End of the month report - January 2023

 Total portfolio: £70267 (+4852)

I did not write anything in the last few months, as I was busy organizing one or another. I am back, for now!

Debt: ZERO
External funds: ZERO
Car: No
Net Worth: £70267 (+4852)

Investments UK: £41527 (+2657)
Investments overseas : £377 (same)
Cash: £3635 (+887) 
Pension: £24104 (+1309)
Passive income: £756 (28%)
Savings rate: 20% 

Side hustle 2 profit (Royalties): £ 6
Side hustle 3 profit (Match betting): £2
Side hustle 4 value (Crypto): £753 (Total funds still invested in crypto:6799)
Side hustle 5 profit (Focus groups): £0

Side hustle 6 profit (Internet):£34.43

I must to admit, the market did not favours to me, and I just noticed that I am now at the same point as I was on December 2019, in terms of total net wealth. I hit a small jackpot with crypto, but I was a bit greedy, and I did not take back enough profit, and then the bear market came and everything went down from the 300% profit increase back to the initial values. I do not regret this, but I hope I will do better on the next crypto bull market, whenever this one will come (2025-2026?). Shares and mutual funds, I am down to £2097, hope to do some crazy move and reach 10K until the end of the year, but before that, I need to biuld a 20K cash reserve in the bank account (Santander is paying 1.75% interest for up to 20K so I plan to keep it in there). I have also started a saving account on Santander, where they offer 2.75% interest for up to one year. I have £800/£2400 in there, with the limit being £200 pain onto account per month. This will be the cash reserve, and after that I start to build my shares and mutual funds, on my AJ Bell account ( £10K to start) and Freetrade account (they got zero fees and individual shares to pick, even fractions of them, I go for £1000 here to start with it), and over the next few years the aim will be to have 100K in funds, and 10K individual shares.

As for 01.02.2023 the numbers are:

Cash: £2500 (TSB) £1135 (Santander)

AJ Bell (VT AJ BELL FUND): £1524/£10K (final amount: 100K)

Freetrade: £573/£1000 (final amount: 10K)

Crypto: £39030/£250k

Zero fee share trade - coming soon

Hello,
I got some good news tonight. Probably you heard about sharedealing platform with zero fees, like Robin Hood in US, or the ones that started to trade share fractions? Well, seems that we will have the best of both in UK, with Free Trade launching soon over here, promoting zero fee and even share fractions. Seems good to me, and can’t wait to test their products.

Link here to put your email on the waiting list.

Disclaimer: This is a referral link aiming to put me higher on their waiting list. You can use the no-referral link here if you wish so. But thanks anyway.

The portfolio paradigm

The world is changing fast. Faster than we can predict, and one after another, we've seen the aftermath of the Brexit effect. And not only. Bonds are going down, unable to provide the much needed stability, and we will probably go to the extremes, like in Japan, were the interest is negative. Yer, you read that right, there you need to pay for the right to keep a bond. The market is still going up and down, reaching the lower and the higher value of the last 5 years in just a 5-months interval. Gold and precious metals went up for a moment, just to go back to the initial value. Petrol based companies kept going down, again and again, but they paid good dividends despite this. Banks cutting down the interests, again and again, trying to prevent a future crisis. Housing market going down, despite the fact that we do not have enough houses to provide a home for everyone. It is a challenging period, but then, these are the times where you can ride the wave, and find new opportunities to reach your financial independence faster, even if nothing seems to be safe enough. We need to reconsider all our risk-taking strategy, but in the end we will prevail. Because we are following our final goal, and we gonna reach it, in one way or another. It is also the easiest time to buy a house for the first time, helped with instruments like First buy, Isa and different financial sticks and stocks. Is is possible for us to invest in a Cash fund, a Global equities fund and a Global property shares fund using your change, through moneybox app. The possibility to own a part of an ancient castle, via thehousecrowd. to invest in emerging market, in companies that can mark their own place via crowdcube and seedrs. The possibilities are endless. You only need to keep an open mind and to search, to search with obstinacy, every day of the week.

Good luck!
G.

Two of my favorite shares for dividend portfolio

All of us have some favorites. I usually use mutual funds but from time to time i buy individually shares. Two of them that i always liked are:

Halma plc
Technology company
Halma plc is a group of technology companies that makes products for hazard detection and life protection.
LON: HLMA - 10 Sep 16:38 GMT+1
745.82 Price decrease 0.18 (0.02%)

Pearson PLC
Publishing company
Pearson PLC is a British multinational publishing and education company headquartered in London. It is the largest education company and the largest book publisher in the world.
LON: PSON - 10 Sep 16:52 GMT+1
1,145.62 Price decrease 15.38 (1.32%)

Do you have any companies that you really like?

How did i start to buy shares?

At some moment in time after i read an endless stream of books about buying shares and playing some virtual money ( losing most of them), i decided to buy some. What i learn? First i learn that when you want to invest on long term, day trading is not good. The fees will just eat away all your profit, doesn't matter how good are you. Then i learn that is always easier to buy them yourself without hiring some clever bloke from the bank to advice you, and nowadays you can use an online platform without any trust issues. Then i learn that is better to buy mutual funds instead of individual shares. Then i found that you can buy aiming for a good dividend, in this case you do not care too much about the price fluctuation of the share as long as you get your money every year. Or you can buy aiming for an increase of the price of the share, in this case is irrelevant if the company is paying dividends or not. Then i found that mutual funds can have different fees, and a diference of only 2% in the fee level can eat away as much as 20% of your profit over the years. Luckily for us, we have now tracker funds, with shares that sell only for a minimal fee. And between the best of them i consider the ones from Vanguard, Blackrock and Unicorn.
What is the next step? Define your savings amount. Save automatically very month. Choose 3-4 equity trackers and 1-2 bonds mutual funds. Save as your life depends of it ( funny thing, this last words are not a joke at all ). Few years later you will thank me.

P.S. At the moment shares, bonds and mutual funds are only around 60% of my porfolio, as you read and learn more you will find many other sources of income. But this is a story for another day. Good luck and strong will!

How i learn about shares?

I was talking today at work about shares with some of my colleagues. They wanted to know how i do what i do. One was not interested. "I did it once and i lost money" was his excuse. He is investing in a motorcycle collection. I ask him what are his other additional 8 income sources (Disclosure: I believe that everyone of us need to have at least 10 income sources, if not more, in order to be fully covered against any natural disaster, economic crash or anything like this. So, motorcycles and monthly wages, he needed another 8. In my opinion only).The interested ones were even worst. The put an equal sign between FOREX, currency, shares, oil, gold and other crazy things, and are thinking at day-trading as trading shares. I told them the short version. How i studied the market for 18 months, reading and learning about everything from 1880 until nowadays. How i trained myself on virtual money and i mostly lost. How i was trading individual shares with a decent return (beginner luck!), how is start to buy mutual funds (income for my early retirement funds, accumulated for my pension funds).And how i became comfortable enough after just 6 months of trading, in the end i think i will buy mostly Vanguard or Blackrock 100 UK equity tracker funds (80%) and few others (small cap and foreign ones for the remaining 20% ). In the end they understood, but even if they liked the idea of financial independence, they were thinking that 5% of their money saved for this goal is too much.

What can i do? Nothing. At least i feel like i did my duty as i will finish my job in that place tomorrow. From Monday i start another job, one that will get me even closer to my early retirement. Hopefully.