Update #012 - March 2022

Update 12!!! that means this thing just turned 1 year old, Happy blogthday to me I guess xD. Honestly, I had some second thoughts about writing this entry... almost felt it was pointless. But then I thought it's freaking cold outside and I'm oncall so can't go anywhere xD, what the heck, lets get this done!

March was a bit bitter in a way for my finances, dividends were pretty good but the P2P returns are clearly effected by the conflict in Ukraine. The one impacted the most, as predicted in last month's update, was PeerBerry, however they have been keeping users very much up to date with their plans and actions and seems as if they will be able to turn this around... will see. I really don't want another Grupeer in my back.

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!!!

Update #010 - January 2022

Helloooooooo everyone out there in the vast Internet, welcome to Update #010, covering my finances for the month of January 2022. Can't believe I've been doing this for almost a year :O now, hello consistency, how are you, wink wink!!! 

January was a good month, I must say though that getting back to work after the holidays was hard to say the least. The first 2 weeks were mental, oncalls delayed projects, jeeezzz, luckily things have taken a slower pace by now.

Have you seen the stock market during January? oh my, it felt like a freaking roller-coaster. we dipped 10% on 27th, and now looks like we are slightly recovering. However things aren't looking too good, looks as if we were starting to break previous lows and trending down. I guess in a few weeks or month we will have a better picture!

What am I doing? trying to pick stocks as they start dropping in price, but holding off on any big purchases for a few weeks at least.

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?

Is something brewing in the P2P Lending space???

Now that the world is coming to an end again (for like, what? the 4th time this year?) with this new Covid variant and lockdowns, markets going nuts and blah blah blah, we have P2P lending platforms acting out. For the last 3 to 4 months I've been consistently complaining about my P2P Loan platforms. You could say, that I complain a lot, and you wouldn't be wrong xD, but in this case I might have a valid reason. Late payments, drops in interest rates, cash dragging, etc etc are some of the symptoms I've noticed in the platforms I use. And now... to all these already bad issues, we can add FEES, yeah, Finbee is adding an account FEE!!! WTF Finbee!!! WTF!!!

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!

 

Update #006 - September 2021

What a month!!! As we get closer to the end of the year, looks like we are at the brink of a big economic colapse xD. Both world biggest economies are having their own fair share of issues due to debt (one way or another). On one side we have China and their now infamous Evergrande scandal, and on the other (literally opposite things xD) the US running out of dough and struggling to increase their debt ceiling to get them printers printing. What a time to be alive folks!!! What a time!!!

Jokes a side, hope you all had a good September, regardless of where this all takes us I truly hope is not too bad. Chances are in a few weeks we will be just talking about Halloween and we would have left all of this fear and uncertainty behind. I myself had an interesting month, did some buying here and there, got some juicy dividends and pretty good P2P results.

Life itself is going good, summer is officially behind us here in Emerald Island as we've had very chilled days lately. On the bright side, I finally got my tickets to see my family in December. It's going to be almost 2 years without being there, so can't wait!!! All that said, lets get to the numbers September left.

Update #005 - August 2021

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 )

Update #004 - July 2021

Say good bye to July!!! Yess, July 2021 is official behind us all, and I'm a year older than I was in "Update #003 - June 2021". Besides the regular aging that comes along with time, July has been a pretty fun month, very sportive I must say. Back to play some volley ball here and there and some very intense Bouldering sessions. For the ones unfamiliar with Bouldering is a sort of indoor climbing, pretty fun and great full body workout.

Financially wise, July wasn't a record month in terms of passive income, but was pretty close. It did reach the highest expenses coverage percent ever with a nice 2.7%, beating March 2021 by 0.01%!!! How come you have lower income and higher expense coverage? You must be thinking! Panic not, I have the answer for you :), essentially my expenses have dropped a bit since I moved in with my girlfriend and this is a side effect of that. Anyways, enough talking, show me the numberssss

Update #003 - June 2021

Hello hello! Here we are deeping our toes in the second half of 2021, closing second quarter of the year and most importantly the month of my birthday! Yay! Summer in Ireland seems to be slowly but surely fading away, which makes me pretty sad to be honest. Thinking about winter again is not particularly exciting xD. But I am not here to rant about crappy Irish weather (although I just did and may keep doing), I'm here to bring you updates regarding my path towards financial freedom.

The way towards Financial Freedom is a bumpy one, but June's part was pretty smooth :). A record month for passive income, record month for dividends and some good changes in the P2P portfolio, so despite how much I love it, I can't complain. Also to add to the mix I finally finished reading "The little book that beats the market", although as more of the financial classics is a bit dated it has very clear content and easy to digest, totally recommend it.

Without further ado, here we go!

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!

Why I'm saying goodbye to Bondora...

For the last 2 or 3 months I've been thinking about how much value is Bondora actually adding to my P2P portfolio after all. I was first drawn to the platform by their amazing liquidity promise and low maintenance investing mode, however a few things have changed so here are my reasons why I'm leaving the platform.

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!