September was an awesome, thrilling, and exhausting month. I moved all my stuff, left my tiny apartment behind, said goodbye to all of my friends and family, and I left for my second mini-retirement.
I have to tell you, it has been amazing. The first few days in Curacao was pure relaxing and adjusting from my extremely busy time in September. We laid by the pool and we went to the beach.
In the midst of it all, we went out to dinner every evening and had the best seafood (I totally love seafood). I told my boyfriend we should enjoy it because we weren’t going out to eat every night when we’re traveling.
After Curacao we visited my friend in Colombia, who I met in my last mini-retirement two years ago. We cuddled with her dogs, met her family and friends, went to her second house in the mountains of Colombia, and a great time!
Currently we are in Panama. I’m writing this from a bus that we’ve been waiting on for over an hour and finally arrived.
It is so great here and I’m super happy I negotiated a mini-retirement with my employer, which allows me to take four months off and return to my job.
My mini-retirement gives me a sense of what the financial independence life could be like. Especially since traveling is one of the main things I would like to do when reaching financial independence is traveling.
For my financial independence goal, my first goal is to have €1000 monthly passive income. After that, I would aim for €2000 to live completely comfortable. I’m currently in the beginning of my journey and I’m excited for you to follow along!
Highlights of my September:
- Monthly savings rate of 80%
- First blog income payout of €35
- Passive income of €63
September Expenses
Since my biggest travel expenses are already included in my July monthly report, my expenses for September are surprisingly low. When I was in Curacao and in Bogota I didn’t need to pay anything for accommodation, which saved me some significant money. I only spend €380 on my travels in September.
Here is my September spending breakdown:
This gives me an 80% savings rate for September and a 77% year to date savings rate. This means I’m still in the race of getting a 60% savings rate for 2019 – the upcoming months will determine whether I will make it or not. Stay tuned!
September Passive Income
Something that I’m grateful for, is the fact that I’m earning passive income every month. Even when I’m traveling. I have Peer-to-Peer loans that are giving me income every month.
Besides my passive income, I received my first blogging income in my bank account. A total of €35, which is more than I could have ever hoped for – so thank you for reading my articles and supporting me!
Blogging income is not truly passive, so I will leave that out for passive income. Excluding blogging income, I’m at €66 passive income for September. This is 33% of my goal for 2019 (€200 monthly passive income)
My September passive income means that I am 6% into my goal to reach €1000 passive income.
[wppb progress=”$66/$1000″ option=”animated-candystripe blue” text=€66/€1000 Passive Income]
Here is a breakdown of all my passive income sources related to Peer-to-Peer lending or crowdlending:
Mintos
Portfolio Value: €1857.54
Average Interest Rate: 12.41%
Passive Income: €19.21
Mintos is the most stable Peer-to-Peer platform in my opinion for long term investments. I have kept my investments stable over the last few months, since their average interest rate has gone down slowly.
Before it was easy to find investments with over 12% interest rate. Recently, it is even hard to find investments with an interest rate above 10%.
As I am using Mintos auto-invest to invest in projects with a high average interest rate, I will maintain my 12% interest rate for a few months – after that, my average interest rate will go down for sure.
Check here my exact auto invest settings if you want to maximize your interest rate at any given time.
I like Mintos because 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 €1858 invested with Mintos. That gave me €19.21 passive income in September, which is 12.41% average interest rate.
If you’re not using Mintos yet, I highly recommend you check it out. You can read my detailed Mintos review 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!
Grupeer
Portfolio Value: €1655.98
Average Interest Rate: 13.19%
Passive Income: €18.19
Grupeer is the backbone of my portfolio, together with Mintos. I am starting to love Grupeer more and more, as they keep consistent high-interest rates where Mintos cannot.
I have a lot of trust in Grupeer and I think it has a huge potential to grow as big as Mintos.
My Grupeer auto invest strategy is for investments with higher than 13% interest, which is great considering that everything has a buyback guarantee.
Every month I’m adding consistent money to my Grupeer account.
Currently I have €1755 invested with Grupeer, which gives me €18.19 passive income – an average rate of 13.18%
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.
Envestio
Portfolio Value: €1041.25
Average Interest Rate: 17.70%
Passive Income: €15.36
Envestio is a steady performer, every month it pays the interest and gives me a steady income of around €15 per month. Everything invested in Envestio is secured debt as has a 90% buyback guarantee.
I have €1041 invested in Envestio, with a €15 return that means a 17.70% interest rate. What I love about Envestio is the high interest rates, which give you a great return even when you’re just testing the waters.
Envestio is becoming increasingly popular, with most of its projects selling out within hours. If you want to get on board with Envestio, this is a great time to do so!
🔥If you are experiencing any problems with Envestio, go here to see what’s going on with Envestio and the current situation.
Crowdestor
Portfolio Value: €1117.37
Average Interest Rate: 7.92%
Passive Income: €7.37
I’ve added a new Crowdfunding and Peer-to-Peer investing platform to my portfolio: Crowdestor.
Crowdestor is an amazing website where you can invest in all different kinds of projects; from building forests, to video games, to real estate. They practically have everything!
I currently invested €1117.37 in four different projects, which has yielded me €7.37. Since I only started investing halfway through the month, my average interest rate will be much higher next month. The expectation is a 15.36% annualized interest rate.
I recently wrote my Crowdestor review. It is a great platform with a transparent buyback fund, which is another approach to platform risk than buyback fund. I am loving it!
Funding Circle
Portfolio Value: €1046.56
Average Interest Rate: 6.42%
Passive Income: €5.60
Funding Circle is the first crowdlending platform that I started using back in May of last year. I wouldn’t recommend using them, as they have no buyback guarantee. Currently, one of my projects didn’t pay for the last three months, so they are not in the process of getting that money back.
As there is no secondary market, I will sit out my investments until maturity.
All the other platforms I mentioned have a great risk-reward ratio, so I would recommend checking them out instead of Funding Circle.
If you’re interested in real estate crowdfunding, I have a list of platforms that I recommend here.
September Goals
- Get €75 income from passive sources – FAIL! I had €64 passive income this month, I will invest more next month to make this happen
- 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 1600 followers on Pinterest – PASS! People still followed me while I wasn’t active on Pinterest as much as I would have liked to, I’m pleasantly surprised!
- 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
I really want to up my game for my October goals, as my September goals got left behind.
My goals will stay more or less the same:
- Get €75 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 September? Let me know below!
Marjolein is a financial consultant who has built over €4,000 monthly passive income and saves over 70% of her income. Read Radicals’ inspiring story, from stuck in the 9-to-5 to loving life. Feel free to send Radical a message at the bottom of this page
Concrats on your first blogging income – and your mini-retirement.
My September was good, you can read about it hear if you like to https://10yeartarget.com/financial-status-september-2019/
Thank you!
That’s amazing, I am absolutely in love with Bogota. The best thing is that it’s high up in the mountains which means no mosquitos and normal temperatures, wooo! If you have the opportunity, I’d do it!
Thanks for your kind words Chrissy, I’m trying my best with Pinterest. I absolutely love the platform but I didn’t understand anything for the first few months. My tactic now is: try to make a pin for every post (I’m still having a big backlog), optimize description with keywords just like Google, pin to my own relevant boards first, after that to relevant group boards, pin successful pins more regularly.
If you have any further questions, I’d love to help you! You can reach out here of course, email to info@radicalfire.com, or send me a DM on any social media platform!
I’m so jealous of your mini retirement M! It sounds like you’ve been having an amazing time. One of our homestay students was from Bogota, and we’d love to visit her one day.
Your Pinterest stats are incredible! I’ve done absolutely nothing on Pinterest, but I know I need to! It so overwhelming, and I keep putting it off. Do you have any tips and/or resources for getting started?