August 2019 Monthly Report: Impatient & Excited

August was a great month with lots of work, hanging out with friends, and moving. I’ll take you through how my month of August was personally and money-wise in this August 2019 report. 

In August, the replacement for my job finally started. I was thinking this was going to be a relaxed month, boy I was wrong. Getting someone to understand what you’re doing on a day-to-day basis takes a LOT of time.

The first week I talked so much I got a soar throat. 

Good thing that the person replacing me already has 10 years of working experience, meaning she understands what I’m saying and I only need to explain her once or twice. 

Upcoming Mini-Retirement

Only four more days of working!!! Then I’ll be having the four-month mini-retirement that I negotiated with my employer, I couldn’t be happier!

I’m having a farewell party this weekend for my friends. Last weekend I already said goodbye to my family. I visited my parents’ house and saw all my family there. 

I also moved all my stuff that was still sitting in my parents’ house. To paint a picture, I moved out six years ago, and I still had a room full of stuff. 

How? Why? No one knows. I was a hoarder in a past life, I guess. 

I’ve already decluttered massively and sold a LOT of my stuff. It somehow still seemed that I didn’t get rid of anything. I decided that I will get rid of all the things I don’t need or use.

By the end of the weekend, I’ve moved half and got rid of half (given to friends and charity, of course). It feels like I still have a lot of stuff, but I was too tired to make any more decisions. 

We moved everything and decided that once we come back from our mini-retirement, we will see what we have packed and purge more. 

I have to admit that I like to get rid of stuff but at the same time, it’s hard to get rid of stuff I’ve paid a lot of money for. Things like gala dresses and even graphic calculators. I will try to sell them later!

Now, on to what you came here for, the money stuff from my August 2019 report!

August Expenses

A short summary:

• 280€ rent and utilities
• 46€ groceries + 10€ eating out
• 27€ giving

This means that I have a savings rate of 83.30% for August, making my YTD savings rate of 76.70%. My goal is to keep my yearly savings rate to 60%. I might need to get creative for that since I’m not getting much income from October until December. Here is my year to date savings rate visualized:

Passive Income August

This year I’m really focusing on building up my passive income. It’s a great way to make an early transition to an early retirement lifestyle. 

When you really want to save and invest enough money to fully retire early that is great, and it can be done quickly for sure. I’m aiming to retire in 11 years. 

However, if you have sufficient passive income to pay for your current lifestyle, you could decide to quit your job earlier. You know that you will be able to fund your month-to-month expenses, which is absolutely a dream!

Here is a breakdown of my passive investment categorized:

Blogging is the thing that really got me interested in passive income. Before starting my blog I had never learned so much about investing and passive income.

I’m starting to see the benefits of building passive income and building capital simultaneously. 

I’m a big holder of low-cost index funds, which pay dividends mostly quarterly. For August my index funds didn’t pay dividends, resulting in decreased passive income for the month.

Luckily the drop is not too big, due to my ever-growing Peer-to-Peer lending portfolio. 

I enjoy Peer-to-Peer investing a lot, it can be a great way to build passive income once you’re aware of the possible risks involved. 

For Peer-to-Peer investing, I have different sources of passive income. They give me the following result:

Portfolio Value: €5345.25

Average Interest Rate: 12.71%

Passive Income: €56.63

Here is a breakdown of all my passive income sources related to Peer-to-Peer lending or crowdlending:

Mintos 

Portfolio Value: €1838.74

Average Interest Rate: 12.80%

Passive Income: €19.62

Mintos is the backbone of my Peer-to-Peer portfolio. 

As I’ve changed my auto invest strategy in July and August in the past months, I see that it’s paying off in terms of the interest rate that I’m getting. In June I was only getting an 8.14% interest rate, in July 12.34%, and now in August 12.80%. 

I’m wondering how long I can keep it up, as the high-interest loans are getting more and more scarce on Mintos. A month ago it was possible to get 16% interest loans, now it’s hard to get 13% interest loans.

If you haven’t read my Mintos review yet, I recommend you do so if you’re interested in kickstarting investing in the platform!

When you use my link to sign up with Mintos, you get a 1% bonus on your investments for the first 90 days.

Grupeer

Portfolio Value: €1325.29

Average Interest Rate: 13.19%

Passive Income: €14.57

I’m continuously adding funds to my Grupeer account. As Mintos is having lower interest rates, Grupeer is my go-to platform to expand my portfolio. Grupeer will be the basis of my Peer-to-Peer portfolio, together with Mintos. 

Grupeer is a very solid investing platform that I enjoy investing in, with a buyback guarantee and their great auto-invest feature, I don’t have to worry about anything. 

Read my review on Grupeer here!

I can recommend Grupeer when you’re all about automatic investing, don’t want to spend much time thinking about your investments, and want to be backed up by a buyback guarantee.

Envestio

Portfolio Value: €1025.89

Average Interest Rate: 18.55%

Passive Income: €15.86

August is the first month I’ve received my full monthly payments for Envestio.

I love Envestio because of its high-interest rates and its recently added auto invest option. Currently, I have an average interest rate of 18.55%!

🔥If you are experiencing any problems with Envestio, go here to see what’s going on with Envestio and the current situation.

Funding Circle

Portfolio Value: €1155.33

Average Interest Rate: 6.83%

Passive Income: €6.58

Funding Circle is the first crowdlending platform I started with back in May 2018. I wouldn’t recommend them as there is no buyback guarantee and the interest rates are generally lower. 

I have one investment that is in trouble, lowering my average interest rate even more. They didn’t pay for 3 months at this moment in time. 

On the bright side, there is also one project that refinanced their loan with their bank and paid back their entire lump sum amount. 

I will just sit out the amounts that I’ve invested here. There is no secondary market where I can resell my current investments. 

There are different platforms that provide less risk for more rewards, so I would advise you to skip this platform. 

Most Popular Posts In August

1. Quitting Caffeine: The Awesome Benefits Of No More Coffee – I liked coffee, a lot. After anxiety and stress kicked in, I decided to quit caffeine as the way to go. Read more about the benefits of no more coffee!

2. 15 Best Passive Income Ideas For 2019 – Passive income ideas have helped thousands and thousands of people achieve financial freedom. Here are the 15 best ways to make money while you sleep! 

3. Think And Grow Rich Summary & Review [13 Simple Steps To Wealth] – You’re looking to learn from the most iconic self-help book of all time? Read here the Think and Grow Rich summary and review, with 13 simple steps to wealth and riches!

August Goals Review

• Get 5% of my income from passive sources – FAIL! I would say this is an arbitrary goal, since from September on I won’t have any income – making 5% an easy target. 
• Read through February-March posts for spelling and grammar – PASS! Now on to April-May posts
• Send out e-mail opt-in series – PASS! If you haven’t signed up already, do so now by signing up below!
• Get 1300 followers on Pinterest – PASS! I’m almost at 1500 followers – wooo
• Work out 2x per week – FAIL! I’ve only worked out once per week. I will go traveling next week, where I expect to not work out at all!
• Sell €30 of stuff on eBay – PASS! I’ve sold over €75 this month, which is great. I love to search around the house for things I can sell online
• Write one book review post – PASS! It’s my post about think and grow rich, also one of my most read posts in August

September Goals

• Get €75 income from passive sources
• Read through April-May posts for spelling and grammar
• Design new front page of Radical FIRE
• Get ahead 3 weeks of posts
• Get 1600 followers on Pinterest – if you haven’t followed me yet you can do so here
• Write one book review post

Let me know how was your August?