Hei-Hei-Hei!
We are less than 2 years out from the end of the year. So it is getting closer and closer to get all my yearly goals done. Well, this month was great for that, I am not done but moved closer to it significantly. But let's start with the usual.

Firstly deposits/withdrawals:
Envestio 100
Grupeer 100
LHV Growth Account 250
Bondora -10
EstateGuru -100
CrowdEstate -250


I kept withdrawing money from the EstateGuru and CrowdEstate due to al the issues with default loans. I also managed to withdraw 10 EUR from Bondora. I have still not decided where to invest this money, together with the last month I have withdrawn 760 EUR. I could add it to one of my other investments or... one simple option would be to add it to our official tax-deferred third pillar pension account. There seem to be changes happening to the account where people joining it later would have less of the tax benefits so maybe I should start it with some money. At the same time, the tax advantage is only present if I access the money above a certain age (it is 55 according to current rules), and I am unlikely to live to that age due to my health condition. Decisions-decisions.

 But as I did add investments to other accounts I ended the month with +90€ in investments when looking at all the deposits and withdrawals.
But let's go to the income, as who does not like income numbers:

From best to worst:
119,85 CrowdEstate 
95,90 LHV Growth Account 
50,33 Mintos 
35,73 EstateGuru 
21,75 Envestio 
9,22 Grupeer 
0,08 Bondora 

 Total 332,86€ or 10,74 a day!

 I have to start by stating this was my best month of all time! And it beat the previous best (July 2019) with more than 100€!
So I had several payments in CrowdEstate and that is, of course, hopeful, I did also invest in a few of the new loans. I have been looking at the deadlines of my longest loans on both CrowdEstate and EstateGuru and investing in projects with shorter deadlines so that I am not extending my involvement with the portal above my currents loans there. I might end up selling all and coming out but I have not decided yet. So slowly decreasing the size of the portfolio there but at the moment not going for a quick exit.
A big part of this month's large income was the SPYW (Euro Dividend Aristocrats) dividend I mentioned already last month as I could see it in future payments back then. This gave a nice large boost to my cashflow this month.
This great month also gave a good boost to my yearly goal of 1800 in pre-tax investment income. Last month I was really stressed that I won't make it, but now the future looks better. My income this year has been 1623,56. So in the next two months, I need to earn on average 88€ a month to meet the goal. The most recent month with so low income was November 2018, so I hope that is not a November tradition or something. 
But as none of the months this year has been that poor (the lowest was around 100€ mark) I expect to hit my goal before Christmas.

As I have added almost no new money to my investments for the past 2 months my portfolio value has been increasing very slowly, but it is about 525 higher than last month. It was 26357,43 on 31.10.2019.

So here is the 9th monthly update of the year and I will include in the end also a small overview of the quarterly statistics, as we are through three-fourths of the year.


So what has been happening in September of 2019?

Some hesitant changes have happened when looking at the deposits/withdrawals this really shows:

Grupeer 150

I have been slowly withdrawing money from EstateGuru and CrowdEstate due to al the issues with default loans. EstateGuru has actually recovered several loans but I am still hesitant as they struggle to sell the collateral of some of the loans. The main issue for me is that I am not sure what to do with the money. Should I add it to my Growth Account? Add to Envestio? Think of starting a company and going into IB? Not sure, so at the moment I added the sum to my savings account and I will ponder it.

But as I did add investments to other accounts I ended the month with +50€ in investments when looking at all the deposits and withdrawals.

From the income side of things, Grupeer and CrowdEstate were unusually low. For the Grupeer the main issue is I have previously managed to take part of some cashback offers and had none this month, for CrowdEstate the issue is 14 delayed projects (or 11 if you count my luck being in 4 installments of the same problematic project). On the other hand, Envestio and EstateGuru had the best months of the year, EstateGuru ending a delayed project and cashing in about 3% extra interest on that one.

From best to worst:
Mintos 47,02
EstateGuru 40,46
Envestio 19,99
Grupeer 6,80
Bondora 0,08

Another notable thing was the small dividend on the LHV account coming from EXSA (Europe 600 UCITS ETF). I had also some confirmed dividends coming in from the SPYW (Euro Dividend Aristocrats) but they were actually deposited to my account in October so they will be in the next monthly update.

So the income was 151,91€ altogether or 5,06€ a day which is the third best month of the year, so not too shabby.

The portfolio value was 25830,95 on 30.09.2019, which is 400 higher than a month ago. As you could see that I added only 50€ and income vas about 150 so the rest came from the market fluctuations.


As this was the end of the III quarter of the year I did take some time to look at the overall stats as well.


I started investing in August of 2016 so I have been doing it for more than 3 years, but as the first months had a limited income as many of the projects did not start paying immediately I made a graph starting from the beginning of 2017. As monthly income does fluctulate I generated a quarterly view of things. As is evident the 1st quarter was rather similar to last year and this made me worried as I made a kind of new year's resolution to earn 1800€. The II and III quarters did pick up considerably I am happy to say. My income from investments from January to September has been 1290,70€ and therefore to meet my goal  I need to earn 509,30 in the next 3 months (average of 170 a month). Looking at the past 2 months this seems improbable. Looking at June and July it should not be a problem, so I need to de a bit better than this month or to have at least one really good month. I am hopeful... Wish me luck!
Just a brief update on the Madara Cosmetics stock owners box, that I have talked on several occasions before on this blog. It was delivered more than a week ago but it took me a few days to actually go end get it as I was out of town.
It is sent as a package and it is not taped shut, inside is a decorative box you see in the image. For cushioning they use shredded black cardboard- I just love that they avoid plastic (tape, bubble wrap etc) as much as possible.
Also, I was correct to assume that they would include some of their new makeup in the box, like I pondered in my recent post.

 The box contained two or three full-sized items and one sample:

  • Sos Eye Revive Hydra Cream & Mask, 20 ml - full-size eye cream. I have used it before and will use this up. It can be even a bit too much for my skin as a mask but is great as a normal cream. Price on the website 32,95€.
  • Cosmic Drops Buildable Highlighter, 13,5 ml - full-size item. I was really pleasantly surprised. When I looked at all the new makeup on the website I was curious about the highlighters, but as I am very fair with pink undertyones I envisaged using only the two pink toned ones. In the box they had included the shade naked chromosphere and it is not at all too yellow for me. I would not have considered it but it is a beautiful champagne highlighter, and the bottle also feeld really lux with the great stopper what cleans excess off the pipette. Great product! Price on the website 25€.
  • Purifying Foam Ocean Love, 100 ml. On this, I do not know if it is a full-size item as it is not sold on the website (yet?), but it is a great size and will last several months. The ingredients match this foam which is sold in a bigger 150 ml size with the price of 20,10 €. So the smaller size might be priced around 12-15€?
  • They also included a 1,5 ml sample of the RE:GENE Optic Lift Eye Serum. As an eye cream is meant to be used in small quantities I guess it is enough for a week or so. The full size is 20 ml and 37,95€. 
So even with conservative estimations, the content of the box is worth at least 60€, the box is sold for 27,95 €. I am still impressed with the free boxes given to investors twice a year and like this specific box perhaps better than the spring box where the sunscreen ended up not being used as I had several ones I needed to use up... and the shampoo got gifted as I do not need better hair growth (short hair means too often going to hairdresser as it is). 
If you are Madara investor or considering it, it is a good idea to register to get the boxes and if not, perhaps ordering the boxes is a great chance to try an assortment of their products, I used to do it in the past with my own money :)
Sharing some Madara News. 
As my readers probably know I am Madara investor. Madara Cosmetics is listed the Baltic market in the Nasdaq First North (also known as an Alternative Market). Madara is an interesting company as it gives it's shareholders some products twice a year (I have written of this process several times but as how to register the info is here, and how the delivery works, it is discussed here). So just a few days ago I got a notification that I could order my insider beauty box which I did. At the moment it is still in the "processing" phase in the shop, but I am sure I will get it soon. 

Also, I did get a Madara Newsletter stating that they are coming out with Madara colored cosmetics, and they are pre-orderable here. 
This is news I am not sure how to feel about it. I do like the idea of more nature- and skin-friendly color-cosmetics at the same time I know that the market is full of companies offering color cosmetics with a variety of prices and ingredients. I am not sure it is a good idea to jump into such strong competition. Madara has had several tinted moisturizers or CC creams on the market for some time. I am light-skinned with pink undertones so I love the Moon Flower Rose Beige tinting fluid, although this is too dark for me in the winter, but spot-on in the summer. And this Moon Flower was the lightest of the 4 products they had. So I had nothing from them I could use in winter. But now they are adding additional base products with the better color range - a glowy foundation with 10 shades. As well as concealer, highlighters, brow pomades, lipglosses and multi-use colors that can be used on eyes. All in all, the addition of foundation with skincare benefits is great but just 10 shades still mean you probably need to buy two shades and mix them (they recommend it on the website), and this is 33€ foundation (30ml) so it is not cheap. I guess for a skincare brand my main complaint is that the foundation does not contain sun protection. It is the most important step of morning skincare and even low protection of SPF 10 or 15 would be logical from such a brand. So thumbs kind of up for foundation and concealer but colors... Eyeshadows and lipglosses or brow products, I am not sure why they would go there...
I am sure I won't order these products from the website before getting to test them on my hand in the shop, but I am intrigued by the base as well as the Cosmic Drops highlighter. Maybe I will get samples of some of these in my autumn box? I will let you know. 


Soooo... I am late as heck this time. Have had motivational issues, partly due to the CrowdEstate issues so I do not really want to look at my investments too closely. But here we go.


Deposits in August were made as follows:

Envestio 150
Grupeer 150

I added 550 to my investments which is kind of average when looking back to the year. As many of the loans in both CrowdEstate and EstateGuru are in trouble so I am playing with the idea of taking my money out of there. So adding extra money to CrowdEstate was not planned but I did not cancel my automatic deposit from my bank fast enough and so this transaction still went through, but in September anymore. 
Both Grupeer and Envestio are rather slow to actually add the money to the account after the transfer from my bank is made. So reacting to great offers on those portals is impossible by adding extra money. So just deposit and expect loans to be coming up in Envestio. In Grupeer there are always some loans in the market so that is not so much an issue. But still a week my money is being added to the account is the time it is not earning me any money.

 Income was almost 100€ less compared to last month. So nothing to shout about. Still having real trouble in moving towards the yearly goal of 1800€ income from investments in a year.

From best to worst:

Mintos 51,29
CrowdEstate 36,44
Envestio 19,22
EstateGuru 17,69
Grupeer 9,78
Bondora 0,08

 Altogether this gives 134,50 per month or 4,34 a day. So 8 months in this was the 4th best month of the year. Not great. I have been constantly adding extra money in so Id like to see the monthly numbers increasing.

So what are the surprises? 
I am most surprised by the Envestio very strong income, at the end of August I had 1400€ invested there and got a monthly income of 19,22. So this would mean 16,5% of yearly interest. If they manage to keep this up I am obviously really happy :) 
Mintos had also the best-ever month I have had, so it is still going strong although the interest rates have really dropped there I still have strong loans performing there. The auto invest has trouble getting the money out so I have been logging in daily to manually invest the money which is a hassle. But I still enjoy the portal very much.
On the less positive side, CrowdEstate and EstateGuru have many loans delayed and the communication from the CrowdEstate side has been non-existent in many cases. So considering exiting from the portals either fully or just stoping reinvesting. I need to figure out where to put this money, LHV is an option but there my fees are starting to get to the 10€ mark where alternative places like Interactive Broker (IB), for example, might be a better fit. Lately, there has been a great post about IB in Estonian FB Group Naisinvestorite Klubi. So I have to make some calculations and take charge of my finances and make some good decisions. The alternative would be to pull the money out and put it as a downpayment for a home. Home is not an investment but can be a saving tool in high rent areas, but at the same time with possibly less than 9 years left (as I have mentioned I have a chronic illness) is there a point to buy a home I won't be able to use much... So, I need to make decisions and this won't be easy. Will need to think on it.

The portfolio value was 25430,46 on 31.08.2019, which is 550 higher than a month ago. So I have hit my goal of 25 000 as a portfolio value! I set 3 financial goals for 2019 and I have hit 2 of them. So great going!




August has arrived and it is time to wrap up the month of July. Although it was a great month I feel a bit disappointed, strange how small things can bring down your mood, isn't it? But let's get into it.

Deposits in July were as follows:
Bondora -10
Envestio 250

So I added 540 to my investments which is about 200 more than in the previous month, but is about average when looking back to the year. 
LHV is my usual 50€ every Tuesday automated transfer and 50€ CrowdEstate is also automated to happen once a month. With Envestio I have had trouble getting money out to projects and the summer has had very few projects there as well. So I had hesitated to add money there, but Jørgen mentioned that there are new projects coming so I added some extra there and got into the Briana projects. So thanks for this, Jørgen!
Bondora is becoming even slower and slower so withdrawing 10€ happened in February, April and now in July. So getting to every 3rd month? That is pathetic. Stay away from them!


Income, let's start on the good stuff, shall we :) 

From best to worst:

Mintos 45,43
CrowdEstate 38,44
EstateGuru 31,92
Envestio 13,91
Grupeer 11,73
Bondora 0,09

So looking generally at the numbers I had a great month, the best of this year. 
The best income of this month came from the LHV where my VAL Fund (MSCI EMU Value ETF) paid dividends. Without this, it would have been an average month, but well VAL does payout 2 times a year usually so it was expected to come this month.
When not looking at that the other good performers were Grupeer with the best month yet, also Mintos, Envestio and EstateGuru did as expected to look at the monthly averages. So all together the sum was 210,40€ or 6,79 a day.

So why am I not happy? Well, in the last month overview I showed the graph stating that I was expected to get 375€ in dividends in July (most of it delays). And how much did I get? 38,44! So in a broad glance just 10% of it. 
I mean I do realize that projects have delays, I do get it. But one thing that I see is that such issues in EstateGuru, for example, are clearly communicated. Here on some projects, there has been no info, on some they have just rescheduled the payments with no comment on what the issue is. And that makes me frustrated, this being kept in the dark. 

So this was how things looked at the end of July still showing all money as it should come on the last days of the month:
And a few days later they just switched it all to August, so I guess we still have to hope?

 I also took some screen captures on the last day of the month to see who should be paying me some interest or principal. 
So as can be seen quite some projects seem to be in trouble. Looking at the list the only ones who have made (partial) payments are:

Global Nord Timber (V)
USL Invest
Vabaduse 16

So all the others, I am still waiting either on payment or at least an update.

Also, I guess people have been annoyed so they have actually revamped the graphs, so in the new version, there are no bars in the current and future months. I guess it is better not to see the expected income when it month after month does not come?

And one more thing I noticed when logging in just now. The Balozu payment which was shown with a date of 31.07 just a few days ago has now date of 30.06.2019 (so back in JUNE), all others have been moved to current date as is usual in CrowdEstate platform.


I am not sure what to do, as you can see from the screen captures including the principal I was expected to get about 1000€ back to my account and this did not happen. Thinking about stopping my additional payments to the portal to see how this sorts itself out. Not sure yet, and my August payment has already been deposited, but I need to reach a conclusion by September on this.


The portfolio value was 24873,58 on 31.07.2019, which is 620 higher than a month ago. I am getting really close to the 25 000 mark actually, about 10 days before the end of the month I did the calculations and I was just 13 € shy, but then markets dropped and the LHV account value decreased markets, what can you do. I guess in two weeks or so I should be there just based on the additional deposits. 
Just a small heads up to those who are not Grupeer or Mintos users and therefore do not get the newsletter from them. 

First of all, Grupeer has significantly updated auto-invest options. If before your basic options were loan term and the planned interest rate now they have much more possibilities (originator, country, loan and repayment type) including seeing how many current loan deals match the strategy you are setting up. More info on this on their blog, here.
Grupeer also offers 1% cashback on 2 Monify loans until the end of July. These are 12% loans and both have at the moment about 35 000€ still open for investment. And compared to Mintos, for example, Grupeer deposits the cashback instantly, so you can invest it again straight away.
Grupeer also lets us know they are terminating working with Kviku. All investors who have invested in these loans will get the principal back as well as any interest earned at the end of July.


Mintos is also launching cashback campaign on two of their loan originators Kredo and Monego until 26th of July. This cashback is dependant on the length of the loan and can give up to 2% cashback:
* 0.75% for loans with a remaining maturity of up to 90 days;
* 1% for loans with a remaining maturity of 91-180 days;
* 1.5% for loans with a remaining maturity of 181-270 days;
* 2% for loans with a remaining maturity of above 270 days.
It is important to remember that in Mintos you get the cashback only if before investing to the loans you have signed up for the offer! You can enrol in here. But when I looked at the loans in the market there are none at the moment. So I enrolled in the hopes that my auto-invest might pick some of them up, but that is unlikely, as they have troubles with auto-invest being slow to run. So this seems to be an offer for those who have time to check the listings manually to see in any are added or those who just are lucky.

How did July go? Very well, thanks for asking :)

 I started writing this post while still near the Black sea but finalized it back in Tallinn. Now I am officially on vacation although the 10-year project proposal still needs some work, so I can not fully switch myself off. 
But how was the month financially?

 Deposits were rather small in June:
CrowdEstate 50
Grupeer 100
LHV Growth Account 200 (+12)

As I was travelling so much I did not have time to look at different starting projects so much. This is something I normally do, and if there seems to be something I am interested in I might add extra money there. So this month it was just mostly the automated stuff, every Tuesday 50€ to LHV and at the beginning of the month 50€ to CrowdEstate. Also added 100€ to Grupeer. So all together just 350 added to the investments. Also I usually just reinvest the money I earn but as there is no point in purchasing small amounts of stocks I added the 12 € I got from Madara dividends to my Growth account as well, so I point it out here to make it clear where that money went to.

Income, that was difficult. Several CrowdEstate projects were supposed to pay out on the last day of the month and they did not. There has been no update on why they did not pay (on two projects they added a note that the payment schedule to be updated). So my income I less than expected in there and also due to that the portal now shows that in July my expected income from Crowd should be 375€, my best so far has been around 100€ mark. So if they keep that promise, I can live with the delays. 
Light blue shows the expected principal and the yellow expected interest.
But all in all the income was good, well, the best I have ever had. From best to worst:
Mintos 49,21
EstateGuru 39,23
CrowdEstate 29,02
LHV Growth Account (EXSA) 19,87
Envestio 15,46
MDARA 12
Grupeer 6,97
Bondora 0,14


Income for June was 171,90€ which is 5,73 € a day. Most of it was produced by the usual suspects. Mintos had a really good month and 1,69 of it came from cashback (rest is usual interest and late fees). EstateGuru and Envestio also performed well, I already discussed the CrowdEstate above. I also got some dividends from my LHV Growth Account where EXSA (iShares STOXX Europe 600 UCITS ETF) paid out some, and Madara stock also paid dividends this month. So, all in all, it was a great month.

The portfolio value was 24252,72 on 30.06.2019, which is 752 higher than a month ago and is getting really close to the 25 000 € mark. 
LHV bank is a smaller and more investor-friendly bank in the Estonian market. They have a Growth account I have been using for several years now, and now they have added an interesting option...
LHV has decided to cooperate with several alternate sites to show the data in the bank web interface. As a first launch, Coinbase and EstateGuru accounts can be linked with the LHV account and then they will be shown in your bank. I do not use Coinbase but I am EstateGuru user so I decided to try this out.  Adding the account was simple, but at first, I could not do it due to errors, it turned out that ID card support had issues, but smart-ID worked. But basically. you select what you would like to add, log in to the account of the portal and confirm you would like to give LHV viewing rights. That's it. And then you have a nice overview in the bank. Once they add more accounts it will be really useful to see if my money is sitting somewhere uninvested.

Unfortunately, it shows just some rows but in general, it does give a nice overview. They have noted that they plan to add also Bondora and CrowdEstate, I think I saw also someone mention Mintos, but maybe that was someone hoping for Mintos to be added. I hope to get all the larger portals in there and Mintos is large so I hope they are working on it!
It is the middle of June and I have not posted my May portfolio update. What can I say? 
I have been very busy with work as I had 2 very large deadlines just now and also we got positive feedback on a large 10-year project proposal which now needs some work to be resubmitted for funding. I have been abroad twice this month and will be twice more, altogether 3 different countries. Also, I had my monthly hospital visit for IV treatments. So running around and no real time for my investments- they really need to manage themselves, which they luckily do.

So the deposits in May:
CrowdEstate 150
Mintos 300

So I added 650 to investments, which gives me about a 46% savings rate for the month. Not too bad. Money is circulating quite well, Envestio has some money sitting there. Also, CrowdEstate has had several projects I did not invest in as I did not want to add too much new money in as several projects are coming to an end and I wanted to make sure I did not have money just sitting there. But one project was prolonged with no notice to the investors. I find it very irritating that they did not publish any update on the project on this, just updated the payment schedule to October. It was showing that I would be getting over 200€ at the end of the month and suddenly on that day I did not get the money and it was not anymore shown in the Expected next payments part. Shame on you CrowdEstate.
Mintos had the cashback campaign and the only loans I managed to get on this was some manual investing on the first days. My auto-investment portfolio could not get into them (due to changes in Madara auto invest I guess). So I had some money just sitting and then I just activated my usual auto invests again to make sure the money was circulating.

Income was about average, I have been around 125-130 mark the past months. The May income, from best to worst, it is as follows:

CrowdEstate 44,35
Mintos 42,11
EstateGuru 18,21
Envestio 13,21
Grupeer 7,17
Bondora 0,07

Income for May was 125,12 € which is 4,04 a day. 

So the overall this was the second worst month of the year, being significantly better than January, but slightly worse than the other months. The daily rate was also on the level of fourth out of five months so far. At the same time, the monthly income was 25€ better than the last years average, so it all depends on what you compare it to. There are clear improvements in the long term but in the short term, there is a lot of fluctuations. As you can see from the graph June is usually a really good month for me and July was also great last year so hoping for things to pick up some.


The portfolio value was 23499,99 on 31.05.2019, which is 680 higher than a month ago. It could be a bit better but the stock market has been down.
On the 29th of May, the Madara Annual General Meeting of Shareholders decided to pay out dividends of 12 cents per share. It was decided that the dividend ex-date is June 10, 2019, and that the dividend will be paid out on June 12, 2019.

The dividend info was also publicised as a separate post on the 30th of May. All Madara cosmetics announcements can be found here. 

As I own 100 shares I got 12 € as dividends. As Madara is a young growing company they do not pay too large dividends so compared to the purchase price it was just 1,6% for me. 
As is usual in dividend times the stock price first rose after the announcement (even to 8€) and then after the ex-date also dropped to 7,40€. As we can see the market overreacts as the price drop was far larger than the dividend amount. For me, the current price is still above what I paid when I purchased Madara so rather happy with the dividend as well as the cosmetics samples I get twice a year as a stockholder. If you do not know what I am talking about I have written about it several times but the main idea how to be part of this offer can be read about here and here.