Adjusting to the incoming Brexit

I am trying to find new ways to improve the elusive Net Worth.

Until now i am looking to sell the car and buy a monthly bus pass. This will half my expenses with transport or even better, estimating value is £46 instead of 80-100 per month.

I am looking to finish with one side hustle, the one that i set the money aside and prepared for it, but i never started, while i will also try to improve another side hustle, the matched betting, by setting a plan and increase the monthly income.

I am also trying to simulate a way to find out what is cheaper, to do major repairs and cosmetic adjustments to the house, or try to rent another close to work, cutting the transport also. Still looking for different ways to do it.

If i manage to solve this until the end of the year, i will be proud of me.

The cryptocurrency adventure

At the beginning on May i invested approx. £3200 in a new cryptocurrency called Ethereum, and i paid an exchange rate of £36 per 1 Ethereum. My deposit run fast to almost 22.000 pounds, but i was greedy, waiting for a bit more, and after few unfortunate events such us a fake news about the dead of the Ethereum public face (which was not true, but resulted in 10% price drop), and one 10 seconds spike from £299 to 0.10 and back, the value steadily decreased, trying to reach some equilibrium value. Today i decided to take my money back, and i just get £9800 sent to my bank. I was hoping to make at least £500, but in the end i got a £6500 profit for 75 days, which is an annual ROI of 31633%. Out of my last side hustles, this is, surprisingly, the second best. With the worst of them hustles resulted in losing £600, and other making zero profit (never started), the three remaining provided a decent return.

I personally think that the potential for any cryptocurrency is to invest at the moment of the ICO (initial coin offering).

Testing, testing!

Here are the results of my latest experiments:

1. Moneybox  is live and kicking, rounding up my expenses and investing the change in shares, gilts and bonds. Click on the link if you want to test it. It is still a beta version, but seems to run smoothly and it is easy to set up.

2. Dollarupload website is working and seems to be a good opportunity for some, but not for me. At the moment I had few tries but my account there is still a big Zero.

3. The brilliant idea of the guys behind the Mondo Card is up, and i am waiting for mine soon. I will make a review after I used it for a while. We are talking about a current account completely managed from your smartphone, with no fee for anything you buy, anywhere in the world. More about it here. We will see what's next!

That's all for today, see you soon.
G.

Side hustle - failure is an option

I found this interesting idea where you can put files with something that is about your expertise and the field you master, and people will want to read it, but they will do a short survey before download it. And you will get paid for that survey. Interesting way to motivate people to complete survey. I went to the website and i made a register submission, and i still need to receive the email to confirm my username and password. Now, this could work, or maybe not. But my agenda is already full, so i made a habit of not trying something for third time if it is not really working. The people writing about it said they made sometimes 100$ per month, but you can do even more. If you have the patience to try it, good luck.

P.S. The link is here.

P.S. no.2 While i was publishing this post the confirmation email came. So the link is a referral link now. I will write about it after one month after i see how it is going.

Me as a "big" bussinesman

Thinking in advance, i will probably introduce another two variable in the monthly report:

Bussiness 1 value

Bussiness 2 value. 

I was trying to estimate how long until my financial freedom, and in a very optimistic universe, i think i can make it in 2 years from now. The thought of that scared me and made me happy in the same time. I will see what's next and hope for the best. 

At the present moment:

Bussiness 1 value: £431

Bussiness 2 value: £3850

Or i can just say side hustle instead of bussines. Hehe!

Should i record them every last day of the month? Probably yes, as they are changing continuously. 

Side hustle for teenagers

...and not only. Doing reviews for music, books, games. If you want to receive all the new hits, books or games, you can do that. You can use websites like Slicethepie, and make some extra cash enjoying latest trends. I must to admit that i do this at work, on night shift break, when i do not want to spend time on Facebook.

Good luck!
G.

* The website mentioned is a referral link.

Side hustle - Orchard

So, as i am constantly looking for a side hustle, i found something interesting, applied in my country of origin. On paper seems good enough, ROI is approx. 400% in 4 years, so almost 100% per year. Is about some tree called Pawlonia - 2 species in fact, pawlonia tormentosa and pawlonia elongata. You will make futures contracts with furniture companies, that oblige them to buy it at the harvest time, and you can make the contract at the moment you planted the trees. Once you got the land, you can hire a tree company to plant the small trees, end of April is the best, other option is in Autumn, but is more complicated. You got insurance on every tree that need to be replanted in the next 12 months, which is good as the rate of success is 98%, so probably 2 trees need to be replanted for every 100 planted initially. Then, most important thing, you need to water them for 5-6-7 months as requested. After that they are alright by themselves. So all you need is land, a water source and 1800-2000 euro per 10.000 square meters. Al least 3 meters between each tree is recommended. That all. I will update about this once i will start it.

Kindle - yes or not?

Inspired by the Jedi Master Huw Davies and his awesome blog, i decided that my side hustle for 2016 will be Kindle Publishing. I am starting from Zero, and i am hoping to go to Hero Level, with my first kindle publishing book very soon. I am working on it, is 20-30% done. I also started the second one, to continue with, at the moment is 5% done. I also set up account on CreateSpace, on Amazon, and i found some very good freelance websites, just in case i need a cover for the book or something similar. Seems to have a huge potential, the only thing is that some complicated books i use to work at will take a lot of time to publish. Meanwhile i will do some different projects which will need less time, being easier to finish.

I will keep you updated.
Have a nice week!
G.

Random thoughts

What i read nowadays?

1. A mindset lesson from T. H. Eker. Click here
2. New side hustle. Did you ever dreamed to become a computer geek? Learn to code and pay what you want for it. Click here. Only until 1.12.2015. Almost free. One dollar per language, thanks to Project Hope.
3. Some quote that stuck in my mind: ,“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” (Ayn Rand)
4. Today dilemma: As i need to invest some money at the end of December, should i just buy some Bitcoin, as just reached the low point, or not? (The good news here is that finally Visa did something to facilitate the use of Bitcoin - click here. The bad news is that the card is available only in US.)

Hints and bits and random data

* Side hustle for children (and not only): this one is very easy, that even one 11 year old can do it. Ideal if you have clever kids? Check the link here. Selling cryptografically secure passwords.

** They just developed something interesting at Oxford, a language understanding intelligent service that can even use SIRI or Cortana. I think this can result in a (r)evolution in phone AI in the future. Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS) offers a fast and effective way of adding language understanding to applications. With LUIS, you can use pre-existing, world-class, pre-built models whenever they suit your purposes -and when you need specialized models, LUIS guides you through the process of quickly building them.

What this language can do, you will probably ask?Here is the list:

-Create language understanding models

-Create models for your application to better understand intents like "turn on the lights", or entities such as "start a new jog/walk/hike/bikeride". Tune your model with in-depth performance visualizations.

-Use pre-built, world-class models from Bing and Cortana

-Use the pre-built, world-class models to recognize entities like places, times, numbers, temperatures, and to also handle common requests like "set an alarm for 8 AM". Immediately enable personal assistant functionalities by using a selection of Cortana understanding models.

-Deploy your models to an HTTP endpoint

-Deploy models to an HTTP endpoint with one click. LUIS returns easy-to-use JSON.

-Activate models on any device

-Activate your language understanding models from your application on your phone, tablet, or any other device that has access to the Internet.

-Maintain models with ease

-Review commands spoken to your application to spot and correct errors. LUIS automatically suggests the most important commands to label.

If you buy shares, not only mutual funds, the future seems to be bright in the phone app sector. But i will let you to look for the companies that will use this technologies soon (hint: Apple is one of them)

*** Meanwhile i will tell you what i noticed in the world economic news and market most recent changes. Eli Lilly ex chief Sidney Taurel will become Pearson's new chairman. That is a good news, as S.Taurel can provide strong ties with U.S market, being one of the most knowledgeable experts at the moment. Aberdeen Asset Management is having the third consecutive year of negative new flow on both income and equities, What a shame coming from what was once Europe largest listed fund (in 2013). Philips is on his way to get rid of his lighting business, trying to sell his major stake in  the company Lumileds. I think Hitachi should take lessons from them, having now 9 business divisions, with the possibility of providing major profit returns if the will just close the two divisions with the biggest loss. But who am i to tell them what to do. Apple is to announce his profit soon, with the experts predicting a low performance next spring, first time in years. What to do? Maybe an aggressive campaign is not the answer, but this is a far away future at the moment. 

**** London financial independence real estate tip. I've seen some very good prices for studio and 1 bedroom flat in Hounslow, around 199.000. Given that i found on internet that the average rent for one of this is 1818/month, meaning 21816/year, that's a whooping 10.96% ROI, sound good to me. You should easily get that rent with some money invested to give a luxury make-up appearance to your flat.

That's it for today, enjoy the rest of the week, see you soon.

G.

Side Hustle - October 2015 - Travel club

As you probable have seen (or not) a new link appeared in my websites list. What is it about? It is a travel club that i use to travel around the world, with very good offers and conditions. I like them because they will return you 150% the difference if you find a cheaper alternative in the next 24 hours. And they have a interesting system of balancing the price, meaning that if they find a better alternative, they will send you back the saved money even without you asking for them. Although this option i have it as a member, so you will still need to check if it is available to non members.
The link is here.

Disclaimer: It is a referral link, so i will benefit if you will use it.

Quote of the day and a bit more.

A river cut through rock not because of its power, but because of its persistence. (Watkins)
This is something i need to remember every month, as it seems that my saving rate is going down lately. A need to reconsider my planning at least. And a bit of motivation. And more time. And more sleep. And stop travelling for one month. Really. I would never think i would say this last phrase. But it is late. Night time. And i work. And i am just talking nonsense. Or maybe not.

Talking about side hustles. I am seriously thinking to plant like 160 trees from a bamboo like family. Sel it in 4-5 years. 4-5k to do it. Sell it through futures contract. At 40-45k. So is like 10 times more in let's say 5 years. If i do the work. A bit less if i put someone else to do it. I got the land provided. And the good part. The trees need daily care only for first 6 months. After that just weekly checks.

Also there is a possibility to change the main job and jump from 18 to 35k. But to move in London. And work my **s out a lot. And pay the living expenses in London. I do not know what to do. I need to check out the expenses. Hard to decide. At the moment.