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!
I started the year with a Total Balance of DKK 400.000 (€53.333 / $61.539) and as of the 31st of December 2018 my Total Balance is (drum roll): DKK 461.715 (€61.562 / $71.033)
I have to say, I’m quite pleased with this number. This means that I actually managed to add an entire years worth of savings (remember the DKK 5.000/month goal) to my nest egg, in just 3 months. Granted, the major part of that was due to my double-salary situation back in November – but hey, who cares how it got there, right?! 😀
Oh, you do? Sure. Let’s have a look at the numbers breakdown for the year then 😉
So what happened in December?
Well, I managed to add the standard DKK 5.000 to my savings – BUT, at the same time I also managed to add €400 (DKK 3.000) to a couple of (NEW!) crowdlending platforms. Yes, that’s right. Once again, I could not restrain myself. – I added two new crowdlending platforms to my portfolio in December. Which ones, which ones!?
Let’s have a look at the balance sheet:
| Platform | Value last month | Current value | Change +/- | % | Expected yearly return |
| Bulkestate | € 3.525 | € 3.525 | € 0 | 0,00% | 14% |
| Crowdestate | € 200 | € 201 | € 1 | 0,50% | 11% |
| Crowdestor | € 200 | € 201 | € 1 | 0,00% | 15% |
| Envestio | € 3.093 | € 3.144 | € 51 | 1,65% | 16% |
| Estateguru *NEW | € 0 | € 201 | € 1 | 0,00% | 12% |
| FastInvest *NEW | € 0 | € 200 | € 0 | 0,00% | 14% |
| Grupeer | € 1.009 | € 1.020 | € 11 | 1,09% | 13% |
| Mintos | € 910 | € 926 | € 16 | 1,76% | 10% |
| € 8.937 | € 9.418 | € 81 | 0,91% | 13% | |
| Bank #1 cash (main savings) | € 38.000 | € 38.757 | € 757 | 0,70% | |
| Bank #2 cash (emergency fund) | € 13.333 | € 13.390 | € 57 | 5% | |
| € 52.144 | |||||
| Total balance | € 61.562 |
So, new additions to the roster – welcome EstateGuru and FastInvest to my crowdlending portfolio. This brings my crowdlending platform portfolio to a total of 8. I have not set a goal in terms of diversification, but my lightly autistic approach to numbers, systems and symmetry tells me that 10 (different platforms) is a nice round number. I’m not going to have a set goal for 2019 to “reach” 10 different platforms, but I will say that it’s likely to happen sometime during 2019. For now though, I will leave room for a couple of new platforms 😉
Imagine a pie-chart with a perfect 10/10 split between 10 different crowdlending platforms. That will be my nirvana! It will probably never happen though 😛 Currently this is how the spread looks:
Envestio and Bulkestate remain my biggest assets in the crowdlending pool, with Envestio being the biggest (current) contributor to my dividend pool. The loans on Bulkestate is bullet-loans (non-amortized), so I won’t see any interest payout from my Bulkestate investments until the end of 2019. Pretty boring actually, but such is the nature of the bullet-loans.
Unfortunately, I had misinterpreted the bonus-program at Envestio. You get a bonus of 0.5% on your (monthly) investments for the first 270 days. The monthly part is the kicker here. Last month I received a bonus of €15 because I had invested the majority of my money on the platform in October. I thus expected another €15 to roll into my account in December (for my investments in November). However, this was not what I got. I only got a measly €0.31. – Because that was 0.5% of what I had actually invested in the previous month. DOH (as Homer would say). So, since I already have a huge overweight on Envestio, I’m planning to start channeling my dividends from Envestio out to my other platforms (starting in January). We’ll see how that goes. The difficult part, is going to be picking which platform to move funds to first 😛 Since I have 4 different “underweight” platforms with only €200 in each, I should probably start there. It will depend on the new projects presented in 2019 by each platform I guess (my money is on crowdestor, to be the first to announce new and exciting projects).
So, because of the little bonus-misunderstanding at Envestio, I didn’t quite reach my €100 crowdlending dividend goal in December. Luckily, the year end is (always) also the time for the bank account interests to be paid out! This amounted to the sum total of DKK 1080 (€144 / $166).
This brings my total dividend for the year to a whopping (really?) €381
For 3 months worth of “runtime”, I think that’s acceptable (keep in mind that only 15% of my Total Balance is actually currently invested, so €381 actually correspond to a 4% yield). Obviously, a lot of my crowdlending investments have yet to pay any dividend (like Bulkestate), so I expect my average dividend for 2019 to be significantly higher than €80. I will publish a “Goals for 2019” post in the coming weeks (spoiler alert: I’m raising the bar significantly to shorten my road to FIRE!) 😉
If you don’t care much for all the gibber-gabber, you can always follow my progress here (no gibber-gabber – just the graphs and a few comments)
That’s it for the year! Hope to see you again in 2019.
Hey Nick,
A couple of questions about your portfolio:
1. Why did you choose Bulkestate and Envestio as your top picks? Is it because of the higher interest rate or something else? Especially about Bulkestate, as it doesn’t have a buy-back-guarantee. I’d like to hear your thoughts on this, as I’m looking into trying out more P2P platforms in the future.
2. What happened between October and November? 🙂
Hey Monk,
thanks for stopping by!
1. In all honesty, knowing what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have entered Bulkestate – especially not with that amount of cash that I did. On the other hand – provided that they pay out – Bulkestate has a really solid return. We shall see in October/November when my first loans are up, whether it was a good “gamble” or not. As of right now, I don’t plan to re-invest with them, as I really prefer the monthly – or at least quarterly (from most of my crowdestate loans) interest payouts. You can read a little bit more about my thoughts on my first crowdlending mistakes here: https://totalbalance.blog/my-3-biggest-crowdlending-mistakes/
I joined Envestio as my 3rd or 4th platform I think, and by then I really wanted to have something that could match/balance out my investment in Bulkestate. At the time Envestio had a couple of interesting development projects, and the bonus scheme kept me investing with them. I have not been investing with Envestio for a while now (got my first loan repayment last month, and moved the funds to other platforms to diversify further). I intend to keep my crowdlending portfolio at around 15% of my total balance. The latest projects at Envestio doesn’t really speak to me. So Crowdestor has kind of taken over as my favorite for the last couple of months (I invested “heavily” in Crowdestor this month already). They don’t have buyback either, though. Although they are working on a “buyback” fund, but it only contains about €100.000…
2. If you read the November update, you’ll find out 😉 (I got a new job – switched from being backward-payed to being forward-payed = double salary).
Your numbers are relatively close to mine! You’re a little ahead (and much more so with property equity). Let’s race to 100k invested! Nothing beats a bit of friendly competition? 🙂
Your graphs are pretty sexy. What are you using to make them?
Unfortunately €100K isn’t quite the same as £100K , so I’d say you’re still a little ahead there (unless you count my equity – but I prefer not to – if I also count my pension, you’re waaaaay behind 😉 It’s currently about the same as my equity), but I will race you regardless 😛
I use two different WP plugins to create my “live charts” and excel to create the flat ones. Easy Charts and Visualizer. It takes a little time to master them, but I’m pretty happy with them – thanks for noticing 😀
Congratulations on a great (last part of the) year, Nick – and Happy New Year! Looking forward to following you and your P2P lending investments (and maybe real estate investments?) in 2019 🙂
Thanks, Carl! Happy new year to you and the missus. I hope you had a blast, whereever you are 😉
I’m sure 2019 will be a year full of many exciting opportunities for the both of us 😉
I did not set out to be a P2P investor – that sort of just happened. I dont feel like p2p will ever be my main thing – but for obvious reasons, these investments are exciting atm, as they (so far) pay nice dividens. I’m starting to doubt if I will actually be able to commit to that one large Real estate project, if it should present itself in 2019…since I heard Christians latest podcast at mininvestering.dk about brickshare (and their future plans), I’m thinking it might be a “safer” approach to just invest smaller amounts in numerous projects, rather than one big with Imbro (for example). On the other hand, I would still put all my eggs with one platform (brickshare), until other similar platforms arrive (like eg propertypartner.co.uk).
Doubts, doubts, doubts! We shall see what happens once it’s decision time :-p
Godt Nytår Nick! We’re not quite there yet, but close enough 😉
You had a great 3-month run! Very promising and I’m curious about how much you will raise your bar for shortening your journey to FIRE (and how you will do it).
Great crowdlending/funding diversification by the way. I need to work on that as well (I currently only have Mintos in my portfolio).
Thanks! I lige måde! 😉
I was really anxious when I made my first investments on Mintos etc. Now I just do it like it’s the most natural thing in the world. It’s funny how quickly we adopt to the new norm. If you’re looking to diversify I recommend going with some of the most established platforms first (like crowdestate and estateguru). I’ve taken on a little more risk with my portfolio than I originally planned to (being on a lot of new and unproven platforms).
I have high hopes for the Danish Real estate crowd platform, Brickshare.dk 😉 I hope to see some interesting news from those guys in 2019. I’m leaving a spot in my portfolio for brickshare I think!
Anyway, since I’ve managed to save alot more than those originally planned DKK 5.000/month I will up my goal on that front going forward. Unfortunately I already know that the first couple of months of 2019 is going to be tough, as we’ve got a vacation planned (in february) and the Mastercard bill for all the Christmas shopping is due too :-p
How did your year go?
I’ll definitely look at those recommended platforms. Envestio looks interesting too. And yes, I have my eyes on Brickshare as well 🙂
My situation is a bit different. I joined my company’s ESPP program in 2015 and they withhold close to 30% of my net salary, which is then used to buy shares (in the same company obviously) for a discounted price. Due to this the return in 2018 stands at 47%. I know I shouldn’t invest everything in a single asset, but for now I just go with the flow (my risk tolerance allows me to do this) 😉
Anyway, it means I have limited additional funds to invest in other asset classes at the moment, but I am definitely going to expand my crowdlending/funding share. And as I get closer to FIRE, I will most likely start selling shares I hold in the company I work for and re-allocate to safer, passive assets.
Okay that was a long story… but overall 2018 has been great for me. Net worth increased around $24K or DKK150.000.
I am starting to feel the heat (FIRE)!
Cool! How long does the ESPP program run for?
I’ve been in a similar program before here in DK, but they are not nearly as lucrative as they used to be. The rules have changed alot, so the benefit of joining such programs in DK is very small, unfortunately…
It runs as long as I am an employee. Every 2 years a new ‘lock-in’ (discount) price is set however at 85% of the share price.
For the past 2-3 years it has been quite lucrative, mainly due to the bull market conditions. No guarantee it stays like that.