!

Pandemic aside, 2020 was not a bad year in terms of my investment returns. – And now it’s time to reveal whether we reached our yearly target of €100.000…

*drumroll*

The year in review

In January 2020 I wrote my goals for 2020 and the major milestone was to hit a Total Balance of more than €100.000!

So, how did we do?! We absolutely CRUSHED IT!

We hit exactly €103.126 – granted it took a little “help” from the Mrs., and it also helped that most of my new purchases (stocks and ETFs) has appreciated quite significantly.

However, since my goal was to reach the €100.000 mark, I decided to let Crowdlending die completely off together with 2020. – So I’ve chosen to write off €1.743 worth of crowdlending investments for now. I might be able to eventually recover a decent part of it, but I just can’t be bothered to fiddle with the updates anymore. I prefer to just leave it behind me (for now) and look ahead.

This means that the Total Balance for the year ends at €101.383.

This is totally awesome (I think)! – But it also puts me in a bit of a dilemma; What should my goal for 2021 be?…

According to my 13-year plan, Year-3 of my FIRE journey should see me end with a Total Balance of €115.637. Looking at the “annus horribilis” year of 2020, I managed to grow my Total Balance by more than €22.000 (of which more than €4.000 was investment returns!).

So, surely 2021 should be able to beat that?! I’m still pondering this question, so I will leave the conclusion for the upcoming 2021 Goals post (coming soon! Edit: Read it here). Stay tuned 😉

 

The pretty graphs

December 2020 will be the last month with Crowdlending in the Infogram. Next month I will replace it with a Stocks-page instead.

All in all my Total Balance and my Net Worth continue to grow slow and steady. I like it!

As they say, becoming FI is definitely not a sprint – it rather resembles a marathon. Slow and steady will win the race (eventually!) 🙂

The boring income statement

Platform Invested Transactions Last month Current value Monthly income
Crowdlending
Crowdestor € 923 -€ 85 € 1.063 € 985 € 7
Mintos € 16 -€ 40 € 282 € 243 € 1
Wisefund € 461 € 0 € 513 € 515 € 2
€ 1.400 -€ 125 € 1.858 € 1.743 € 10
Commodities
GOLD (Coins) € 5.333 € 0 € 5.333 € 5.500
€ 5.333 € 5.500
Stocks (Dividend portfolio)
PROREIT (PRV.UN) € 2.018 € 0 € 2.131 € 3.300 € 16
Shaw Communications (SJR)* € 2.000 € 0 € 1.900 € 1.900 € 6
TransAlta Renewables (RNW) € 2.000 € 0 € 2.100 € 2.500 € 8
€ 6.131 € 7.700 € 30
Stocks (Indices)
iShares Global Clean Energy (IQQH) € 6.667 € 0 € 7.000 € 8.500 € 0
€ 7.023 € 8.500
Properties
The-Many (Brickshare) € 1.333 € 0 € 1.333 € 1.360 € 12
Property #1 € 68.667 € 0 € 68.667 € 68.667 € 0
Fundbricks € 1.333 € 0 € 1.333 € 1.333 € 0
€ 70.000 € 71.360 € 12
Cash
Bank #1 cash (main savings) € 792 € 7.458 € 8.250 € 32
Bank #2 Opportunity money € 0 € 0 € 0
€ 7.458 € 8.250
Total balance € 99.136  €101.383

I received the LAST (probably ever) interest from my bank. Both of my banks have now lowered the interest rate to 0%. These are crazy times we live in indeed! Soon I will probably have to pay negative interest rates to have money in the bank…I will do my utmost to avoid that situation, of course 😉

All in all a total passive income of €83 for December 2020. For 2021 I will probably be less focused on generating monthly passive income, and more focused on the overall growth of the portfolio.

I wrote off all my crowdlending investments – with the exception of Fundbricks, which is a Danish crowdlending platform that I trust will return my money (along with the accrued interests) again when the term is up on the 1 development loan that I’m currently invested in. As I’ve written several times before, I’m however not impressed with the amount of information coming from Fundbricks, so unless something changes on that front, I will not be investing with them again.

Anyway, now that crowdlending is gone I’m going to focus a little more on building a (somewhat) diversified stock portfolio. Due to Property #1 my portfolio is still very real estate heavy, so I will be looking to diversify a bit more in 2021.

The classic growth chart

As always I include my Classic Growth Chart for tracking purposes (and because I like to look at it!):

 

The Classic growth chart will probably see another overhaul in 2021. I will start focusing more on the overall growth of the portfolio, rather than the relatively small monthly passive income. I’d like to include it all of course, but it’s difficult fitting it all into one chart – perhaps it will morph into 2 different charts? We shall see 🙂

In conclusion (TL;DR)

As we say goodbye to 2020 I also chose to wave goodbye to crowdlending as an asset class in my portfolio. Perhaps it will one day return – but for now it has been replaced by a small (but growing) allocation towards stocks.

In many ways it has been a year filled with ups and down, but my portfolio has grown (steadily) with more than €22.000 (22%).

Interestingly enough (I just discovered this) 22% growth has been the norm for each year of this blog! If I’m to follow that trend, this means my Total Balance should be somewhere around €123.000 by the end of 2021.

I have yet to decide on my goals for 2021 though, so you’ll have to wait a little while longer with the final conclusion on that one 😛 (*suspenseful music playing in the background*).

And on that bombshell, it’s time to end this months update!

Hope to see you next month – and in the year to come. Something tells me it’s going to be a good one 🙂

Until next time!

 

 

10 thoughts on “Monthly Update #28 (December 2020) – Return of the Jedi

  1. Congrats on hitting your target.
    I wanted to ask which software do you use for your graphs? I love that growth chart. Would you be able to share a template?
    thanks

    1. Thanks, Marc! You’re not the first to ask this question, so perhaps I should release it as a template! Haha. But it’s just an Excel Combo chart with some customization in terms of color and layout. Its not automatic – it takes a bit of fidgeting to make it look like that 🙂 shoot me an e-mail and I’ll send you my worksheet.

  2. Congrats on a great year and on reaching your target, Nick! 😀

    … and welcome to the dark side with stocks 😉 Good idea with getting rid of P2P lending in your portfolio – you also burned yourself a bit there. I think I have been lucky with my few crowdlending investments, but I am not putting more into it for now.

    1. Thanks, Carl!

      I can’t believe you got a Tesla! 😛
      No doubt a good choice 🙂

      Yeah if nothing else, at least the crowdlending adventure has pushed me towards a long term sustainable plan with more stocks. I’m still not a huge fan of the inevitable roller coaster rides – but I have come to terms with it, more or less I guess. I will still be heavily invested in properties though. If something interesting comes up, I will sell my stocks in a heartbeat to purchase another Property 😛
      We’ll see what happens! For now I’m just happy to have a little growth from the stocks at least.

      Weren’t you also invested in Envestio at one point?

  3. Happy New Year Nick and congrats on hitting that target! What a great year it has been for you spite the initial crowdlending turmoil!

    1. Happy new year, Tony!

      Thanks for your support, and congrats on that promotion! I Think we’re both in for some exciting times ahead 😉

      How did you do in terms of reaching your goals? 🙂 (perhaps I missed it in your last portfolio Update?)

      1. Thank you.

        I still haven’t written about it. 🙁

        Want to sit down calmly this weekend and go through all my 2020 goals and set up new ones for 2021.

        Some of my goals are already on my head though.

        I find especially useful to set goals than can be tracked every month and push me to do something daily.

        For instance, instead of reading 12 books a year, read 10 pages a day.

        Good luck with writing your goals 🙂

  4. Congrats on hitting your 100k goal! Did you celebrate?

    Which stocks are you picking up? I’ll be shifting most of my focus on to Länsförsäkringar Global Indexnära, it seemed like one of the best global passive index funds for Sweden, unsure if you’ll have access to it that far south!

    I tried to look up what your goals for last year were, but they’re all financial. I know I know, this IS a financial blog!! But I wanna see some non-financial goal setting, life’s not all about money jeeez! 😉

    Happy (I hope,) new Year!

    1. Thanks! No I didnt really celebrate – but I am contemplating treading myself to a new TV! Does that count? 😛

      I will do a “Stock strategy” post soon 😉

      You are right – I’m not that good with personal goals! They feel too much like homework! Haha. But your observation is duly noted! I will try to include some in the 2021 goals 😉

      I’ve hit a bit of a slump lately, so I have not really had the brainpower to write anything on the blog.

      That Swedish global fond looks good – although it’s very FANG heavy imho…

      Hope all is well in Swederland 😛

      Happy new year!

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