Welcome to May Networth update! Networth increase of 3.2k, yay!

With the COVID situation things are progressing as planned. Places start to open up here in Portugal (Lisbon) and people are going out. For me personally i will only “need” to return to the office somewhere around September or October so this date was pushed for now.

To be honest i kind of prefer it as i stated previously. Much more chances to grow my prospect projects and collaboration.

This month was also my birthday and we celebrated within reasonable means. Mrs.Firecracker ordered some seafood for lunch and we had a feast ! We also had some hotdogs for dinner and my parents came by for some cake (wearing a proper mask).

May Summary:

1) Portfolio went up not significantly (only 2%) but we are in the break-even part. Meaning regaining not only all the losses of the market crash and shooting upwards.

2) Saved 29% of our income (1185.43€ / 4121.07€)

3) Projects. If you recall my last post i explained 5 side projects i was working on besides my regular job. I will be giving an update on those from time to time since this could have a big impact into our financial progress.

Project A – Implementing a solution end-to-end for health (video, triage, IOT and analystics). Progress: We onboarded a 4th partner and have decided to implement a fully free POC in the Portuguese market. I guess this month we will see if we can walk the talk.

Project B – with 1 partner doing a market analysis for implementing new player in the European market for the mobility + energy area. Progress: Partnership extended to evaluating startups for a Canadian business organization. This is moving well and my partner is really pushing for the topic.

Project C – Sucess fee partnership. There is a mature product developed by one of my partners for ticket management. He chargers per user of the tool. – Progress: All halted. Not only sucess should be transmitted. I was unable to find any customers for this solution. I will drop this project.

Project D – Consulting project for a major telecom player. Progress: we have made some slide decks to present to potential customers. Commercial developement is progressing slower than expected. We have now a lead to push a project proposal so lets see how that goes.

Project E – Currently this started as a pro-bono consulting for Augmented Reality implementation in hospitals. Good news is that we made a presentation to a hospital group board and they might be interested in doing a POC. I have many partners here since the CEO of the company is surgeon. Good thing is that we have the field experts already onboard. I cannot calculate any payout for now but we are planning to apply to some european grants and since my partners are all very well placed and senior this should be attainable. Progress: Project halted. Nobody available to lead the project so i decided to jump-out.

Bottom line i’ve decided to re-focus and this still means a lot in the pipeline.

4) IRS: Still no anwser here. They had the nerve to say in national news they are deliberately taking more time to process..

5) P2P world.

5.1) Wisefund – still same. Nothing new.

5.2) Mintos – Nothing new. Everything seems to be stopped.

5.3) Monethera – still same. Nothing new.

5.4) Robo.cash – Full exit.

Now, coming to our monthly networth…

Summary:

Our Networth value for April is 401 908.33€ ( 5 605,08)

Assets:

Investment accounts

• ETFs Portfolio: 27 341.92 € (+548.28)
• Retirement Accounts (aka PPR): 13 940.47 € (+109.96)
• Certificates Deposit + Emergency Fund: 135 186.39 € (+3 241.12) 
• P2P Portfolio: 7 542.32 € (– 1048.69)
• Total Investment accounts: 184 011.10 € ( +2 850.67)

Real Estate (Based on Market Values)

• Primary Residency: 300 000 €
• Farms: 70 000 €
• Total Real Estate: 370 000€

Cars

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

Total Assets: 593 511.11 € (+2 850.67)

Liabilities:

• Primary Residency: 191 602.77 € (-347.31)

Our Networth drilldown looks like this:

You can follow our Networth status always here

Welcome to April Networth update! Ding dong our Networth is up 2k since the start of this year. Not bad considering we are in a pandemic and we managed not only to recover all the losses but to increase 😀

Still working from home and should continue for May & June. Actually i don’t mind. Missing the ocasional going out but it gives more time to focus and increase our FIRE speed!

April Summary:

1) Portfolio went up 11% since last months end. We are now very close to break-even. With still some ETFs with a long way to go like REIT.

2) Saved 46% of our income (1955.76€ / 4223.75€)

3) 200 € extra from a consulting project i had. I took the advantage of being at home to start working in several parallel projects. Remember my goal of 10k for 2020? here

Project A – with 3 more partners implementing a solution end-to-end for health (video, triage, IOT and analystics). 2 customers proposals sent. 1 in discussion and another preparing info. With this it should bring in income in case one of the first proposals is accepted ~600 € per month. If the other in progress is met this can be upgraded to 1k monthly. My allocation should be less than 4h week. One of the partners will take up a full-time job and ensure project execution. I will be in a advisory role.

Project B – with 1 partner doing a market analysis for implementing new player in the European market for the mobility + energy area. Here it should be expected 500€ monthly. This project can last 1 year and it will include several meetings with board members from major Portuguese companies.

Project C – Sucess fee partnership. There is a mature product developed by one of my partners for ticket management. He chargers per user of the tool. I will take a comission of ~40% per user. I’ve made a few contacts and should be able to sell 30 users which means 150€ monthly of return for me.

Project D – Consulting project for a major telecom player. This started has a pitch to one of the board members to hire me and another partner. Since things dont workout has we like they are conservative and wouldnt like to jump in into this technological field asap. This means i will setup a company and provide them with a POC implementation. They are choosing which customer from them to implement it. This could take ~4 months since analysis to implementation. Good news is that i should gather at least ~3k from this. They will pay for our consulting fee.

Project E – Currently this started as a pro-bono consulting for Augmented Reality implementation in hospitals. Good news is that we made a presentation to a hospital group board and they might be interested in doing a POC. I have many partners here since the CEO of the company is surgeon. Good thing is that we have the field experts already onboard. I cannot calculate any payout for now but we are planning to apply to some european grants and since my partners are all very well placed and senior this should be attainable.

Phew….thats enough. No more room for projects. I will only think in another things if one of those gets finished/dies/is on hold.

4) Still waiting for IRS to deliver the amount we payed extra last year. Usually they are fast but this year its taking its time…c’mon we need the 2.4k !

5) P2P world.

We continue to reduce exposure since credit moratory or freezing in the countries the LOs are applicable.

4.1) Wisefund – Still with 1 payment missing. They launched a survey this month. This should be on hold for the next months.

4.2) Mintos – Reduced exposure to 1k. Better than the 1.2k i had predicted. Now waiting for all the pending to come. Still stuck in Monego & Capital Service.

4.3) Monethera – still same. Nothing new.

4.4) Robo.cash – Reducing our exposure to ~0.9k.

Now, coming to our monthly networth…

Summary:

Our Networth value for April is 398 710.35€ ( 5 605,08)

Assets:

Investment accounts

• ETFs Portfolio: 26 793.64 € (+2731.86)
• Retirement Accounts (aka PPR): 13 830.51 € (+692.89)
• Certificates Deposit + Emergency Fund: 131 945.27 € (+3 178.38) 
• P2P Portfolio: 8 591.01 € (– 1 334.19)
• Total Investment accounts: 181 160.43 € ( +5268.94)

Real Estate (Based on Market Values)

• Primary Residency: 300 000 €
• Farms: 70 000 €
• Total Real Estate: 370 000€

Cars

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

Total Assets: 590 660.43 € (+5268.24)

Liabilities:

• Primary Residency: 191 950.08 € (-336.14)

Our Networth drilldown looks like this:

You can follow our Networth status always here

Welcome to March Networth update! For the past 2 weeks i’ve been closed at home. Luckily neither me or Mrs.Firecracker have felt any health related issues and the pandemic is not as severe as in Italy or Spain.

Since i work in IT i’ve been having even more work (nobody takes easter vacations) and i’m now engaged with a potential new business venture. Lets see if it goes anywhere. Nevertheless i also manage to sleep more (or go to bed later) which makes me attend some morning work meetings in my Pijamas.

When it comes to our finances March was not a boring month at all:

1) Invested 5k into our ETFs on the 19/March when our positions took a drop of ~25%. Currently we are still on the red but i’m not concerned.

2) Saved 23% of our income (873€ / 3769€) – with 2 extraordinary expenses

2.1) One related with roaming on a work trip i made to Switzerland. duh! I forgot about roaming after landing and my company didnt pay for it…

2.2) We changed our bed with my mother-in-law and during the move the company broke the entry window of the building. Since we are in Portugal of course they claimed it was not their fault and stopped picking up the phone. Result? 112 € extra expense.

3) Remember my January update “Taxes After selling an apartment” ? Well, we were waiting for the Tax simulation which started in April 1st and after speaking with another accountant option B is the one to go. This means that in order to avoid paying taxes on the surplus of the deal we will need to invest 136k into our next apartment / house and use it has a primary residence. Additional to this we are filling for the first time our taxes together and the taxman owes us ~2.4k, meaning we will get some extra income. (Not really, this is money IRS took that it was not suposed to…)

4) P2P world.

We continue to reduce exposure since credit moratory or freezing in the countries the LOs are applicable.

4.1) Wisefund – Managed to sell an investment in Wisefund. We now have 3 projects there and one of them didnt pay this month (suposed to do on the 31-03-2020)…

4.2) Mintos – Reduced exposure from 1.9k to 1.8k and hopefully to around 1.2k by end of April. We still have 600€ pending from Monego and now more LOs are starting to default.

4.3) Monethera – Not possible to reduce exposure and we currently have 5k there. Projects didnt pay this month since we were informed that their offices are closed to the pandemic. They claim to be back when this is over…so lets see.

4.4) Robo.cash – Reducing our exposure to ~1.5k. Short term credits in countries which will also suffer from lenders not getting their money back.

Now, coming to our monthly networth…

Summary:

Our Networth value for March is 393 105.27€ ( -2 742,10)

Assets:

Investment accounts

• ETFs Portfolio: 24 061.78 € (+2110.98)
• Retirement Accounts (aka PPR): 13 137.62 € (–1 402.23)
• Certificates Deposit + Emergency Fund: 128 766.89 € (–2 830.31) 
• P2P Portfolio: 9 925.20 € (– 956.36)
• Total Investment accounts: 175 891.49 € ( –3077.92)

Real Estate (Based on Market Values)

• Primary Residency: 300 000 €
• Farms: 70 000 €
• Total Real Estate: 370 000€

Cars

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

Total Assets: 585 391.49 € (-3 077.92)

Liabilities:

• Primary Residency: 192 286.22 € (-335.82)

Total Liabilities: 192 286.22 € (-335.82)

Our Networth drilldown looks like this:

You can follow our Networth status always here

February! Panic on the stock market. Due to the Corona Virus pandemic our ETF Portfolio has been with a lot of volatility. This is not a problem and could perhaps present an opportunity to buy low 🙂

Regarding P2P we continue to retrieve our dividends from Wisefund and Mintos. Until now, Monethera has not paid their interests. They have informed they are having some issues with their payment system. Lets see.

Our tax questions are still open and we have now a new contact for an account. We need this info asap since we started to budget repairs and constructions in our farm. Mrs.Firecracker has now spent some time planning and drawing how our farm could look like. First estimations point to an investment of around 65k.

Coming to our monthly networth…

Summary:

Our Networth value for February is 395 847.37€ ( +363,07)

Assets:

Investment accounts

• ETFs Portfolio: 21 950.80 € (-1363.73)
• Retirement Accounts (aka PPR): 14 539.85 € (+255.42)
• Certificates Deposit + Emergency Fund: 131 597.20 € (+1291.88)
• P2P Portfolio: 10 881.56 € (– 156.00)
• Total Investment accounts: 178 969.41 € ( +27.57)

Real Estate (Based on Market Values)

• Primary Residency: 300 000 €
• Farms: 70 000 €
• Total Real Estate: 370 000€ (Removed Rental property)

Cars

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

Total Assets: 588 469.41 € (+27.57)

Liabilities:

• Primary Residency: 192 622.04 € (-335.50)

Total Liabilities: 192 662.04 € (-335.50)

Our Networth drilldown looks like this:

You can follow our Networth status always here

In January we continued reducing our exposure to P2P having it representing now around 3% of our portfolio (it was 5% in November – 2019). We reduced exposure mostly in Robo.cash and Mintos since Wisefund and Monethera currently frooze buyback due to widespread panic in the P2P market. We have now not more than 400€ exposure to any LO originator and since the money was sitting around in robo.cash i figured why not removing it from the platform.

Additionally, our ETF portfolio also suffered a decrease (altough as the time of this report it recooped the value and plus some more) due to the panic with CoronaVirus in the emerging markets. This affected several ETFs – and the global market – due to fears of factories stopping production in China since workers could not go to work due to contagion possibilities.

When it comes to risk we are very conservative at the moment and cash plenty, as you can see we haven’t invested any of our proceedings from the Apartement sale. We are currently validating with an accountant exactly how much do we need to invest in order to minimize tax payment.

Taxes after selling an apartment

In Portugal when you have a plus from a sale of your main property you need to pay tax on 50% of that plus. Now, that tax will be included in your normal yearly tax. Nonetheless, there are some exclusions to this rule which are the ones everyone uses to avoid paying that tax. Good explanation – here (only in portuguese).

In this case we have bough the apartment for 172.5k and sold it for 305k which amounts to 132.5k. Now we can deduct several things here like home improvements costs, mediation costs, costs that you had when you bought the place, etc. There is also an inflation adjustment based on the year that you acquired the property. After deducting all of this, the value stands at 101k. In this case 50% of this value would be liable to tax payment, meaning 50.5k.

Now, the rule to be excluded from this tax is that up to 36 months after the sale (3 years) you need to reinvest into another property and that property needs to be your main household.

The value that you need to invest from your own money is calculated by Price of sale – morgage on the property . In this case, we had 2 morgages on the apartment. We are validating with the accountant if they both count or if only the one we used for aquiring the apartment. In this case we talk about Morgage 1: 139 853,65 €, Morgage 2: 29 156,23 € .

Current options to validate:

a) According to our accountant only the first should be used, meaning we would need to invest ~165k (305k – 140k). Damn…too much, we dont have that much and would need to take a personal loan or to pay a proporcional of the tax…:(

b) According to the public services tax branch we went, what matters is the value of the loans we terminated once we sold the apartment, in this case, the full morgages. This would mean 136k (305k – 140k – 29k). Which is much preferable and we will have the cash in 3 years for sure.

I now will do a written questioning to the Portuguese IRS in order to have this sorted out and a proof when submitting our taxes. Better to play it safe.

There are still some questions like would this need to be the value we invest in total (new property price + tax) or does it only count for property value? This makes a big difference since when buying you need to pay municipal tax and gov tax which can be around 20k for a 200k property.

This will have impact on what we plan to do with this sum, ranging from improvements on the farm to me taking an MBA and how much do we want to invest in a new property (we have a few ideas already). Remember it needs to be a “single” apartment.

Coming to our monthly networth…

Summary:

Our Networth value for January is 395 822.50€ (-845.45)

January adjustments:

• We have started to account for vacations in our monthly budget. For this month to avoid removing money that we consider “saved” we have parked a bigger sum in our checking account ~500€ more.
• We also had vacations, 10 days in Ireland and we circled the whole island. Pretty cool. Definitly recommend! We spent 2k on those vacations. So after all, not a bad month!

Assets:

Investment accounts

• ETFs Portfolio: 23 314.53 € (-243.52)
• Retirement Accounts (aka PPR): 14 622.63 € (+589.12)
• Certificates Deposit + Emergency Fund: 130 305.32 € (+2853.35)
• P2P Portfolio: 11 037.56 € (-4 388.58)
• Total Investment accounts: 179 280.04 € (- 1 180.63)

Real Estate (Based on Market Values)

• Primary Residency: 300 000 €
• Farms: 70 000 €
• Total Real Estate: 370 000€ (Removed Rental property)

Cars

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

Total Assets: 588 780.04 € (-1 180.63)

Liabilities:

• Primary Residency: 192 957.54 € (-335.18)

Total Liabilities: 192 957.54 € (-335.18)

Our Networth drilldown looks like this:

You can follow our Networth status always here