Update #011 - February 2022

Hello everyone out there, what a crazy month we just had... and probably still have ahead. War in Ukraine, talks of nuclear threats, markets being shaken by catastrophic news, oil prices reaching $100, financial sanctions on Russia, and this is just a summary of it all. I am sort of surprised that after all the bloodshed we saw in the early and mid 90s we are again walking down a very similar road, it's just sad and makes me wonder how smart we are after all. 

Personally February has been nice, freezing cold in emerald island, we even got a glimpse of snow a few days ago. Fortunately though, it is getting warmer by the day. Oh! I finally started going back to the office once or twice per week, so that was something new and interesting. Met colleagues I've been working with for over a year now hahaha. I also seem to be much more productive when working in the office, very interesting observation, on top of that communication is much more fluent with my colleagues when there.

Leaving all the madness aside, or trying at least here goes the financial summary for February 2022!!!

Yearly summary - 2021

Hello how long!!! Here I am, ready to do a review of my 2021, see which of my goals I achieved and which I didn't and also to rant a bit about other stuff. Also was thinking about including some highlights of 2021 and set the new goals for 2022.

Update #009 - December 2021

Hello how long! It's me again, still reporting from the scorching southern hemisphere survining almost 40 Celcius right now! Things can get really hot down here in summer xD. Oh, man I missed this weather, it hasn't rained once in almost 3 weeks now. That said, I got a very serious sunburn I'm still recoverying from because of going for a walk between 10am and 2pm. I did wore some suncream but I clearly lost the technic to apply it properly xD, so now I'm peeling off like a snake literally. For the first time in a long long time, I managed to really disconnect myself from work, which was an amazing feeling. Need to achieve that more often, but without the need of having to travel to the oppossite hemispfere xD, otherwise is hardly viable.

Financially wise December, despite my negative predictions HERE, was pretty good :). This was caused by both lower than usual expenses and good passive income levels. The P2P platforms finally broke the €40 barrier I was so looking forward to (hard to tell whether that will be sustained though) and my beloved dividends did pretty good as well.

Enough with the pep talk :), lets get to the numbers!

Update #008 - November 2021

I don't even know when November happened, if you ask me 2021 didn't have a November xD!!! Hello anyways I guess :), sorry I've had a few very very intense weeks and now I'm on my merry way to sunnier lands. Although I'm currently stuck in Frankfurt airport, my mind is already feeling the 30+ centigrade that wait for me in the southern hemisphere of this beautiful and fragile sphere we call earth.

I haven't slept much the last 48 hours, so forgive my crappier than usual language xD. Have you noticed how much more cumbersome has traveling become? Jesus... PCR tests, a ton of forms to fill, certificates of vaccination, I remember when worrying about my passport and visa was all of it. Good old times, right?

Well, enough ranting! Lets talk some finances now.... turns out November was for me as nuts as it was for the stock market. Yeah, my stock portfolio went full nose dive to begin with, mainly caused BABA stocks, on top of that the passive income overall wasn't outstanding. Lets have a closer look, will you?

Update #007 - October 2021

It is me again (a bit late xD), this time saying good by to Mr October 2021. A month that didn't bring much to be honest, neither financially nor personally. Don't get me wrong, wasn't a bad month, just nothing particularly good about it. Good thing is, I am now entering the last 4 weeks before my so, so, so, needed holidays!!! It's actually 4 weeks to leave Ireland, I'll do remote work for a week and a half and then proper holidays mode on. But just being able to get on a plane and get the heck out of here for a while will be a big relief. Honestly... I have never wished holidays so bad.

Financially speaking October was so and so. Although there were some dividend hikes on some of my positions, the earned dividends were super shy. On the other side P2P earnings recovered a bit compared with the results from September, not a whole lot to be honest (I was expecting better). Lastly, P2P related, I noticed that for over 3 weeks, Mintos had about €220 without investing them at all so i decided to relocate them.

Lets go into the details!

 

My dividends are shrinking?? what's going on?

Hello there! Here I am, at 6:15 PM on my day off having a nice cup of tea and listening to what sounds like some of Oasis’s songs on the radio. Can’t complain though, the view from the new place (recently moved :)) is pretty nice, summer, on the other hand, seems to have slowly faded away in the Emerald Island and we are now back to sub 15 C temperatures. By the way as suggested by One Million Journey on my previous post Update #002 - May 2021 I’m using google docs for writing the post so let's see how it goes this time.

A few weeks ago, while I was doing my regular dividends check in my Google sheets I noticed something that caught my attention. Several of the dividends that I had recorded seemed to have been shrinking since I started receiving them. This was shocking to say the least, so I decided to write down my findings here for posterity :). Enjoy!

Update #002 - May 2021

Here I am, June 2nd, re writing this post because freaking Blogger editor is crap... and deleted all my draft when I was trying to copy a freaking table to it. Anyways... May did not go unnoticed to me at all, lots of interesting events in tha finance world, from the crash in Bitcoin and other cryptos, to a deep in the SP500, AT&T announcing Warner media spinoff, etc. Adding to all the financial madness, Ireland has provided some of the sunniest days I can remember, so all in all things in May were interesting.

Personal finances are looking good as well, second highest month in expenses coverage with passive income reaching 1.89%. As usual, mostly driven by the P2P portfolio returns and less than half by dividends from my stock portfolio. No big chances in the P2P portfolio, although a few things are not looking so nice. I did make some changes in the stock portfolio that you might find interesting, bought some deep in the lows we had in the first half of May 

AT&T is getting rid of Warner Media and cutting their dividend! I'm selling Comcast!

May is proving to be a very emotional month for the stock Market, and here I am licking my wounds after the shocking news about my dearest dividend stock AT&T. In a nutshell, they have announced they are finally giving up on their dream of becoming "a modern media company". Yes, they will sort of spin-off their Warner Media (acquired in 2018) business and merge it with Discovery to from a new company while T will focus on their telco business (which may not be a bad idea). But getting rid of the second largest income generating business (and the only one really growing) in your portfolio doesn't come for free... they will cut their dividend!!!

Update #001 - April 2021

Hello! As will be regular from now on here it goes my first official monthly update. April was a very interesting month, crashed the walking targets, decided to leave Bondora to improve my P2P portfolio yield and got some nice dividend bumps here and there. Besides all that, It's good to see world slowly coming back to normal, at least here in Ireland we have left behind some of the restrictions and getting some of our freedom back. Hopefully as vaccines become more and more available we will all be back to the world we knew!

One step at a time towards financial freedom

Hope you are doing great in this rather weird times we are living. Welcome to the somewhat intelligent investor, a blog tracking my steps to financial freedom while trying to keep healthy and sane (as much as it is possible at this stage). I've been following several other blogs so thought why not starting my own now with all the "free" time the pandemic has given us, right? So here I am, telling strangers about my finances and how I plan to be financially free/independent by the age of 40. In case you wonder, I'm not too far away from 40, so this goal is rather crazy nowadays, but what the heck!