Just a few days ago LHV publicised some great news about their Growth Account. It seems LHV has decided to grow its user base by getting more young clients to join their bank and this has brought some rewards to others as well. 

The main change in the Growth Account I have seen is the fact that the account management fee has gone down for some people, especially for investors just starting out. The Growth Account is free of charge for the first year and then the monthly management fee is 0,05% with the minimum being set to 50 cents (this used to be 1€). So after one year now it is advisable to have at least 1000€ on the Growth Account not to pay more than the 0.05% minimum. Previous to the change the amount you needed to gather in the first year was 2000€. The other change is that the Growth Account management fee is 0€ for people until they turn 26 years old. So if you have a newborn child and you would like to invest some money for their future in long term then this account could be free of charge for 25 years (if no changes are made to fees of course).

The other main fees such as purchase and sale transaction fees remained the same- 1% purchase fee, 11€ + 0,3% per instrument sale fee.

Another bigger change is that although you still can choose "just" 6 funds the options are largely increased. There used to be 22 fund options in Growth Account and now there are 38 to choose from. They also added filter functions by themes (technology, consumption, sustainable development, healthcare and even cryptocurrencies etc), types (dividend payers) and regions (global, developed countries, developing countries). There is also a risk scale ranging from 1 to 7, where the lowest risk fund has level 3 (corporate bonds) and level 7 are cryptocurrencies and Russian companies. Sometimes too many options can be paralysing and some of the options are more speculation than long-term investing. Not sure about how I feel about it yet. Some of the new options are interesting- I have been thinking about medicine or biotechnology field since starting the Growth Account (as it is a field I try to keep myself up to date on anyway) but up to now I didn't really have an option to dabble in it. Need to read more about the field in general as well as the options now open to me. So maybe, just maybe I'll change something. We'll see.

There was another news related to Growth Account...

If you have Growth Account and also use LHV for your daily banking there is also now new micro investing option you can activate. Basically every time you pay with the card small amount of money is transferred to the Growth Account and once a week purchase is made based on your predetermined preferences just like happens with your normal deposits to there. I have somewhat similar thing in my SEB account although there the money is put on regular savings account. But even for a person like me who prefers to pay cash (more on it here)- this account still gathers some money. How much is added to the Growth Account depends on what you choose. 

• In the so-called unlimited option always your purchase is rounded up to the next full euro and the difference is deposited to the Growth Account. So, for example, the price is 7,40€ and an additional 60 cents would make full 8€ so 60 cents are deposited to Growth Account. In all the everyday prices ending in 90 or 99 cents - the amount deposited is really small.
• In case of the limited amount if the payment is less than 10€ you would deposit 10% of the payment made. This makes some deposits larger and some smaller than in the first option. In the 7,40€ example, you would deposit 74 cents. If the price was 1.20 you would deposit just 12 cents compared to 80 cents of the unlimited option. If the payment is 10€ or more it is always rounded up to nearest €, same as in the unlimited option.

Using this LHV micro investing can be done on any LHV debit card and activating this service is free of charge (but the Growth Account fees still apply of course). 

One more news they stated was for students, and it was that starting this year LHV is giving out student loans. This does get them, clients, perhaps? When I started university it was quite common that people my age didn't have bank accounts and they made it in the bank where they took out a student loan. And as you needed 2 persons to guarantee the loan, it was the least amount of paperwork to get the loan from the bank they banked at. Nowadays as the student loan terms are the same in all banks I guess it is still true people take it from their home bank? But at least they won't lose clients who would need to make an account in another bank to get the loan. So not sure how much this changes for them but maybe the image of a youthful and successful bank will draw in more young people if they can get the loan there as well?

I have been really trying to figure out how being ill effects my financial state- my income and spending. It is not just curiosity... I guess nobody thinks of being unwell when they are healthy... Within the last month, I have been in the hospital for about 15 days, some of it in the intensive care unit. 

And of course all of it depends on what is the matter with you, but it really feels like financially it has been rather positive for me. 

In Estonia, you get sickness benefit from the fourth day of your falling ill, and some employers also pay for the first 3 days. The sickness benefit is paid at the rate of 70% of daily income, and this is calculated based on the last 6 months wages. So, yes, of course, you get less money when being ill but you get also paid for the weekends and holidays (which can be is important for those who work shift work for example). Also compared to being healthy or just ill at home - in the hospital you have almost no ability to spend your money. You are given food 3 times a day, you get all the medications you need... You are expected to pay "bed fee" of 2,5 € per day from the second day of being in the hospital and this is not paid for the intensive care unit days. So basically you get 30 % less money but spend just 2,5€ a day. Sounds like a deal doesn't it?

Being ill at home and buying expensive medicines, being unable to cook at home for some reason and needing to order in a lot of food etc can be really expensive. But this hospital stay seems like best saving month ever. To be honest being home from the hospital for a few days I did spend more than usual as I just missed so many foods. Hospital food is filling but there is a limit of how many times I can eat cabbage soup... I guess anyone who has been in Estonian hospital in summer and eaten cabbage soup 1-2 times a day (for 15 days) like me, knows it. 

From time to time when I feel I need to unwind from work, I watch some youtube videos (yes, I am guilty of that)... and somehow I stumbled on an account The Financial Diet which provides short financial videos about twice a week. And I have kept on watching. 

There are two female hosts and a regular guest host as well and they have about 200 videos uploaded there.

To be frank, most of it is quite USA specific but most videos tend to have something noteworthy for the rest of the world as well. They do screw up sometimes and say things like "a good coat which serves you for many years is an investment", perhaps financial text should not state that, but hey, these slipups happen. Also, the hosts do not invest, which is important to know. But they talk about saving, earning extra money, bad money habits, spending mistakes etc. Nothing too deep, but nice relatable episodes- maybe worth checking out?

Do you have a favourite financial / investing youtube account or a podcast? 

I started investing in August 2016, so by the second half of this month, I have been in the investing "scene" for 2 years. 

So what have I achieved, are there any changes and what are the future plans?

I started in August 2016  by adding 1000€ to Bondora, then in September I added 1000€ to Mintos and in December added also some funds to CrowdEstate. In January 2017 I started an LHV Growth Account, which allows to by regularly ETFs with relatively low costs and also started using EstateGuru. So half a year in I was already in 4 portals. Quite recently I added Grupeer as 5th.

I realized quite quickly that Bondora is not something I could use as the interest % they show and what you get are really not in balance. I stopped adding money there already in January 2017. This is the only portal I am exiting. Also as lately the interests have dropped significantly in other portals and inflation also eats into the profits I feel too much of my money is in crowdfunding sites... so I have limited my deposits to these sites and try to add most of my investments to LHV Growth Accounts that seems a safer option also due to tax benefits there.

So while 6 months ago in general terms my portfolio looked like this, the current status is on the lower image. The categories are not perfect but I thought it would be better than just adding every portal seperately. 

Bondora and Mintos (and Grupeer in the lower image) are in P2P loans. As EstateGuru and CrowdEstate mostly deal with realestate they are marked in the orange category. LHV Growth Account with the 5 funds I buy weekly is the grey and individual stock is the yellow (in February graph it is the Tallinna Vesi and now Madara Cosmetics). On the upper image the full sum was 13800€ and on July it was 16300€. There aren't that big differences but as you can see I have been adding more money to the Growth Account and have a smaller investment in individual stocks.  The change towards more money in ETFs is something  I plan to keep up. I will also add some money to CrowdEstate, but try to limit deposits to other portals to get a bit better balance of the different risks. The P2P loans part has not been going down as Mintos had several lovely campaigns so I added uncommonly much money there in June. But as they publicised that Mogo will be buying back a lot of the loans my average interest I am able to get there has significantly gone down. I had to change my auto-invest portfolios as my money was just sitting on my account. So this is why am hesitant to add more money there. I generally enjoy the portal but, hey, of course I loved the higher interests with buyback guarantee more.

What else I should say about this 2-year journey?

I generated 2 graphs to show in time my deposits month by month as well as the cumulative sum I have deposited over this time. So the best months was January 2017 when I started LHV Growth account and added a lot of money there. All in all, I have deposited 14085€ to my investing accounts.

From the pretax profits, it is clear that months vary quite a bit but all in all, I have gathered 1507€ in profits during these 2 years. I am quite happy with this sum. I mean I am in no way professional, but as someone who started 2 years ago knowing absolutely nothing, this isn't half bad I think. 

So what next?
Well, first of all, I try to keep up my current savings level.
I am not currently looking for new portals to try, but I would not say this is ruled out if something interesting crops up. The main target is to keep adding money to investments and I would like to see that by the end of the year 1/3 of my portfolio value is in the LHV Growth account. The end of the year will be a good time to reevaluate things anyway, to see where to go from there.
Also, September will be a bit slower month as I need to pay up the last years income tax (deadline is 1st of October) so probably a bit less money will be deposited to investments next month.
Where will I be the same time next year? I'd love to have portfolio value over 20 000€. Let's see :)

July was the second best month I have had this year. So this was really exciting. I actually was quite busy and didn't have time to look at my investments that much so this was really a surprise for me, when I was looking at the numbers yesterday.

From deposits and also withdrawals I am finally giving up and trying to sell my Bondora loans, this is not going very fast but I managed to withdraw 265€ from the site. I also feel the pressure to be more conservative so most of it went to LHV growth account, with some additional money I added 350 there. I also added money to CrowdEstate, EstateGuru, and Mintos. So in summary I withdraw 265€ and deposited 590€ to other sites - so this balances to 325€ of "new" money added to investments.

Income was quite good 137,25€ or 4,43€ a day.
The biggest part of it with a bit ower 45€ came from CrowdEstate, Mintos portfolio earned me almost 35€ and on my LHV growth account, the VAL ETF (MSCI EMU Value ETF, the European value companies) gave me almost 30€ dividends. So I am happy with this months income :)

The portfolio value was 16352,48€ on 31.06.2018, which is 425€ increase compared to June, not bad, not bad at all.

Exact numbers for July and previous months can be seen in the spreadsheet here.

First of all to be honest I do not know exactly how I spend my money. 

There are some amazing people who know down to the last cent how much toothpaste they buy a year, I am not one of them. I have tried so many options of keeping track- either apps, writing everything down physically or keeping the receipts, but I always give up within a week. Mostly the things that throw me off are the really seldom happening larger costs which skew the monthly budget and then my motivation diminishes. Or I forget to do it and then if feels pointless to start again. For example this week I bought pet food- it cost me 77€! It will last me for about a year but I had to buy it now as I was almost out. And it feels really expensive although it actually costs me just about 6,50 a month if I buy these larger containers, compared to buying smaller ones several times a year, which would be a lot more, but still, it IS expensive for me.

I do try to keep track of my weekly expenses I will explain how at the end of this post, and although I do not budget in the traditional sense - this method really works for me.

My salary is 1100€ netto, we have usually no bonuses, over my years with the current employer, I have gotten the year-end bonus once. So this 1100€ is what I really work with every month.

But the bigger monthly costs first:

By the way, I will round things, so if my internet is 19,99€ I will write 20€ for my sanity-sake :)

So let's start with the costs I have to pay. My rent is 210€, I also pay utilities (gas, water, electricity, heating, maintenance etc) to the owner, in our cold climate they wary a lot, the lowest is in the summer with about 90€ and winter comes up to 190€ due to the heating. So the average is 140€.

I am paying off my student loan, so 70€ a month goes for this, less than a year to go!

My internet cost is 20, mobile is 8, I have no TV, Netflix etc.

I try to invest at least 250 a month, usually more, let's say 300€. As the info is online in the excel my actual average over the past 12 months was 515 a month. This was because last year for 6 months I had extra tasks and had a higher salary and also I did invest some money I had saved up previously, this is not realistic now as I am back to the lower wages, so I try to do 300€ a month or more than 25% of my income. So my savings rate 27% which is quite good I think?

So quick math tells me I am left with 352, or slightly over 10 € a day for groceries, toiletries, home goods, transport, clothes etc. Let's be honest this is not much. This is why paying 77€ for pet food really makes a difference in my monthly budget as I really calculate around this 10€ a day and this costs more than weeks living money... Same with needing new shoes, winter jacket etc, these things really throw off my budget. But I manage. Many people live with a lot less- for many people in Estonia this 350 is their whole salary and they need to pay rent etc from it. I honestly can't understand how they do it, but they are my heroes!

As I said in winter the home costs are up and also some produce is more expensive, so in summer I add a bit to my savings to take from when the heating bill is really high. At the same time, I am not really frugal. I could cook more, but really most days at work I eat out and therefore spend more than half my daily allowance for lunch (working in Tallinn city center most daily lunch offers are between 5€-7€). I work long hours so cooking and bringing food to work would be good but a) I am not a good cook, and b) getting home half past seven (mostly working 10-11h days) means I am so tired I just can't be bothered... Yes, civil servants are lazy and never do anything... 

But how do I keep track of my living expenses if I do not know where I spend my money? 

For me, the main issue is that if I pay by card I seem to lose track of how much I spend. At the same time in many instances, it is easier to pay with a card. So what do I do? In a way, I use heavily modified envelope system.

So all the other things I mentioned before I pay online, they are the things I need to pay and then I won't think of them anymore. Most of them are automated. So what is left is everyday living expenses.

At the beginning of every week, I withdraw enough money to have weeks worth of cash in my wallet (so 70€ for me). I do not count coins, sometimes I have gathered extra 10€ there, sometimes it is almost empty, but this is kind of extra... So beginning of the week I have 70€ paper money. Every time I pay cash this goes down. Every time I pay by card I take the relevant amount rounding it to closest 5 or 10 etc (as 5€ note is the smallest paper note) and place it to a separate slot in my wallet. This way I can see every day how I am doing and this has been the easiest way to also visualize card payments. So I calculate by week, if I do bigger grocery shopping sometimes I use 2-3 days money in a day, but then I have also a lot of food to eat for several days. By the end of the week on Sunday or Monday morning I look how much I have in this extra slot (where I put money when I paid by card) and withdraw enough to have 70 again, and a new week begins. Sometimes I have spent less, and still, I have cash in the main compartment- this is just saving of that week, but it will not carry over as extra for next week. I will give an example:

So let's say by the end of the week I still have 5€ in the main compartment and 25€ in the "I paid by card" compartment - so I have 30€ in my wallet. So I withdraw 40€ and put all this 70€ again to the main compartment and all begins again.

As long as I stay within this 70€ / week I do not set myself any other limitations. 

As you perhaps noticed I actually allow myself to spend a bit less than I have (even if there are 31 days in a given month it is just 310€ I can spend), and as sometimes I spend less in a week, so a small amount gathers to my account. But sometimes some extra things are needed, expensive things, like the aforementioned pet food or new winter boots... this is when I really think hard, decide if I really need these things or just want them. And if I really need them I will buy it and I pay by card from this small stockpile of extra money I have gathered there over the weeks and months. For these purchases, I won't move money to the separate compartment as these large purchases are outside the normal weekly budget.

I hope this explanation has made sense and might be useful for some. This is really the best system I have found, and it really works for me. 

Do you budget? How? Any tips for me?

In a way, half a year has been going past so fast, at the same time I feel that June has dragged. The weather has not been very nice- I had a week off work and it was +14 and raining. Not very pleasant. I have been waiting for a longer vacation I have in July and this means the time has been going slowly although I have been really busy at work with several large projects, few more work days and then freedom! Well, I love my work, but I feel overworked so some time off and enough sleep sounds really good. But to the investing...

The main change with my investments this month was the final selling of Tallinna Vesi (TVEAT) stock and buying Madara and putting the rest of the money on the LHV Growth account, I have another post where I talk more on it. So at the moment about 25% of my investments are in funds, 5% in individual stock and rest 70% in P2P sites. This is too high, I feel the need to correct this more towards bonds, we will see...

Deposits were quite normal for me, withdrawal from Bondora and small increases in all other portals, altogether 305€ more is circling in investments as of June.

Income in all the portals was in the same ballpark as last two months, with small changes here and there. The main income of about 50€ came from the TVEAT dividends. The second largest income was from Mintos with almost 40€ and third was EstateGuru with just 10,75€. All others were less than 10€. Altogether the income was 120,31€ or 4€ a day. I also received 1,65$ in dividends as well - I keep track of the dollars separately as it seems simple that way.

The value of my portfolio was by the end of the month 15927,01€, so almost 16 thousand in less than 2 years. Motivation is a powerful tool. I have been trying to put money by for years before investing but as it just sat there - the motivation was very low. I think I have saved more in these past 2 years than I had saved in the previous 7. Yes, I have had a bit larger income but still, the difference is really markable!

As always spreadsheet has been updated with this months stats, so deposits, income and the current value of my investments can be seen here.

Compound interest is one of the most important terms to fully understand for someone who is planning to invest money. It is important because it will make growing your money more effectively.

What is interest itself? It is a fee paid by someone for the right of using someone else's money. If you borrow money you pay it, and if you invest your money well you are paid for it. 

In growing your money compound interest is the interest you earn from the interest previously earned. So if you invest 100€ with a 10 % interest by the end of a year you have 110€. If you keep the money in the system the next year the principal of 100€ will again earn you 10€, but the 10€ you earned previously has also earned you and 1 extra €. This 1€ does not seem as much but as years pass it can actually make a huge difference. So basically the more time you have to let your money grow the more previous earnings will start also earning for you. The main things that help you here are the sum initially invested, how much you are able to add to this regularly, how much time you have and of course the interest you receive from your investments. 

As compound interest works it's magic ower years starting as early as possible is important. Start in your twenties if you can.  As they say, the best time to start to invest was 10 years ago; the second best time is now. So start now!

Here is a graph that shows it clearly. If you save 200€ a month and therefore invest 2400€ a year - in 20 years you will have more than 100 000€ although you have deposited less than half as much with 48 000€. You have more than doubled your money.

So what happens if you start later? If you start 10 years later by the same time you have deposited 24 000 and have earned just 11 000€. 

It is always easy to put it off, thinking that in my future I will earn more and will be able to invest more, so there is no reason to invest now when I have little money. Well, let's say you start 10 years from now and invest twice as much with 400 € a month. You will have invested the same amount of money, but the account value is just 71 000 € compared to 105 000€. So starting early with small sums is always better than waiting.

Also it is, of course, important to figure out where to invest. Saving money in a piggy bank is bad, also bank accounts have dismal interest rates (mine is at 0,3%), Savings Accounts offer up to 2% which is way better than nothing, but still dismally low. If possible strive for 7-10%.

Here is a graph that shows what happens when you invest 200 € a month for 20 years at different interest rates.

And as I stated the real magic comes in time, so the same amounts with 30 years of investing on the lower graph are really interesting visuals. As you can see the 10% interest is really taking off in an exponential manner.

So what can you do to take best advantage of compound interest?

1. Start right now!
2. Find a place which offers the best interest to you at the risk level you are comfortable with. If possible it should have automated investment option to reinvest all interest incurred. Perhaps use Mintos or Gupeer loans with buyback guarantee, which at the moment offer even 14% interest. Or a safer option would be to invest in dividend-paying ETFs, but with lower rates. 
3. Automate your deposits. Make an automated transfer to the chosen investment account or site that deposits money as soon as you receive your paycheck. So you even don't have time to miss the money you invest. Do it even weekly, even just 10€ a week is much better than nothing at all.
4. Figure out the tax system of your country and if there are any tax benefits use them. In Estonia there is an option to postpone income tax with some investments, so the 20% you would otherwise be giving to the government helps your money to grow... and you pay it when you start withdrawing money in the future. This extra 20% is very important in compounding the interest. I use this with my LHV growth account, when investing in ETFs. So figure out if there are any similar possibilities in your country.
5. From time to time look at how your investments are doing and if needed or new and better opportunities arise invest in offers giving you better interest. But make sure that you don't become too greedy. Higher interest means higher risk. Find a balance, even if it means investing a certain portion in safer options and part in higher risk and interest places. 
6. Be patient and do not withdraw the money to spend it.

I have been thinking long and hard, but it is so hard not to dabble in stocks. I DO know better, but... Is anyone really immune to the psychology of money? The fact that loss of an amount X will be a much stronger emotion than the profit of the same amount. Why are we like this?

Maybe someone who is really good at analyzing stocks and therefore can make the decisions solely based on that. Not me, not yet anyway.

I have known that I needed to take the step and sell my TVEAT (Tallinna Vesi) stocks. They were looking so red in my account, but it is so hard to take the loss. So I postponed the decision and the outlook worsened month by month. I wonder if I should actually take the chance and buy some more? But there is another court decision to come... Would it favor the company? Not very likely. Should I sell? Yes, I really should. So I finally took the plunge and after the dividend ex-date I sold the TVEAT stock with a loss.

My purchase price was 1949€ and sale price was 1449€, so exactly 500€ loss (not including the transaction fees). I have received dividends last year of 75,6€ and will receive 50,4€ this year's dividends as well. But still, the first real loss, not to count the small 10€ red loans in P2P lending platforms.

Did I learn from it? Not sure, as I took a chance and bought some of Madara Cosmetics stocks. I made a post about Madara cosmetics a month ago, writing about their investor bonus program. So I took a plunge and bought some. The price has gone down 30 cents since the post I wrote, so I decided it was time to buy it. I also just completed the form on the Madara Cosmetics website to register to the stock owners program. I wonder what happens in the autumn as I am expected to receive the Madara cosmetics box I ordered as well as the one I should from now on get as a stock owner. I guess I will be overrun with cosmetics.

Also, it is interesting to see that the market is not rational, the Madara also had dividend ex-date just a week ago. The dividend is 9 cents per share but the market dropped 25 sents so far. I guess the dividends were lower than expected and people sold. But I want to see what the company will do and to profit from the "cosmetic dividends" as well. So not (too) worried about it. But maybe life will correct my optimism. I found it strange that the info that the Madara finally came out with organic sun protection this spring almost did not affect the price. + 20 sents, after it had just dropped more than 50 cents- really? I would think this would boost it as good suncare is so hard to find, but I guess not very many people are really following the stock who also know about the struggle to find actually good SPF... Unfair, in my eyes. Also looking and official stock releases, their blog etc I do not understand what caused the drop just before that? Anyone knows?

But what happens to the rest of the money I got from selling the TVEAT stock? 

Rest of the money will be put to the LHV Growth Account- I do not plan to dabble in any other stock in foreseeable future. I hope the decision to buy Madara will not let me down. Of course, if I have any news on the stocks I will post about it.

Few posts ago I promised more information on a new portal Grupeer that I am trying out. I have invested just 100€ and been on the portal for 2 months but here is what I have learned so far.

In many ways, Grupeer is similar to Mintos platform. Grupeer is a loan listing platform which provides services to other creditor companies. It mediates car, mortgage, business and personal loans as well as lists bigger developmental projects. At the moment there seem to be 16 loan originators in the platform. 

Making an account is easy, you need a working email address and need to provide your name and to actually use the portal you also need to transfer some money to the portal. The transfer is easy and is processed quite quickly, you need to add your personal Grupeer ID to the payment details/info field. 

Making investments is easy you can pick them from list, read extra info and click invest, add the sum and then it is added to your "shopping basket". When you are happy with the loans you have selected, you can go to the basket, look them through again, delete some or all and confirm all investments you are ready to make. Minimum investment in a single loan is 10€. 

This is how the loan listing table looks:

When using the list you can also use several filters to see just the loans you are interested in. A few weeks ago also auto investment option was added to the portal, it has the same filters as the manual filtering does. This tells me that there seems to be an active development of the portal which is always a good sign!

Some projects (mostly larger developmental projects) tend to have also 1% cashback which is automatically added to your account as soon as you confirm the investment (compared to Mintos where it takes several days to get that money, Grupeer is much faster, but gives always just 1%). These are marked with a blue € sign with an arrow circling it. You can see a few in the image above. At the moment even one 9 month investment option gives 1% cashback, the longest is 12 months and they all are at 14% interest rate- not a bad deal.

You can not filter loans by cashback and not add this as an auto-invest filter. But of course, if you invest in them manually or with auto-invest you get the money credited to the account.

At the present time Grupeer gives on absolutely all loans 60-day buyback guarantee- so if the loaner is late with payments you get back the principal as well as the incurred interest for the 60 days the loan was late. Also most, if not all, loans are listed with 14% interest. Sounds great, doesn't it :)

So high interest and buyback guarantee. Is there something negative or limiting as well? 

• There are a quite limited number of loans currently on offer. So if you would like to diversify across 100 or 200 loans at once- you can't.
• There is no secondary market. So there is no option for a quick exit, but the link to secondary market is already there in the portal with the text "We are sorry, secondary market will be introduced later." so I guess it is coming.
• In general, the maximum amount to add to grupeer account is 50 000€/month. If you wish to invest a larger amount, you will need to provide the bank with additional information. This won't be limiting me in years but might be a problem for some perhaps.
• When manually picking loans it does not tell you that you have already invested in that loan. In auto-invest you can set the maximum amount invested in a single loan so there no double investing to the same loan should happen, but this might occur in manual investing.

All in all, I am happy with the Grupeer portal and hope to be able to add more money there in coming months. And I hope the number of loans they offer will be steadily increasing.

May was again a slow month. No big payouts to excite me. I try to remind myself that I am not trading, long-term investing is supposed to be quite slow and boring. 😎

From deposit side, I had a little bit of excitement as I could not help myself and I decided to take a bigger advantage of the Mogo and Lendo cashback campaigns in Mintos and compared my usual 60€ deposit I added an extra 500. So my deposit to Mintos was 560€, which is larger than my whole deposit to all platforms in April for example (460€). Other platforms were more traditional: I withdrew 25€ from Bondora and deposited 50€ to Grupeer and LHV Growth Account, 150 to both EstateGuru and CrowdEstate. So all in all my deposit in May was 935€.

Income was relatively low this month with 78,79€ or 2,54€ a day.
More than half of it from Mintos with 42,57€ out of which 14,95 was cashback. If you are interested then the Mogo cashback is still available until 16th of June. Also always check the running campaigns by clicking your name on the top right corner in the portal and checking the campaigns page.

The other larger sum came from EstateGuru with 25,92€. Bondora and CrowdEstate were both less than 10€. One payment which was supposed to come on the last day of the month on the CrowdEstate platform was divided to 3 payments due to internet bank limitations from the borrower side, so that money will come in June report. CrowdEstate is quite an uneven payer in my portfolio just because I do not have money to take part in all projects and therefore I do not have projects ending every month as well. There are also some who pay monthly or quarterly but these are really low sums if you happen to invest the minimum of 100€. So maybe I should try to put more money there to get better money rotation later with being able to invest more there also from ending projects... Need to think about it.

The portfolio value was 15648,88€ on 31.05.2018.
So I have succeeded one of my yearly goals to have portfolio at least 15 000€ even before the half-year mark. Now I just need to work on the getting 1000 profit this year as well (my second financial goal of 2018). At the moment for the first 5 months, the profit has been 501,68. So I am at a good place but should not be complacent as this includes two especially great months... If all other months will be as May or even April were, I will be quite hard pressed to get the 1000 in income as I decided my goal was. And to be honest it would be great to get 1000 after taxes, but as most of my investmenst are long term then 15000 in investmenst with 10% interest does not mean I get this mathematical 1500€ payout within this year. We will see how it goes :)

Exact numbers for May and previous months can be seen in the spreadsheet here.