I thought of doing a small series on the investment portals I use, but before that I figured it would be great to actually share my portfolio in detail. So HERE is a three sheet excel (or a google drive analogue to that, to be frank).

I have included 3 separate sheets there:

• deposits;
• income;
• portfolio value.

Deposits sheet shows on a monthly basis how much money I have put into a specific portal / investment scheme. This is something I have been keeping track on since beginning. The values are not too uniform. This is because in the beginning I had big hurry to start investing :) Also to most places I have made automatic deposits from my bank, but sometimes I feel the need to add extra money... Like when Mintos has bonus campaigns, or if I feel that CrowdEstate or EstateGuru has added a loan to which I would like to invest in. The investment deposits are quite large, or have been. My neto earnings in a month are about 1100€, my last year average monthly deposit was 615€. This would make my investment % about 55%- this is unfortunately not true. This figure was partly because in January I added in 4 parts larger sum to my LHV Growth Account (from savings account) and also on the second half of a year I received extra pay for extra work I was doing, so I tried to put more into my investments. At the moment I try to invest 300€ a month, taking into account that rent, utilities and student loan together are about 500€ a month I think my investment % is quite good. I have not paid back the student loan as the interest is much lower compared to what I earn from investments so it seems counter intuitive. Also I know owning a home is not a investment but can be important saving... But as I can not get a home loan I am forced to rent an appartement- perhaps this deserves a its' own post some time.

Income- this shows all my interests and dividends earned in 2017 and I am also adding values for 2018. I did keep track also in 2016 for tax reasons, as I received first payments in Bandora and Mintos in 2016, but I do not have good excel for that. Based on the interest rate of the loans I have issued in EstateGuru and CrowdEstate mathematically my monthly income should be greater - but many are bullet type loans where the whole payment comes in the end of the term- so I expect to receive more payments this year, as many loans given in 2016 and 2017 will be ending this year. For example January 2018 was good in CrowdEstate.

Portfolio value- from December 2016 I have tried to remember and few times a month to visit all my investments and write out the current value there. Most things are growing nicely there. My only single stock Tallinna Vesi has been loosing value due to negative court outcome, I still believe in the stock and keep it. The other downward trend is Bondora where I have not givent out new loans since January 2017. Every time I have 25€ or so in the account I withdraw it. I am not selling my loans but going for a slow exit. I will see how it goes in long run. 

Value of my portfolio in end of 2016 and through 2017

So I hope this short over view might be helpful to anyone investing in the Baltic Region who is just starting. I am sure I would have liked it when I was just starting, and well I still am nosy ;) enough to be fascinated by such tables.

I have to start with a bit of a background to give a full picture of where I started.
I have always been good with money. I don't mean perfect, oh no, but I have always seen the value of putting some money by just in case something breaks or I fall ill... Growing up in a very poor single parent household thought me that you need some extra money to buy winter clothes or fix the broken heater... But also from time to time I fall in love with something (new gadget, watch or a camera lens etc) and I just have to have it. But I buy it only if I can afford it - no long payment schedules and interest... The only time I buy something on a long time payment is if it is truly cheaper that way- some mobile operators for example make deals like this- be our client for a year and you'll get this phone for X amount a month- full price is higher than the offer.
But back to the story. So after I graduated with my masters degree (not related to economy) and found a job as a civil servant I started putting some money by. In theory it was supposed to be my first apartment down payment money. But as I earn average wages and need to pay rent in Tallinn... This money grows very slowly- that is why I say in theory. To buy an apartment you need 20% down payment + all sorts of contract fees I am still no where near that. Where to put this money I am saving? I learned quite quickly that any type of savings accounts are pointless. The interest is non existent but I had no idea what else to do. And years went by... And suddenly in the summer of 2016 I found myself reading interviews done by Kristi Saare. Articles written about people like me. Articles of people investing.
It was a revelation. Up to that point I thought investing was something done by rich old millionaires in their mansions. It had never interested me and I knew nothing. So I started reading everything I could think of. If you too are new to investing I would suggest starting with these interviews (in Estonian)- they are a great motivational boost + give some lovely ideas.

As always- all starts are hard.

It is difficult to know where to start. In a way I would like to be helpful to any fledgling investors out there, as well as have an written account for my self. So I guess I will start on where I am at the moment, then perhaps go back to the beginning and try to work to present day again. 

So at the moment I have been investing for about a year and a half- I started in August 2016 with just one portal. Now I have several types of investments in my portfolio- I have stocks from one company, I have invested in some funds through LHV Growth Account (Kasvukonto) and I have invested in person to person (P2P) loans on Bondora and Mintos as well as real estate loans Crowdestate and EstateGuru and through Crowdestate also given out working capital loans.  There have been some other trials but I will write separate posts on the portals and other investments. The current value-distribution of my investments can be seen on the graph. 

I would not state that all these choices have been great and meticulous choices or worked out for me. I have tried to look into places where I can find a lot of information both on how they work and also from personal experiences of different people. So I have excluded some where the public information was lacking. Also I do feel that with my current portfolio size it would be unwise to diversify too much. Learning and understanding new portals takes time- and with small amounts of money going into investments this time might be better spent on earning more money. And also every new investment takes time also because in the beginning there is strong urge to log in daily (and sometimes more) to see if something has changed. So at the moment I am quite happy with the number of sites I use. I am currently taking money out of Bondora and still actively investing in all the others mentioned. 

One more thing to mention in the first post- why am I writing anonymously? 

Well, it can be hard to openly discuss money matters with not just the people I know, but with anyone who might happen to read it. I figured I need to make some things private... So the question was- will I talk of real numbers and not add my name, or under my real name and just generally about what I do without showing any numbers... Well I figured real numbers and unedited stories might be more useful for the readers, compared to my name. This is why I took an obvious pseudonym. Why this one? Well for me everything started with so called rainy day fund and I wanted to take this as a blog address. As this of course was already taken as a blog address, I figured as I live in a cold climate- here we should have snowy day funds :) And Snowy is an interesting book character as well in Pratchett-Baxter Long Earth series. So the blog is snowydayfund.blogspot.com and I am Snowy.