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!
A lot happened in November, actually! We’ve changed our main bank, and I’ve exited Viventor and entered Crowdestate and Crowdestor instead. I decided to enter Crowdestor, and managed to sign-up, get verified, add funds AND invest in my first project, all within 2 days. The same day I signed up, Jørgen over at financiallyfree.eu posted a review of Crowdestor. This review only confirmed me in my choice.
Jørgen is very pleased with the platform so far (as am I). It’s very similar to Envestio in terms of payouts and the interest rates. I like getting monthly interest payouts – it kind of makes it more interesting to follow your investments, and it also allow you to re-invest your dividends quickly. Of the crowdlending platforms that I’m currently invested in, only Envestio, Grupeer and Crowdestor have monthly interest payments.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a whole lot of cash to put into the two new platforms, so they make up a small percentage of the total crowdlending portfolio – for now.
I entered Crowdestate because it seems to be the biggest real estate development crowdlending platform in europe – and they have a secondary market, which could allow you to exit the projects ahead of schedule, should you wish to do so. Bulkestate does not leave you a lot of options in that regard. Also, Bulkestate did not have any new projects on the platform in November, so I’m starting to doubt if the platform is going to survive in the long run. It certainly makes it difficult to get a decent spread, and I know of people who have decided to leave the platform because of this.
Enough jibber-jabber – show me the money!
OK, OK – without further ado, here’s the numbers from this months progress:
Platform | Value last month | Current value | Change +/- | Change in % | Expected yearly return |
Bulkestate | € 3.525 | € 3.525 | € 0 | 0,00% | 14% |
Crowdestate * | € 200 | € 200 | € 0 | 0,00% | 11% |
Crowdestor * | € 200 | € 200 | € 0 | 0,00% | 15% |
Envestio | € 3.027 | € 3.093 | € 66 | 2,18% | 16% |
Grupeer | € 1.000 | € 1.009 | € 9 | 0,90% | 13% |
Mintos | € 905 | € 910 | € 5 | 0,55% | 10% |
€ 8.857 | € 8.937 | € 80 | 0,90% | 13% | |
Bank #1 cash (main savings) | € 37.333 | € 38.000 | € 667 | 0,70% | |
Bank #2 cash (emergency fund) | € 13.333 | € 13.333 | 5% | ||
€ 51.333 | |||||
Total balance | € 60.270 |
I had some cash drag on Mintos, and I’ve been struggling to keep above 10% interest rate, so I decided to move €100 to Crowdestor instead. I’m still undecided whether I’m going to keep Mintos in the long run, but for now I’m OK having it in my portfolio.
Once again, Envestio is the flagship earner! As part of the bonus program, I got €15 as a timespan bonus (this corresponds to 0.5% of my total invested funds, which I will receive the first 9 months of investing!). I’m seriously considering throwing in more money – but I need to keep my ultimate goal in mind; I need to save my cash for the big real estate investment – which unfortunately did NOT happen this month either…
I met with both Imbro and Koncenton this month, and these meetings just confirmed my disposition. I’m so impatient! I really want that project to appear NOW! I don’t think it’s going to happen in 2018, unfortunately…
There’s not a whole lot I can do – besides waiting. It has occurred to me that I might actually have to wait, till I have 750.000 DKK (€100.000), since most of the projects have a minimum buy-in of €100.000. That’s obviously going to take a while (I’m €40.000 short…). Imbro just released a new project with a yield of 15.8% and dividends of 5.9%! I know it’s going to sell out in 1 day, and the buy-in is €100.000. At this point, I really wish I had that much to invest. I would probably do it in a heartbeat 😛
I am concerned that I’m wasting valuable time and money, by having the majority of my funds in a low-interest bank account. This month, I managed to secure an interest rate of 5% on part of my nest egg (new bank), but the 5% interest rate only apply to amounts below €13.333 (100.000 DKK), so it’ll only give me 5.000 DKK/year (pre tax). – Which is OK, all things considered – it’s just not really going to make that big of a difference, in getting to those 750.000 DKK. It’s more cosmetic to be honest 😛
Although it’s the dreaded christmas month, I still managed to tuck away 5.000 DKK (€ 667) into my savings, which is my minimum monthly goal, so that’s OK I guess. In the new year I want to try and raise that goal to 7.000 DKK, but it probably wont happen the first couple of months, as we have a few getaways planned.
Anyway, on the upside, I managed a return of €80 from my crowdlending investments this month. I’m pretty happy with that! Ideally, I would love to see that number grow to €100 by the end of this year, but I don’t think my small investment in Crowdestor is going to get me there – so I will have to see if I can scrape together some more cash, and put into one of the platforms in december…
I only count realized earnings. I could choose to include the unrealized earnings of Bulkestate and Crowdestate, but that just somehow seems wrong. So I won’t see any realized earnings from those two platforms anytime soon.
November was another volatile month in the stock market. It confirmed my reluctant feelings about it actually. I don’t plan to enter that casino anytime soon…
My crowdlending mixture now looks like this:
Still a somewhat uneven distribution. I will attempt to balance it a bit more over the coming months. Whenever I have €100 I feel like I can spare, I will put it into one of the two new platforms (Crowdestor or Crowdestate). Since I started using Revolut, making small deposits to the different platforms doesn’t cost me anything extra (no SEPA fees). So I’m fine with transferring smaller amounts, whenever I feel like I can spare some change. Protip: When you transfer funds to Revolut, make sure to do it in the typical bank opening hours, and always transfer funds in your own currency – and then do a currency conversion via Revolut. Then you wont pay any bank-fees, and you will get the best exchange rate.
In hindsight, I probably went in a little too strong on Bulkestate. I should have kept my initial deposit at around €1000, and then spread the rest to Crowdestate and Crowdestor. Lesson learned. Let’s just hope the investments I’ve made on Bulkestate so far, actually pays off in a year or so…
That’s it! See you next month! 😉
Hello fellow FI pursuer. Great update and inspiring portfolio. It is interesting to see different approaches and perspectives on sources of “passive” income.
I am thinking about joining another platform. Where would you recommend me to begin my own research – Crowdestor or Crowdestate?
Thank you and good luck.
Hello Druss,
I’ve decided to enter both, as they represent two parts of the spectrum – one is well established, the other is (almost) brand new.
Looking at your portfolio I would say that Crowdestate is a lot like Estateguru (both in terms of the number of projects/types and the interest rate levels).
If you like Envestio and are looking to add some monthly “dividends” to your portfolio, I would definitely go with Crowdestor. They are new, and still unproven, so it might be a “gamble”, compared to entering Crowdestate. The fact that Crowdestate have a secondary market (that works pretty well) is of great importance to me. In my mind, they ALL should have that! 😉
If you want to learn a little more about the individual platforms, check out Jørgens reviews of the platforms over at financiallyfree.eu 🙂
Thanks for reading! And good luck on your FI journey! I’ll be sure to follow your progress 😉
Great update, Nick! Exciting to follow a portfolio made up of more “untraditional” asset classes with no stocks at all. I’m especially curious to see how your real estate investments and crowd-investments will perform during crises compared to more “normal” portfolios like mine.
You and me both, brotha! 😛
I believe it’s likely that 1 or 2 platforms will go under during a financial crisis – but since the history of crowdlending is still short, we don’t really know what to expect. It wasn’t intended, but I can see myself move in the same direction as Jørgen over at financiallyfree.eu, but with a little less overweight in crowdlending 😉
Long term, I’m still thinking about 80/20 between real estate and crowdlending. I believe rental properties are one of the safest assets you can have in your portfolio – even during a crisis (as long as you’re cool with the bank ofc).
However, I’m starting to think that the timing in terms of real estate investments might not be perfect atm. I sense danger/turmoil ahead 😉
The big citites around the world are starting to see the real estate bubbles burst, and the giant joker in that sphere is of course the interest rate atm. Since the world debt continue to climb through the ceiling, I’m afraid that a(nother) collapse is imminent. People, countries and companies are so indebted that we’ve forgotten how to create growth without indebting ourselves indefinitely. There’s no way the current debt levels are ever going to be repaid. It will be interesting to see what happens.
I believe Sune over at Frinans.dk picked the right time to start “investing” in gold 😉
This is an interesting article that I found yesterday (while digging for gold – ha!): https://news.goldcore.com/ie/gold-blog/interest-rate-rises-gold-global-debt-bubble-collapse/
– Keep in mind that the source sells gold – so it’s obviously pretty biased, but I believe the conclusion is fairly accurate…
I totally get you – I feel that way about stocks a lot at the moment! For me, it is the same with real estate as it is with stocks. You cannot time the market (I’ve learned that when I didn’t invest in real estate in 2012 because I thought the market had topped – ha!). So I would continuously dollar-cost-average invest in real estate too if I were in your shoes – the only problem is that it often requires quite large sums of money to do so, so you are more prone to investing “at the wrong time”.
I agree. The real estate market tend to follow the interest rate – low rates, high market prices – high rate, low(er) market prices. So I’m not that concerned regarding my upcoming investment. It just seem more attractive to pay less for something, and then pay a higher interest rate – than to pay more for something, and then pay a low(er) interest rate. – Although the latter is the scenario right now, historically I think the former is more the default scenario.
My main concern right now is my exposure towards the interest rate (in that I have a big mortgage in my own home). I’ve been playing with a bunch of scenarios for the coming years, depending on the interest rate (and the real estate market). If I don’t find an attractive real estate investment within the next year or so, and the interest rate starts to go up – I’m considering dumping my real estate investment money into my mortgage instead, which would be a poor investment, but it would limit my exposure. I’m constantly nagged by doubt in every decision that I make 😛