Expenses & Passive Income – October Monthly Report

In this October monthly report, we dive into travel expenses, passive income, and adventures along the way.

October was an exciting month. We’ve been traveling through Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and we’ve just arrived in Guatemala. 

We’ve made some great stops and I love every country that we’ve visited. 

Panama and Costa Rica were more structured countries with relatively good infrastructure. Of course there is an occasional dirt road, but that’s hard to prevent. 

A special place in my heart is for Nicaragua and El Salvador. In both counties, the people were so HAPPY to see tourists. They were literally thanking us for choosing their country. 

Honduras was something else. They have people with shotguns for literally every store, bank, and on street corners. We took a night bus one day and we even had someone with a shotgun sitting in the front. I suppose that is to make you feel safe, but it didn’t do the trick for me. 

We have been in Guatemala since Halloween, to celebrate dia de Los Muertos – which was amazing. We went to a kite festival and saw giant kites flying up in the air. 

On our travel so far I’ve met many people who have unpaid leave from their employer. That means it’s possible to negotiate a mini-retirement with your employer. They are very flexible – some people I spoke to had two years off of work (!!!!).

This mini-retirement gives me a taste of freedom during financial independence or early retirement and I love it. Traveling is something I could literally do for months and months. 

For my financial independence goal, I’m consistently saving to have a big nest egg. Besides that, I want to build up some passive income that may enable me to escape the 9 to 5 sooner. 

My first goal is to have €1000 monthly passive income. That would be enough for me to live off of. After that, I would aim for €2000 to live completely comfortable.

I’m currently at the beginning of my journey and I’m excited for you to follow along!

Highlights of my October monthly report:

• A monthly savings rate of 50% while traveling
• Blog income of €30
• Passive income of €111

October Monthly Report: Expenses

In October we’ve been traveling extensively, trying to keep expenses low while making the most of the time we have here. We go out to eat, but we split a meal. We go everywhere we want, but we go with the local busses. For things we really want to see we book tours, but explore by ourselves when recommended. We sleep in decent hostels, but negotiate and compare prices before we go. 

All these tactics have resulted in me spending €687.04 on traveling in October. This is lower than expected, which is always nice! 

Here is my October spending breakdown:

This gives me an 49.38% savings rate for October and a 75% year to date savings rate. This means I’m still hoping to make my goal of a 60% savings rate for 2019. 

If you want to read more about how to calculate your savings rate – you can start here!

My employer paid me three weeks of salary but added additional costs related to my car – that I’m currently not driving. This is a mistake on their side and will be fixed in November.

Meaning that in November they’ll give me a refund of around €300, which spreads the money a little bit more out. 

October Monthly Report: Passive Income

I’m very happy that I’m earning some passive income every month. Even when I’m on the other side of the world enjoying time not working, I have my Peer-to-Peer loans that are giving me income every month. 

Besides my passive income, I receive occasionally blogging income in my bank account. For October this was €29.30, which is more than I could ever dream of – thank you so much for reading my articles and supporting me!

Here is a breakdown of income per source:

Source	Income	Annual Return
Blog	€30
Grupeer	€23	10.16%
Mintos	€15	9.40%
Envestio	€15	16.92%
Crowdestor	€14	15.01%
Funding Circle	€7	8.31%
Dividends	€38	0.44%
Total	€142	P2P: 11.36%

Since blogging income is not truly passive, I will keep that out of my analysis. Excluding blogging income, I’m at €111 passive income for October. This is 55% of my goal for 2019 (€200 monthly passive income).

My October passive income means that I am 11% into my goal to reach €1000 passive income. 

[wppb progress=50 option=”animated-candystripe blue” text=”Goal: €111/€1000 Passive Income”]

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

Grupeer

Portfolio Value: €2675.85

Average Interest Rate: 10.16%

Passive Income: €22.65

Grupeer is the backbone of my portfolio, together with Mintos. This month I invested €1111 in my Grupeer portfolio, which makes it my biggest position in a single P2P platform. 

The reason why I chose to add money to my Grupeer platform, is that they keep the high interest rates where Mintos can’t. Besides that, I have a lot of trust in Grupeer & I think it has the potential to grow as big as Mintos. 

Currently, my Grupeer auto invest strategy is very simple: invest in loans with 13% or higher interest rate. A return of 13% is simply amazing, considering everything has a buyback guarantee. 

At this moment I have €2675 invested with Grupeer, which gives me €22.65 passive income – an average rate of 10.16%. 

Since I added my €1111 halfway through October, the interest rate is lower compared to other months. I expect the interest rate to pick up again next month!

Grupeer currently has a promotion for fall. For new clients who sign up using my link, there is a 1% cashback until 17th of November.

If you’re not using Grupeer yet, I highly recommend you check it out. You can read my Grupeer review here or you can sign up directly.

  Try Grupeer Now

Mintos 

Portfolio Value: €1874.44

Average Interest Rate: 9.40%

Passive Income: €14.69

Mintos is in general a stable Peer-to-Peer platform if you’re in it for the long term. 

Recently the average interest rate on Mintos is going down, meaning that you get less income with the same amount of money. 9.40% is still very good I have to say, but it will be lower for the upcoming months – until the interest rates pick up again. 

I use auto invest to make sure that I get the maximum return for my money and risk I’m willing to take. Check here my exact auto invest settings if you want to maximize your passive income with Mintos. 

The thing I love about Mintos is that it’s so easy to invest with them, having auto invest and Mintos Invest & Access. With Mintos Invest & Access, you only need to click on ‘Invest’ and boom it’s invested. 

I currently have €1874 invested with Mintos. That gave me €14.69 passive income in October, which is 9.40% yearly average interest rate. 

If you’re not using Mintos yet, I highly recommend you check it out. You can read detailed Mintos review here or you can sign up directly.

When you sign up with Mintos using my link, you get 1% extra return on any investments made within the first 90 days!

Try Mintos Now

Envestio

Portfolio Value: €1056.14

Average Interest Rate: 16.92%

Passive Income: €14.89

Envestio is a steady performer in the P2P world. This results in about the same amount of money every month. With their 90% buyback guarantee, your loan is guaranteed for the majority of it. 

I have €1056.14 invested in Envestio, with a €14.89 return that means a 16.92% interest rate. That’s not too bad of a return!

🔥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: €1021.52

Average Interest Rate: 8.31%

Passive Income: €7.07

Funding Circle is the first crowdlending platform that I started using back in May 2018.

Because I want to be honest with you, I wouldn’t recommend using them. They have no buyback guarantee and no secondary market. Plus, their interest rates are not too high. 

I currently have a loan that is in dispute, but there is no way that I could get rid of that by selling or letting a buyback guarantee kick in. It’s just sitting there, hoping that they can pay. 

All the other platforms I mentioned have a great risk-reward ratio, so I would recommend checking them out instead.

If you’re interested in real estate crowdfunding, I have a list of platforms that I recommend here. 

October Monthly Report: Goals

I spend so little time working on these goals or even looking at them. I’m enjoying my mini-retirement to the fullest and feel no pressure to reach those goals. Just to give myself some sense of direction, I’ll keep them in here (otherwise I would never check on their fo sho). 

Here they are:

• Get €75 income from passive sources – PASS! YES finally, I’ve made it! I’m aiming to have €200 passive income at the end of 2019, let’s go for it!
• Read through April-May posts for spelling and grammar – FAIL! I didn’t take any time this month to look at old blog posts
• Design a new front page of Radical FIRE – FAIL! I would love to have a new front page, so let’s keep that goal for next month
• Get 1700 followers on Pinterest – FAIL! Time spent on Pinterest this month is close to zero – let’s try it again for next month.
• Write one book review post – FAIL! No book review posts have been written, let’s keep it on the list for next month

October Goals

• Get €100 income from passive sources
• Read through April-May posts for spelling and grammar
• Design new front page of Radical FIRE
• Get 1700 followers on Pinterest – if you haven’t followed me yet you can do so here
• Write one book review post

How was your October? Let me know below!