November 2019 update: 1,579 € in passive income


Highlights from past month:
  • Passive income was 1,579 € ⬇️
  • Stocks are up, Yay! 🍾
  • I founded a (shell) company!
  • Check out the compound interest calculator 🖩
For those who are new, hi! I'm glad you're here!

I will be financially independent. I almost feel like I already am. You don't actually need a lot of money to live a good life. With about 400k€, I am already at a point where I feel like I can do what I like. But I can't just stop going to work, not just yet.

My first stage goal is 3,000€ in monthly passive pre-tax income, which translates to 2,100€ post-tax. As per my earlier post, my monthly expenses are about 2,200€, so the goal doesn't currently completely cover my expenses, but, there is definitely some wiggle room in my budget (ehm. travel) for me to still live very comfortably with what I'm targeting.

What's new?

It was a slower month and I was vacationing for a week. One fun highlight of the month was being interviewed for the Joney Talks podcast. We talked about investing, especially outside of stocks and how I see p2p investing.

I was forced to set up a company for the two blogs, which is mostly just a shell bank account to track everything plus accounting. It doesn't change much, except blog income will be taxed with 20% rather than 60%, until I decide to take it out of the holding company. Then, it will depend on my salaried income (which I hope to be much less). The big benefit is being able to push the big taxes to the future and it's easier to deduct costs associated to blogging.

I created a compound interest calculator for you! With it, you can easily calculate how much a certain starting principal and monthly savings would compound to with a given interest rate. How much would it take for you to become a millionaire, for example? (Just make sure you account for taxes etc. in your interest rate)

Let's get to the actual content, what you're here for. Passive income of this month: 👇🏻

Income IRR
Bondora 384 € 14%*
Swaper 228 € 13%
Lainaaja 163 € 11%*
Mintos 157 € 13%
Envestio 141 € 21%
Robocash 119 € 13%
Crowdestor 111 € 18%
Kuetzal 93 € 21%
Dividends 83 € 1%
Grupeer 67 € 14%
Fastinvest 16 € 15%
Peerberry 10 € 11%
Viainvest 8 € 10%
Bulkestate 0 €
Crowdestate 0 €
Trine 0 € 6%
Agrikaab 0 € 34%**
Total 1,579 € 14%
* Lainaaja and Bondora will have defaults, this is long-term best guess at the moment
** Agrikaab pays out quarterly

For passive income I'm at 1,579 € for last month, which sets me at 53% from my goal (last month 1,892€ / 63%). My crowdlending IRR is over 14% on the portfolio level. 😎

Goal: 1,579 € / 3 000 € in passive income
53 %


Check out other European passive income bloggers

There are quite a few European passive income blogs. The below chart gives a good picture of how we're progressing (instructions to contribute).

Check out the full chart 👇🏻




Invested capital increased by 8,424 €


This chart contains significant capital changes last month. Positive numbers is net capital added (including reinvestments) or value appreciation. Negative numbers are net principal paid back / defaulted / deprecated. This includes only capital that got invested.

As you can see, I've increased significantly my stake in Fastinvest (I will need to do a write-up of that) and the increase in stocks was driven by the market. Swaper and Robocash both have experiences a bit of cash drag.

A deeper look into the 1,579 € monthly passive income



Passive income increased slightly from 1,892 € last month to 1,579 € (chart excludes stock dividends for technical reasons). Unfortnuately, I need 26,477 post tax to support my current lifestyle. There's still some way to go.

Internal rate of return is at above 14%. As long as I can keep it above 10% long-term, including write-offs, I'm very happy. The next recession will be the true test.

Let's zoom in on the different sources.

Bondora



With still 25,166 € in Bondora, I got 384 € (compared to 474 €) in interest.
The IRR for Bondora is still at 29%, but it's going to drop still heavily as the defaults start to roll in.

If for Bondora I give a 10% discount on the principal (which is a little optimistic) then the IRR drops to 20%. With a more pessimistic 20% discount the IRR sits at 11%.

I've decided decrease my portfolio in Bondora to balance it with other platforms. I'm not going to sell the portfolio nor will I convert to Go & Grow, since I'm interested in how the late loans behave. Stick with me!

There's also a proper review on Bondora, you should read it!

Mintos


Revenue from Mintos was 157 € (201 €) and IRR sits steadily at 13%.

Interest rates have been dropping on Mintos, and my Auto Invest settings have not captured a lot of loans. First I thought I'd reduce my Mintos portfolio, but now I've decided to start using Invest & Access more now. That one still works, but interest rates are a bit less of 10%.

If you haven't checked out my Mintos review, please do so! I touch on this point about Invest & Access as well in it.

Swaper


Swaper has again been suffering from cash drag and my portfolio dropped to 15,203€. Income increased to 228 € (compared to 215 €) and IRR sits steadily at 13%.

Since I have over 5000 € on Swaper, I'm entitled to a 2% loyalty bonus. As most of my loans are 11%, over time I should be looking at roughly 13%+ returns, which maps well to the IRR.

Swaper is a fairly hands-off platform. To tackle cash drag, I created multiple auto-investment profiles. I believe it means I'm investing in the same loans many times over, but since Swaper has full buyback guarantee and since they're backed by a larger organization, I am taking the risk.

I finally wrote a review on Swaper, go read it.

RoboCash


RoboCash accepts deposits up to 10,000 € only, so that's what I did. Due to cash drag my invested capital dropped to 9,256 € (10,608 €) but still yielded 119 € interest (103 €). IRR is a very comfortable 13%! Although all the loans on Robocash are 12% interest, I am a Platinum member due to having an account balance of over 10,000 € and am therefore eligible to an extra 1%.

RoboCash is a completely hands-off platform. I have a full review on RoboCash too. Please do read it, it's definitely one of my favorite platforms! I haven't had any issues with RoboCash so far, and no cash drag. I'm just sad I can only invest 10,000€ on it.

Grupeer


I now have 6,036 € invested in Grupeer. I got 67 € interest for this. IRR is even 14%!

I have a lot of trust on Grupeer and I think it has a good chance to grow as my top platform. Given that Mintos' rates are falling and also Swaper has a bit of cash drag, I will likely increase my Grupeer balance next.

Most of my investments are in 13%-interest amortized business loans, with buyback guarantee. That is pretty sweet.

Here's my review on Grupeer - definitely worth getting to know this platform!

Envestio


Invested principal increased to 11,137 € (10,994 €) on Envestio and I got 141 € interest for it (165 €). IRR is at a steady 21%. The fluctuation in income is because some of the principal was unused for a while.

Through Envestio, I've invested in aluminium production, fruits wholesale, urban mining, sawn timber and wood pallets. All are secured debt and Envestio has a 90% buyback guarantee themselves.

Envestio has become so popular that most of their projects fill up in hours, so, if you are looking to get on board investing through Envestio, it's a good time to sign up and transfer money ready to your account. When you sign up using my affiliate link, you'll also get a 0.5% cashback for investments you make within the first 270 days.

Go have a look at my review on Envestio!

Crowdestor


Crowdestor is definitely something to consider!

I've currently invested 10,586 € on four different projects, and it yielded me 111 € interest last month. previous. IRR sits at 18%.

I have also written a lengthier Crowdestor review. There's a lot to be liked there and especially the way they tackle platform risk with a buyback fund versus a buyback guarantee.

Fast Invest


Fast Invest is a very clean and simple P2P lending platform.

I decided to increase my portfolio on Fastinvest to  10,000 €. Interest hasn't kicked in yet and was at 16 €, IRR slightly up at 15%.

I like Fast Invest in that it's a very straight forward, clean, usable platform. They provide buyback guarantees and have a lot of loans with 12% interests, some even 13%. FastInvest is a great one to diversify your portfolio on. Being such a steady performer, I believe I will increase my stake in it.

I will try to write a proper review on them soon, stay tuned!

Kuetzal


Kuetzal is an interesting platform that I am keeping an eye on. It's got lots of risk, but perhaps for the diligent there should be good money to be made.

Previous month I increased my stake on Kuetzal to 6,010 € and that has now grown to 6,168 €. The interest for this month jumped to 93 €. The IRR is at a great 21%.

Kuetzal definitely comes with high risk - high reward combo. The rates are phenomenal, but the ones covered with buyback guarantee have collateral too. Be careful though and make sure you don't just jump the bandwagon because others are on it.

I wrote a review on Kuetzal, which I think you should read before investing.

Peerberry


Peerberry is another P2P consumer crowdlending platform.

For now I have 1,045 € invested on Peerberry and got 10 € in interest. IRR is at a good 10%. If Peerberry can keep that up for years, I'm all good with that!

Peerberry also offers buyback guarantees for the loans. It's a very simple, clean platform again. Great for anyone looking to diversify their consumer crowdlending portfolio.

Viainvest


A very similar story to Peerberry, Viainvest is another P2P consumer lending platform with very similar specs. What I like most about Viainvest is that most of my money is in credit lines. These are very flexible loan instruments for the borrower, who can easily reduce and increase the loan as they need.

I have 1,033 € invested in ViaInvest and got 8 € in interest. IRR for Viainvest is also at 10%.

🐪 Agrikaab


I own a camel (Yes, the animal) in Somalia through Agrikaab. The animal cost me 1,375 € and as it lactates, the milk is sold and I get most of the revenue. Quarterly dividends are around 6%-8% and this puts the IRR at this point to 29%.

I've since invested also in the Agrikaab Store and further planning to invest in the newly released rainwater harvesting pond.

For those of you interested in reading more about Agrikaab, check out the review I wrote on them. Need a camel for yourself? Buy one on Agrikaab!

Trine



I have 1,000 € invested on Trine in a 7% p.a loan. Last month was the first one I got revenue from the project, 21 €. This month revenue is again 0 and IRR is at 5.1%. It might not reach 7% completely, since after committing it took a little while before the project started and the loan was issued.

Trine is a spectacular sustainable investment crowdlending platform. With my 1,000 € investment I am offsetting 38 tonnes of CO2 while getting a 7% return.

I've covered Trine in a proper review, but if the topic of sustainable investing interests you, please read the post: Sustainable investing: how to profit while healing the planet.

Lainaaja


Interest from Lainaaja is falling as I am withdrawing the principal from this marketplace. Lainaaja has discontinued their peer lending operations and this is the last time I'm including a separate section for Lainaaja - do ask me though if you want!

Lainaaja decreased from 272€ to 163€. I'm giving the principal on Lainaaja a 10% discount, which then sets the IRR to 11%.

Lainaaja is a good example of a platform that issues long loans and doesn't provide buyback returns - it's a waiting game when you want to exit. It's not for everyone, but for me, as long as the IRR stays above 10%, I'm all OK!

🌤️ Sun Exchange 

Just recently I invested on Sun Exchange, which lets you buy and lease solar cells in South Africa: they get electricity, you get income. Read my Sun Exchange review to learn more and get a free solar cell! 🌞

My cells are being installed, so I haven't received any revenue from them yet, but I'm hoping I soon will. So far my cells aren't worth a huge amount, but I'm expecting to increase my stock by the end of the year still.

Other platforms

I've also opened accounts and invested 1,000 € in Bulkestate and another 1,000 € on crowdestate but haven't received any income from them yet.

Thanks for reading

Thank you so much dear reader for visiting! I hope you've subscribed! I think I will need to start writing some more review content on the site, let me know if there's a specific one that would interest you.


And before you leave, why don't you say hi? 😊 👇🏻

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