Mini-Retirement Planning – July Monthly Report

I feel like I’m repeating myself when I say that the months fly by. Oh well, it’s still true though. I have been working on the blog, working on my passive income, and working on getting ready for my mini-retirement. 

I’m going on a four-month mini-retirement from September to December in Central America, together with my partner. My employer has given me unpaid leave, meaning that I will have no income while I am traveling. Do you also want to go on a mini-retirement but don’t know how? Here is how I negotiated a mini-retirement with my employer and here is how I saved enough money to go!

Change Of Plans

On a more exciting note: I’ve changed my flights over the weekend. The plan is now: Amsterdam – Curacao – Bogota – Panama, to explore from there Central America by bus. To be honest, I would prefer to cross from Bogota to Panama by bus – that’s impossible since there is no border post between Panama and Colombia.

Anyways – I’ve done something very exciting. I noticed that the flights from Central America back to Curacao were very expensive. They all seemed to go through Miami or Orlando. That’s why I’ve changed our itinerary a bit to fit a week in Orlando, Florida and the surrounding area! I want to see Disneyworld, Harry Potter World, and I LOVE to be back in the US. 

Do me a favor and throw everything at me! I want to know where I need to go when I’m in Orlando. Any friends who are living around Orland and would love to meet up, let me know! I’ll be there probably from December 17th until December 23rd.

I was jumping around the living room for 30 minutes, too excited to contain myself! I can eat alllll the US food again – I’m specifically excited about the Cheesecake Factory and Reeses.

One moment later realized this will have some major impact on my spending and my overall savings rate for the year – but I’m convinced I will still make it work. If I don’t make my projected 60% savings rate for the year, no man overboard. I will survive. Financial measures are not the only thing that is important in life, that’s for sure. 

Enough talk about my trip, let’s go for the expenses and passive income of the month. 

July Expenses

A short summary:

• 280€ rent and utilities
• 473€ flight tickets to Colombia, Panama, and Orlando
• 197€ taxes I needed to return – so sad for my savings rate
• 60€ groceries
• 12.50€ giving

This means that I have a savings rate of 47.43% for July, making my YTD savings rate of 75.80%. My goal is to keep my yearly savings rate to 60%, I might need to get creative for that. Here is my year to date savings rate visualized:

In my June monthly report, I mentioned I needed an extra €4.600 to fund my travels. I have over €3.600 left for August – since I’ve had an unexpected bill from the tax office and booked my flights for my mini-retirement. Let’s see how that works! Like I mentioned before, if it doesn’t work that’s okay as well. I would rather not worry about money when I’m going on my mini-retirement.

Passive Income July

I’m building my passive income as I go. I’m very excited about the way this is heading and I have a feeling it will get better with time. I am still in the beginning phase of building up my stock portfolio and trying out investing in different Peer-to-Peer platforms. Since I’ve started with Peer-to-Peer investing in May, I’m 100% sold on it. I’ve already found a few of my favorite P2P lending platforms and I will stick with them. 

Here is a breakdown of my passive income from diverse investments:

I’ve started to build my passive income actively since May. The dividends from the fund I own are paid quarterly, which gives the higher passive income for those months. 

I love receiving money every single month. Perhaps I need to diversify my passive income some more. It would be so great if towards the end of the year I could have 200 EUR per month passive income!

Let’s have a look at my different sources of income!

Mintos 

I’m very happy with Mintos. As I’ve looked into detail in this platform, I’ve noticed that it’s a decent backbone for any P2P portfolio. With €1871 invested, I’ve received €18 in revenue in July (compared to €6.92 in May). This is about 11.55% per year, which I’m very happy about. 

As I’ve changed my auto invest strategy over the past months, I see that it’s paying off in terms of interest rate that I’m getting. Last month I was only getting 8.14% and in July I’m getting 11.55%. 

If you haven’t read my Mintos review yet, I recommend you so do before you start investing in the platform!

Envestio

I’ve recently invested my first money in Envestio. I will receive my first monthly payment in August, meaning that this is just the sign up bonus of €5. If you want to get a signup bonus as well, sign up and get €5 +0.5% on your investments in the first 270 days. 

Envestio is becoming increasingly popular. They’ve recently also added an auto invest option, meaning you don’t need to push the refresh button all day to wait for a new project to come online. 

If you haven’t read my full Envestio review, check it out here!

Grupeer

I’m now in the process of adding funds to my Grupeer account, which means that I’m investing my money fully since half of July. Although that is the case, I received €8.33 in interest which is 7.65% of my invested capital. I expect to receive more money from them from August, as I’m fully invested in them now. 

My average return is not great yet, so stay tuned for an update next month! I enjoy investing with Grupeer and I think they are a very solid investing platform. They will become bigger, just like Mintos, and be the basis for my portfolio. 

Read my review on Grupeer here!

Funding Circle

Funding Circle is the first crowdlending platform I started with. I’m not sure yet if I would recommend them. They do not have a buyback guarantee and the interest rates are generally lower. 

That said, I already have an investment that didn’t pay for February and June, as you can see in my overview. Hopefully, it will be okay for the person who took out the loan and they can repay it. I think that for other platforms you can have much higher returns for lower risk, so I would not recommend people starting with this platform.  

Most Popular Posts In July

Jeeez, my monthly updates are getting longer and longer. Anyways, here are my most popular posts in June:

1. Make Yourself Rich With These Three Words – Always Keep Buying. Making money and getting rich with one simple trick: always keep buying. The market is high, low, crashed, all times highs? Irrelevant. Always keep buying!

2. What Would You Do If You Retired Early? – Working towards early retirement is a goal in and of itself. But what if you retire early? What would you do if you retired early?

3. Festivals, Birthdays, and Relaxation: June Financial Report – I share my June financial report, including my June expenses, my June passive income, and the goals that I’ve set for June and July!

July Goals Review

• Get 5% of my income from passive sources – FAIL! I’m steadily working towards this goal. This month it was 4.89% including dividends, let’s make it gradual steps for each month.  
• Read through all posts for spelling and grammar – FAIL! I think I need to break this goal down. I have now read through December – January, I will do February-March next. 
• Figure out how to distribute email opt-in series – PASS! I’ve figured it out, now only to activate it – there are some technical issues
• Get 1200 followers on Pinterest – PASS! I have 1,232 followers currently, wooo! 
• Work out 2x per week – PASS! I’ve been to the gym twice every week, I’m proud of myself
• Sell €30 of stuff on eBay – FAIL! I’ve sold €3 worth of stuff, does that count? Better luck next month!

August Goals 

• Get €40 income from passive sources
• Read through February-March posts for spelling and grammar
• Send out e-mail opt in series
• Get 1300 followers on Pinterest – if you haven’t followed me yet you can do so here
• Sell €30 of stuff on eBay
• Write one book review post

This is the first month I’m trying to add my breakdown per passive income source, if there are any optimization suggestions I’d love to keep myself recommended!

How was your July? Let me know below or link your monthly report!