Here we meet again, another month is gone and is time to pick up the numbers to see how things went. Personally August was a solid month, lots of bouldering was done and a pretty good walking stats :). Financially speaking it wasn't as solid unfortunately xD, that said something great happened in this are :) keep reading if you want to know more :O... (see what I did there :P )
P2P Loans Update
My P2P portfolio had Ok-ish month returns €33.01 which happens to be -3.33% compared to the July :(. Yes, not cool, but guess what... Mintos crapped all over my portfolio again... resulting in a second month trending down :(. They have an investing license now and all, but to me they still suck big time when it comes to getting my money back! Sorry for the rant, but honestly, the quality of their loans seem considerably crappier than the other platforms I invest in.
By far the star of the month was without a doubt good old Finbee with a return almost 6% higher than July, pretty neat. The rest of the platforms showed a very shy growth.
Due to Mintos's ugly performance in August, the average annual yield took a bit of a nose dive, but remained above the 10% I am targeting, reaching 10.74%
Looking at delays and dragging, there's some good news! Fibee current funds are now reaching 94%, quite a climb from the 85% of the previous month. Peerberry that I find so reliable, is showing for 3rd month in a row shrinking current funds, now sitting at 81.79%. It's not terrible, but is a bit concerning to be honest. I'm sure a few of the loans under "Up to 15 days" will get sorted soon and these numbers will get better.
The platform that is really becoming a problem is no other than Mintos. Current funds are again low, barely reaching 63% with about 3 times more funds in "up to 60 days" compared with July.
P2P Loans news
I know what you are thinking "Ohhh a fancy new section", not really xD. Just trying to split the monthly numbers update from other P2P related news. In particular there's two I wanted to share with you:
I can now leave Grupeer behind
When I started with the P2P loans, one of the platforms I initially registered on was Grupeer. Well... on February/March 2020 Grupeer started showing delays in their payments until they totally stopped. Their accounts were frozen and they are now facing some legal consequences. If you have been following or have read my P2P Portfolio section you may have noticed that I still have roughly 10% invested in the platform (€404.37 to be precise). Even though Grupeer is unlikely to ever get back to business (despite their website still being online), I decided to keep them in my stats as a reminder of how risky this is. Well, after about year and a half, the interest income collected from the other platforms have reached the money lost/stuck in Grupeer :) and that's quite a thing for me to be honest. By the end of August I have collected €414.73 which sort of means that I'm just breaking even and can buy a beer in temple bar with the rest hahaha.
Added more money to P2p Loans
For a few months now I have been thinking about adding some more money to my P2P platforms. They have shown the pandemic didn't affect them as much as some of us had thought. So what I did was get some money that had parked for cryptos and moved it to P2P instead. Is not a lot to be honest, I'm still supper hesitant about sinking too much money in P2P loans.
I distributed the €600 like the following: - Finbee €200 - PeerBerry €200€ - RoboCash €200€ - Mintos €0 Once this money is put to work (which may take a few weeks for Finbee) and assuming the platforms keep their regular yields, my P2P monthly income should increase by roughly €5.5, so I expect monthly incomes above €40 in the next month or two.
If you feel like joining any of these platforms, you can use the following affiliate links and push me a step closer to financial freedom in the process :)
Dividend Update
Good old dividends, my precious, unfortunately during August they didn't love me as much as I do love them :(. I have noticed that in my dividend distribution months like November, February, May and August are of rather low dividend income. Particularly August returned €19.2 in dividends, with the biggest payers being VZ, T and ABBV:
Looking at the bigger picture (trying to see the bright side here xD), August 2021 returns of €19.2 is almost 5 times higher than the shy €3.94 returned by August 2020 :). So, although slow, things are moving up and to the right, like we all want.
Stocks Update
August was a sort of quiet month in terms of trading, however I did buy a few things. Here's the summary:
- RIO: on August 5th I finally decided to grab myself some Rio Tinto stocks, bought 5 at $84.66 (already down to $75.87). RIO seems like a very safe play in the Materials sector, they are mostly getting their revenue from Iron Ore, but they are also investing in Lithium for the years ahead. They are very kind on their dividend payment however they are not shy in cutting or reducing them when commodities prices are low. RIO currently has a very high yield (about 9%) since they have declared a very juicy dividend after the great revenue achieved due to the extremely high Iron Ore prices we saw in the past few months.
- NEL: on August 16th bought 120 shares at 14.11 Nok each. NEL is a Norwegian company that specializes in building electrolyzer and hydrogen fueling stations. It's a bit of a long term bet, they have been in the hydrogen business for a very long time. So if hydrogen ever becomes a meaningful fuel source in the economy they will be benefited by that. That said, there's something I don't like about NEL... they partnered with Nikola and Nikolas hasn't done anything but disappointing investors for the last few years.
- BABA: following my own words in the previous update, I bought BABA in two different dates, first got 2 shares on August 16th at $185 and then 2 more on August 17th at $175.1. There's been a lot of FUD (Fear, uncertainty and Doubt) about BABA and Chinese companies in general, but honestly this is a company with an explosive growth at a very reduced cost. Today BABA is trading more or less at $170 which is the price the stock had back in 2017/2018, however nowadays they are doing 3 to 4 times the revenue they were doing back then.
I'm not going to lie... BABA and NEL are two very risky buys. Particularly NEL that is an old company in a sector that is fighting to establish who the new big clean source of energy is going to be. However I think NEL has interesting chances to get some growth from Europe's carbon neutrality plans in the years ahead. And about BABA... well, they are growing in one of the most densely populated parts of the world, honestly I don't imagine BABA getting anything but bigger and bigger for the next 5 to 10 years. Yes, maybe the Chinese government try to keep them under control, but I cannot imagine them damaging BABA enough for the company to go out of business.
Overall passive income
In the big scheme of things August's passive income (€52.2) was Ok (yeah, I admit it, it was disappointing :( ). Still trending up in the YoY charts, resulting in a 2.4 times increase compared with the August 2020 €21.38. The passive income coverage didn't shine much either, I thought I would get somewhere around 3% coverage, but ended up being 2.18%. That, sadly, doesn't get me very close to my 5% annual target :(, but on the other side is the third month in a row that the passive income covers more than 2% of my expenses, so that's something :P.
Personal life and health
Life is going well, been going to the bouldering gym 2 to 3 times a week with my girlfriend and we are killing it!!! I also managed to get 82.4 Km done!!! My hands though, are totally messes up, splinters and callus all over them xD, but it's worth it. First time in ages that I feel sort of strong, bouldering is quite demanding and particularly when your technique sucks, like mine xD. A month or two ago we were just doing yellows and blues (the first two levels) while nowadays we have done almost all the orange and pinks in the gym (levels 3 and 4), and already started to try some of the next levels. We are building a very interesting routine, nothing too elaborated but is working out for us. Sunday is bouldering days, Monday is usually rest days so the body can do some healing xD (mostly the hands), Tuesday is workout day nothing too fancy (and hands can still heal), no gear just body weight and totally indoors. Wednesday is bouldering day again (Yay!!!), Thursday is rest day and Friday usually workout again although depends on the energy left xD. Saturday depends, but is usually the laziest day of the week so we don't overthink it and eat and sleep most of it.
No, my life is not just bouldering and investing xD, I also work and drink beer (although not as much as usual anymore). Haven't been able to do much traveling either, essentially because I have no passport xD, but that's subject for a different moment. Anyways, I'll drop the ball here, get some wine and watch some Netflix while Sunday slowly fades away!!
Have a great week! Cheers!
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