Dear fellow investors, guys and gals, friends and family.
This is my first portfolio update written from southern Europe. Yes, we have officially moved to Portugal.
Selling most of our stuff including 2 cars have freed up a good amount of money, which is waiting to be invested. Maybe it’s time to put some into the stock market?
If you’re interested in more details about our journey, I’m working on a post-series called “Moving to Portugal for Financial Freedom”. Part 1 will be out soon 🙂
So how did my portfolio perform in February? I’m glad you asked, I prepared a nice overview for you.
I found a way to calculate XIRR correctly for negative values, so this month I calculated Crowdlending and Scams together.
Monthly Income Statement: February 2020
| Crowdlending | Income | XIRR | Invested | Value |
| Bondora* | -489.11€ | 3.45% | 10 236€ | 13 748€ |
| Bulkestate* | 0€ | 12.33% | 10 000€ | 10 989€ |
| Crowdestate* | 15.12€ | 6.07% | 5 648€ | 6 675€ |
| Crowdestor* | 1 258.78€ | 16.57% | 85 000€ | 93 110€ |
| FastInvest* | 49.16€ | 16.25% | 2 902€ | 4 144€ |
| Grupeer | 244.04€ | 14.84% | 20 474€ | 23 799€ |
| Mintos* | 252.00€ | 16.00% | 20 000€ | 24 325€ |
| PeerBerry* | 57.68€ | 13.85% | 6 000€ | 6 354€ |
| ReInvest24* | 2.63€ | –0.45% | 1 000€ | 996€ |
| Robocash* | 106.43€ | 12.74% | 10 000€ | 12 335€ |
| Swaper* | 134.15€ | 14.21% | 10 000€ | 13 438€ |
| Viventor* | 38.91€ | 11.68% | 5 000€ | 5 331€ |
| Wisefund* | 324.05€ | 23.92% | 18 117€ | 20 626€ |
| Scams | XIRR | Invested | Value | |
| Envestio | -100% | 20 000€ | 0€ | |
| Kuetzal | -100% | 24 700€ | 0€ | |
| Subtotal | 1 993.84€ | -4.67% | 249 079€ | 235 876€ |
| Real Estate | Income | Invested | Value | |
| Property #1 | 704€ | 49.03% | 18 080€ | 41 448€ |
| Property #2 | 1 167€ | 0.42% | 61 200€ | 61 373€ |
| 1 871€ | 79 280€ | 102 822€ | ||
| Total | 3 864.84€ | 1.93% | 328 359€ | 338 698€ |
Portfolio performance: Historical view
Income from Crowdlending & Real Estate combined was 3 864.84€.
(+78.79€ more than last month).
That means I’m 128.83% Financially Free (+2.63 percentage points up from last month).
My second goal of 7 000€ per month reached 55.21% (+1.13 percentage points up from last month).
Bondora
I stopped reinvesting in Bondora* a long time ago and I’ve started the slow withdrawal process.
I read somewhere that Bondora’s own employees only invest in Go&Grow. None of them uses Portfolio Manager or Portfolio Pro. They have probably seen my income graph as well 🙂
96.55€ was recovered in February but I still have 25 458€ in defaulted loans.
I do not recommend investing with Bondora unless you use the “Go & Grow” product only.
If you want to use Bondora’s Go&Grow as a savings account and earn 6.75% interest rate with instant liquidity, use this link* to get 5€ free when you sign up.
See more info and screenshot from my Bondora account
Bulkestate
I’m only invested in 1 project on Bulkestate* and the next payout is scheduled for 21.12.2020.
This graph will be quite boring to look at unless I invest in more projects.
See more info and screenshot from my Bulkestate account
Crowdestate
The problems on Crowdestate* starts to show in my income graph.
I’m slowly withdrawing funds as they are repaid.
I have 6 late and 1 defaulted project with Crowdestate.
It’ll be interesting to see how well Crowdestate will handle the defaults and delays in 2020.
See more info and screenshot from my Crowdestate account
Crowdestor
Crowdestor* is still my favorite platform. They offer a variety of projects with different risks and different yields.
I like their team and the way the CEO Janis Timma replies to questions on Facebook.
Sometimes it feels like I’m addicted to Crowdestor.. I’m really tempted to invest another 15k EUR into the “Leasing Loan Portfolio” project which comes with a 24% interest rate. It pays interest and principal every month, starting from next month (not 6 month delayed like other projects).
On the other hand, I already invested 85k EUR in Crowdestor so I should probably diversify more. Hmm.. it’s so tempting!!
See more info and screenshot from my Crowdestor account
FastInvest
I feel really twisted about FastInvest*. Some people say it’s obvious they’re a scam.
Some loan originators on Mintos* now pay up to 16.7% interest, so I don’t think the unnamed loan originators on FastInvest is worth the risk anymore. Hence, I decided to reduce my exposure on FastInvest a bit. I’ve been withdrawing some money as the loans matured.
I’ll probably keep a small position just to follow the evolvement of the platform, because I still like how it works.
See more info and screenshot from my FastInvest account
Grupeer
Grupeer* remains one of the most stable investments in my portfolio.
They just released the latest platform update which shows statistical data of your portfolio. I would be more interested in better overview of actual data but it’s a start.
See more info and screenshot from my Grupeer account
Mintos
Mintos* is closing in on the 5 billion EUR milestone.
Meanwhile, the interest rates keep climbing up. 6 loan originators offer interest rates above 16%. Loans from SunFinance and CashWagon and Finko comes with 16.5% and 16.7% interest these days. I’m getting some while they’re available.
A German guy created this Google Sheet which is automatically updated with the latest interest rates from all Loan Originators on Mintos. It’s really nice to get an overview of current and past interest rate levels.
See more info and screenshot from my Mintos account
PeerBerry
I use PeerBerry* for my children’s savings account.
Interest rates rose from 12.5% up to 15.5% in late February. I hope the rates will stay competitive to the rates offered on Mintos.
See more info and screenshot from my PeerBerry account
Reinvest24
Not much new on ReInvest24* since last update.
2 out of 3 projects I invested in are paying dividends, 1 is (still) waiting to be sold.
At the moment I’m happy I only invested 1 000€ on ReInvest24. While the platform might be one of the safer options, my patience is currently being tested.
If you want to try ReInvest24 you will get 10€ instantly credited to your account if you sign up with my ReInvest24 referral link*.
See more info and screenshot from my ReInvest24 account
Robocash
The days of cashdrag are over on Robocash* again. I’m happy with the current performance of the platform.
See more info and screenshot from my Robocash account
Swaper
Not much to report on Swaper*. The availability of loans is currently alright. Just like last month, I had ~1k EUR idle on average.
See more info and screenshot from my Swaper account
Viventor
I’m still testing out Viventor* to see whether it’s a platform I like to keep in the long run. The platform is working very smooth – so far so good.
Viventor published an update about the troubled loan originator “Aforti” to everyone who invested in Aforti:
I hope everything will turn out fine, I have 725€ in Aforti Factor on Viventor.
See more info and screenshot from my Viventor account
Wisefund
I decided to reduce my exposure to Wisefund* until I’m 100% certain they’re legit. Since I reduced my investment from 30k to 20k EUR, interest payments are equally lower. All my withdrawal requests have been processed.
Ingus, who was already a partner, apparently bought the rest of Wisefund on February 14th. He confirmed the buyout when I asked him about it on Telegram:
He’s now the sole owner of the platform. I’m happy about this because he is the only person from Wisefund I met and there’s no mysterious people in the background anymore. Legally, everything is his responsibility now. I like Ingus and I hope time will show that he’s not a scammer.
If you sign up and invest through my referral link* you will get 0.5% cash back on all your investments the first 270 days.
See more info and screenshot from my Wisefund account
Real Estate
I received rent from all 5 tenants on time as usual.
One tenant complained about moisture in the apartment, even though she claims to ventilate every day. None of my previous tenants reported anything like this. I might want to install a better ventilation system, just to be proactive and prevent issues with mold. It’ll cost me less than 1 000€ to do so it might be worth it.
Another tenant contacted me today because she isn’t able to close one of the windows properly. I’ll have craftsman look at it tomorrow. Since we moved to Portugal, I rely on craftsmen and friends whenever something needs fixing.
See more info about my First property and Second property
Savings rate / Expenses overview
I’m not sure if it makes sense to publish my savings rate anymore, as I don’t have any salary income like I used to. I’m contemplating whether I should start showing my online income again but I haven’t decided yet.
I will, however, at least publish our expenses so we can compare our Portuguese expenses to our Danish expenses.
See more info about my Savings rate
Blog statistics
Blog visits are back to normal. December and January were exceptionally high due to the failure of Kuetzal and Envestio.
Visitors: 14 082 (-40.02% compared to last month)
Page views: 49 252 (-52.82% compared to last month)
2991 Subscribers (+82 compared to last month)
1 481 Facebook followers (+40 compared to last month)
Quote of the month
“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” – Henry David Thoreau
Start your own blog
FinanciallyFree is hosted on SiteGround* for the incredible low price of 3.95€ per month. I honestly couldn’t imagine a better host for a WordPress site!
Free EUR bank account with no fees
I recently opened a bank account with N26* and received a free MasterCard. They are similar to Revolut* but N26 has much higher transfer limits and you can withdraw euros from any ATM up to five times every month for free.
N26 is a German bank with base in Berlin and your account is secured up to 100 000€ like any traditional bank!
That’s it for this month!
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Glad to see that the move went well!
Looking forward to future updates, and how you will show your income 🙂
Matt
Wow, you lost a lot of money in those two (obvious) scams!!
In the clear light of hindsight, everything is obvious.
Regarding kuetzal, I sent a message to the following address:
kelmused@politsei.ee
However, I did not receive a response or acknowledgment of receipt.
Is everyone in the same situation as me?
Thanks for your help.
If you didn’t hear from the police it’s a good sign. The police announced, that if they don’t reply, it’s because you gave all information they needed.
Welcome to Portugal! Wish u are happy here with you family. Is a nice country to live.
Thank you Andreia. We enjoy it already! We just need a good long-term rental to live in now so we can apply for residency.
As a suggestion, when you mention Portugal would be nice as a comparative, to also mention Italy, France, Spain, Greece and other “cheap/safe” countries as possible alternatives, if so, which I believe them to be. As a portuguese I’m not that keen that suddenly so many people come to our country for FI and further raise prices more than tourism is already doing.
Hi João,
The NHR status makes Portugal more attractive than other similar cheap/safe european countries. The NHR regime is what made me chose Portugal and I guess that’s the pupose of the NHR regime – to make Portugal attractive to foreigners and bring in wealth?
Watch out for the Grace Period on those short-term loans on Mintos. Some are 5 days or more, and you don’t get paid interest during the grace period if the loan is repaid late (I checked with Mintos).
You’re right about that Rob, that’s why I try to manually grab the loans with a duration of 28-30 days to minimize the impact of the grace period.
Hey Jorgen, job well done on another successful month!
What formula do you use to calculate your XIRR, for Mintos example?
Thanks Lucas. I use the XIRR function in Excel.
Thank you for the detailed posts and transparency, as always. Congratulations on your move. I moved from the US to Spain just under 2 years ago – loving it here in the Galicia region.
Scams and losses are part of investing and I’m sure they will add to our future skillset. Hope you’re not hard on yourself. I made worse mistakes than that and I still managed to retire early.
My pleasure Dr. Mo. Thanks for your encouraging message. You’re right, over a life time of investing, there will be losses and sometimes scams in most portfolios. I hope to learn from it and continue the search for good investments. If I stopped investing completely it would be a bigger mistake than investing in the scam itself. Need to move on with positive spirit.
Hi Jorgen, I see you have a big loss in Bondora, can I ask you what was your investment strategy?
I used Portfolio Manager on medium-high risk setting and sold off most of the HR loans (at par value, so no loss) to reduce my risk. I was going after B-F rated loans. But I’ve managed 5 different Bondora accounts with different settings – From the most conservative to the highest risk. All of them turned out equally bad (more or less).
Hey Jorgen !!!
Question: Do you know why these P2P platforms like to change the Bank Account so often ? Most of them do it frequently… It brings me very bad memories, like the case of the Envestio fraud…
Thanks.
Hi Omar,
Which platform has changed it’s bank account recently? Some platforms have more than one bank because they can only hold 100k EUR of uninvested funds for free. If they have more they need to pay a fee.
Great update, glad move went well. In significantly different place from you and slowly growing residual income from 30 euro a month to to 60 as next step from P2P. Trickle feeding funds in as can so this blog invaluable. Enjoy portugal.
Jorgen, congratz on you migration to Portugal!
I would like to ask you what is your opinion about Wisefund secondary market? Do you see it as a good investment oppurtunity (50%return on discounted investments) or do you see it as a way out of investment in wisefund projects?
Have you ever met with Wisefund? (If yes can you tell us what was your feeling about them?)
Thanks and best regards,
B.
Hi Jorgen, thanks for sharing your experience in P2P lending. Some of these platforms are not being supervised by finantial authorities, how do you see this? Will this happen soon for any of these platforms? Thanks
Hi Anthony. Services provided by most platform is considered “administering claim rights purchase and sale” which is not mentioned among the financial services. Therefore, management of a platforms is not regarded as “provision of financial services”. In short, for these platforms it means that being supervised by financial authorities is a choice, not a must.
None of the platforms are a subject of any particular regulation. That’s why everyone is waiting for the regulation to come. The platforms want it too, uncertainty is worse than a given set of rules to follow. It’s currently scheduled for 2021 as far as I know.
Hi Jorgen,
so if i understand correctly, after investing in p2p lending since aug 2018, you now have a loss of approx €15000?
To risky after all?
Hi Ron,
P2P investments made me believe financial freedom is possible for me. If I had not started with p2p, I most likely wouldn’t have started saving, which allowed me to buy my first properties and put me on this track.
Due to the recent scams, I’m down 13000€ which is about 5% of my p2p portfolio. It’s not great but it’s also not a disaster. I was willing to take a risk with new and rather unknown platforms because, until recently, we hadn’t seen any fraud in Baltic p2p platforms. If I had sticked with well known and established platforms I would have a nice profit. Things have changed now and I hope and believe it will make the industry stronger going forward.
Hi Jørgen,
Is there a special reason for you to ude Peerberry instead of Mintos e.g. for your childrens savnings?
Or maybe even spread the risk to more than one platform?
Hi Jonas,
The reason is that I can only have 1 account with each platform and I don’t want to mix my money with theirs. As I already had a Mintos account, I needed to find an alternative. For that purpose, I think PeerBerry is a good place to invest their savings.
Hi,
do you think your investment safe in Crowedestor?
This sector of loans they are working with will vanish like smoke in air.
Also their fund is really crazy idea. How could it be that same fund money will be used for different risk projects. Like project paying 12% will have equal rights to compensation with project paying 26%. It is nonsense why still people invest in project lower than <20% with such risk and such fund mechanics
Hi Sarger,
No investment is safe, just look at the stock market these days. I think risk and profit goes hand in hand with Crowdestor. They’re working with many different sectors. I’ve been happy with them since I started investing there 2 years ago.
I think you should forget about the fund. I invest like there’s no fund at all, because the fund is still very small compared to the value of funded projects. Their fund is just an extra layer of protection, which would cover some expenses related to recovery. I don’t expect it to recover much principal if a project defaults. They put 1% of their own money into it, so I won’t complain.
HI Jorgen,
OFC all of them are risky, but this one is extreme high risk.
Take a look at min target and target. Before it was like 1/2 or 1/3 min amount to target, now min amount is 1/10 of whole target:)
I feel bad times for it, cause all those risky business what they have financed, will burst soon.
Are you referring to the gas acquisition project? It is carried out by Janis Timma who has been involved in the Energy sector for a decade. I don’t see anything wrong with a big difference between min and max target in a project like this. They’re storing and reselling gas. It’s a trade based on historical prices of gas due to seasonal price fluctuations.
Nope I mean about all projects, but it does not matter anymore, cause
we received e-mail that they have issues already.
hey jorgen,
with the recent outburst of loans on mintos secondary market with huge discount (probably due to the covid and market situation), do you think is better to “gamble” on those with buyback or just continue with primary maket loans with starting higher interest rate [even though those on the secondary has higher YTM as shown in the market]?
Hi Daniele,
I like to buy discounted loans with buyback guarantee from well established loan originators on the secondary market.
Hi. I havent got payment for project 1882. Have you got additional information? I don`t like it.
Hi Akneu, Crowdestor informed investors about the reasons for the delay in an email sent out on March 13th.
Hi Jørgen,
Love your website and what you are trying to do. Question…Has the increasingly serious impact of Covid-19 worldwide and mooted government enforced payment holidays for borrowers etc. meant you have changed any of your investment strategies ?
For example, I have sold out of most of my p2p investments as I worry about greater levels of borrower defaults and Lender corruption, from what are effectively risky sub-prime loans to begin with.
rds
Robert
So as I mentioned, seems Crowedestor investments will be gone soon..
Hi Sarger !
I also have the feeling that Crowdestor might be gone soon. They even mentioned on the mail this morning “it would be indecent and grossly misleading to tell you that business is running as usual”.
They have a BuyBack Fund of (only) about 360K.
– I ask
Will it be enough in case JUST 1 project fails / goes bankruptcy ? What about 2 projects
– I answer:
NO
I will try to withdraw my money as soon as I can, of course for that, we need them to pay first .. ..
Crowdestor sent out a message to all investors that they pause repayments for borrowers for 3 months, like most governments around the world also are doing right now. Since Crowdestor is just a middle man, they will survive this since the cost for them is low each month. Borrowers on the other hand will like all over the world/platforms have problems if this continues for a long time. No reason to panic after they show that they are following rules made in this time of crisis. I would be more worried about platforms that say everything is okay and it will not affect them at all. ( reality check, they don’t know anything right now, it’s to early)
Its too late to withdraw.
Hi Jorgen,
People seems to be suspicious about Grupeer now. There is a discussion group here: https://t.me/grupeerdiscussion1
Do you have any concerns about it? What about Crowdestor?
Cheers
I’m concerned about the entire p2p market at the moment but there’s not much I can do about it.
Whew. Losing that 85K on Crowdestor would be painful. I really hope they’ll make it.
Might be you retired a little prematurely. I wish you and the family the best Jorgen.
Yes it was an early move John. Things will change if I lose another big portion of my portfolio. On the bright side there’s many ways to work online. Let’s see what happens.
Sad to see that you have +20k in Grupeer and 85k in Crowdestor, while the second one might not be a scam, they will definitely have some defaults.. and at the same time 1k in Reinvest24 where the projects are actually fully backed with real estate properties?
Sad times indeed. I like ReInvest24 but they don’t have enough volume / investors to fund the loans.