As some of you might have noticed i’ve skipped the March update. I’ve not felt motivated to post last month since i think i was stuck in this loop, networth – real estate – construction – construction is not under control – shit. And then my attention would wonder into something i could do to speed things up. Since that was not possible..well..you see where this is going.

Lucklily now the contrators that we hired to do the garden have finished – well it still needs some working but most of the work is done. And… we have now a contract signed with the “big contractor” (lets call it that) for the value of ~147k + VAT.

This is a big number and it took several weeks of back and forth to also have the executation plan and the construction quantities defined.

Another reason maybe related with my motivation has been that our first contractor told us he wasnt too interested in the project since he would never be able to match the values we had and thus walked away..this was a setback but we managed to find another one via referrals.

The first payment is also done and will be reflected in next months networth update. For now, the trend is still down with -5k in April and -3k in March. Those are all related with the expenses for the garden.

April

On the P2P front, not much new besided getting a few cents back from Aforti. Hopefully Monego would pay soon.

Construction on the façade of our apartment is finished and the building end up quite nice. All of this is the result of the organization of Mrs.Firecracker. The next batch of works including the door repairs have not started yet.

Reno Updates

General updates:

1- Construction: Update above. Another info is that the reno should only be finished by end of February 2022.

2- Tax gains “Mais-valias”: Submitted the taxes for this year. I’m expecting to pay ~4k on that.

Savings Rate

Our savings rate has not been constant, in March we saved ~5% (with some extra 500€ health expenses) and on April we had another extra expense with our car of >2k. This adding up to some extra health expenses on January, February was the only month we had ~20% savings rate and saved 900€.

If we disregard the extra expenses we have even spent less that we budgeted.

April Summary:

1) Auto: Our car broke down and needed a new piece. They dont sell the piece individually and we had to buy a big chunk of parts..this was a very big expense but we need the car…

2) Projects: Received the 2.5k! Happy with this.

Now, coming to our monthly networth…

Summary:

Our Networth value for April is 441 162.18€ (– 5 040.30)

Assets:

Investment accounts

• ETFs Portfolio: 33 446.03 € (+391.97)
• Retirement Accounts (aka PPR): 17 653.38 € (+418.98)
• Certificates Deposit + Emergency Fund: 35 485.59 € (– 6 665.56) 
• P2P Portfolio: 2 238.76 € ( +0,01 )
• Total Investment accounts: 88 823.76 € ( -5 854.60)

Real Estate (Based on Market Values)

• Primary Residency: 300 000 €
• Farms: 70 000 €
• Rental House: 414.500
• Total Real Estate: 784 500€

Cars

• Mr.Firecracker Car: 20 000 €
• Mrs.Firecracker Car: 18 000 €
• Scooter: 1 500 €
• Total Cars: 39 500€ (=)

Total Assets: 912 823.76 € (-5 854.60)

Liabilities:

• Primary Residency: 187 763.49 € (-370.46)
• Rental House: 283 898.09 ( -443.84)

Our Networth drilldown looks like this:

You can follow our Networth status always here

Portugal is still on lockdown, every restaurant closed and only serving take-away, it’s cold outside and often raining. Nevertheless, this didn’t make an uneventful month!

February

We have gone back and forth with budgets about the renovation for the house and luckily we have now 2 people doing the demos so we started with that straight away. This category has been given a quote of ~10k and so far we’ve spent 1k with all the works almost done..we even added some extras like removing a tree and checking some of the plumbing. Besides that we also paid for the execution plan for the architects which cost us 3 431,7€.

On the P2P front, we got some money back from Mintos on our Monego loans (finally!) after a year waiting for that. It wasn’t the full amount but ~60%. That got transfered right away to our savings account.

Construction on the façade of our apartment continues and should be finished by next month. We all decided for some additional work (water drains and mailboxes) which has increased the construction for +900 on our side.

Reno Updates

General updates:

1- Construction: Got the new budget for 183k (wayyy above our capacity). We did a 4h meeting and changed construction approaches. Got the second reviewed budget for 173k. Still 23k above our capacity. We will now be sending the tasks we want them to complete (removing demos and some paintings) which should make 150k. I’m still wondering what we can do in the roof which seems to have now wooden beams in poor condition.

2- Tax gains “Mais-valias”: Got the anwser back from the laywer and there is no decisions going against our case, they recommend that we go ahead with submitting our tax returns and be prepared to show evidence. This research and consultation will cost us ~950€. (yes…legal advice is crazy expensive here…more than IT, go figure..) Additionally i’ve had a meeting with an accountant so that we can have a double opinion on this.

Savings Rate

I’ve made my peace with our Networth taking a plunge. We will be using the 40k given by the bank to proceed with constructions so this is only following the plan.

February Summary:

1) Health: Mrs.Firecracker had some exams on which we spent 400€ but got back 240€. Our farm also needed to be looked after and the grass cut for which we have paid 50€ to our neighbor.

2) Projects: nothing to add for now. I’ve done a proposal for a potential customer and invoiced another one for 2.5k.

Now, coming to our monthly networth…

Summary:

Our Networth value for February is 449 645.47€ (– 882.01)

Assets:

Investment accounts

• ETFs Portfolio: 31 392.25 € (+181.04)
• Retirement Accounts (aka PPR): 16 960.51 € (+76.61)
• Certificates Deposit + Emergency Fund: 48 303.61 € (– 1 703.95) 
• P2P Portfolio: 2 238.75 € ( – 228.96 )
• Total Investment accounts: 98 895.12 € ( -1 675.26)

Real Estate (Based on Market Values)

• Primary Residency: 300 000 €
• Farms: 70 000 €
• Rental House: 414.500
• Total Real Estate: 784 500€

Cars

• Mr.Firecracker Car: 20 000 €
• Mrs.Firecracker Car: 18 000 €
• Scooter: 1 500 €
• Total Cars: 39 500€ (=)

Total Assets: 922 895.12 € (-1 675.26)

Liabilities:

• Primary Residency: 188 464.12 € (-349.88)
• Rental House: 284 785.53 ( -443.37)

Our Networth drilldown looks like this:

You can follow our Networth status always here

Welcome to the first Networth update of 2021, January! I know i’m still slacking on my 2021 goals but they have been hard to pin-point with some uncertainty we have currently going on. Mostly the real estate invesment.

January

The good news is that one of our 2020 Goals was/is being accomplished as we speak. Late December we finally got the permit accepted from the municipality and the construction company came last week to put the protection around the building.

In order to proceed we needed to pitch in for our part which was ~2.9k thus killing our savings rate this month. Otherwise we would have saved ~23% of our income.

I’ve also removed the P2P monethera entry from our network. The website is down and altough i’ve joined the telegram group i dont wish to spend my energy getting my hopes up about receiving any of this money…

How about the rest?

Portugal is now one of the worst countries in the world managing the pandemic with the biggest new daily infections per 100k habitants. We are having a number between 10k-15k on a daily basis with >200 people passing away every day. Our numbers of critical care patients (UCI) is now >800 which makes a lot of pressure in our national health system. Adding to this even with the number of vaccines being distributed in a good pace we got several cases of pety corruption with people bypassing vaccination priorities (eg. the husband of the secretary of a hospital manager). This causes social unrest as it could be imagined.

Trying to contain those numbers, the government put us in a more strick lockdown. Restaurants are closed, going outside only for small walks (when the weather allows), no crossing between municipalities on weekends (etc). For us this meant less spending with eating out.

Reno Updates

General updates:

1- Construction: Contractor gave notice that the designs would greatly go over the 150k mark so i’ve asked the architects to review the plan and put it in a minimalistic version. The idea for lowering the floor on the attic to have a 1 bedroom has been cancelled we will transform the ground floor 2B into a 4B duplex taking advantage of the stairs already next to it. Most of the changes will now be cosmetic and wont change the layout of the building.

2- Tax gains “Mais-valias”: There are several options on how the IRS will see this. Good news is that we now have someone knowledgeable on the topic. The advice was to wait for the IRS delivery happening in March to see what is the best course of action. Most likely this will generate an alert and we will have to clarify the tipic

There are some doubts on how to consider what was invested from our side and if that is applicable to the whole building. In the best scenario we will be taxed extra with 1.3k (great!) and in the worst with 34k (not good…).

Savings Rate

As previously stated, this month we had to chip in for the building facade renovations eating away our savings.

January Summary:

1) Changes : received a 66€ refund from medical expenses. We bought some gifts for babies of our friends and we only managed to give them in january.

2) Projects: Received 2k from an invoice from September. I will have some expenses with this so i’m antecipating my net return to be 400 € on this one. I’ve made a post just on my entrepreneurship journey – here.

Now, coming to our monthly networth…

Summary:

Our Networth value for January is 450 527.48€ (-6 060.13)

Assets:

Investment accounts

• ETFs Portfolio: 31 211.21 € (+895.27)
• Retirement Accounts (aka PPR): 16 883.90 € (-77.13)
• Certificates Deposit + Emergency Fund: 50 007.56 € (– 2 591.72) 
• P2P Portfolio: 2 467.71 € ( – 5 079.28 )
• Total Investment accounts: 100 570.38 € ( -6 852.86)

Real Estate (Based on Market Values)

• Primary Residency: 300 000 €
• Farms: 70 000 €
• Rental House: 414.500
• Total Real Estate: 784 500€

Cars

• Mr.Firecracker Car: 20 000 €
• Mrs.Firecracker Car: 18 000 €
• Scooter: 1 500 €
• Total Cars: 39 500€ (=)

Total Assets: 924 570.38 € (-6 852.86)

Liabilities:

• Primary Residency: 188 814.00 € (-349.60)
• Rental House: 285 228.90 ( -443.13)

Our Networth drilldown looks like this:

You can follow our Networth status always here