Showing posts with label MDARA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MDARA. Show all posts
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 I have still not decided where to invest this money, together with the last month I have withdrawn 760 EUR.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.

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!

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. 
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. 
And suddenly one-third of a year has passed. It has felt rather slow but now looking back - it has gone so quickly. And to be honest I am a bit worried, worried about my yearly goals. Getting a 25 000 portfolio should not be a problem as I have deposited quite a lot of additional money but the income... income does not want to increase and to get 1800€ income I need about 150€ a month. And this does not seem to be happening. June and July should be rather good months in CrowdEstate, so maybe that would help. I have thought of adding more money but even if I add 1000€ and get let's say 12% in the 8 months left of this year, that is just additional 80€. That would not help much and would mean taking money from the snowydayfund...

But let's keep the post manageable and not tooo long. How was April, was it better than March?


 Looking at the deposits, I deposited in almost all the portals this month. So from smallest to largest, it looked like this:
Envestio 300
So all together 890€ of additional money will be circulating in different portals. Envestio is the only one where I still have a problem getting into new loans as I can not invest from my mobile phone any more and sometimes when I get to the computer the new project is fully financed. Well not exactly, I have noticed several times that when logging into Mintos 50-150€ has been just sitting there although there have been many loans that would actually qualify for my auto invest strategies. Every time I have invested the money manually as I do not want the money to stay idle. It needs to work :)
2 sites seem to have problems at the moment, one with not enough projects coming in, and the other with running the portal efficiently.

 But on to the April income, from best to worst it is as follows:
Mintos 39,34
CrowdEstate 38,58
EstateGuru 28,12
Grupeer 5,58
Bondora 0,09

Income for April was 129,05 € which is 4,30 a day. 
So the overall monthly income is just 1€ more than last month but as the month was one day shorter the daily rate was much better compared to March (4,13 vs 4,30).
The first time this year Mintos outperformed CrowdEstate for me. This has happened in 2018 as well as CrowdEstate is variable and Mintos is rather stable.  Both CrowdEstate and EstateGuru have some loans which are in debt to me. CrowdEstate has one main culprit the MMMSprattus, and two which are just one day late and this might be just a weekend effect that money has not come through yet. EstateGuru is more complicated, there 5 loans are in default and 3 more 60+ days late. So out of 57 loans, this is more than 10%.
We will see what May brings. I would guess everything else to be stable and LHV getting nothing as my ETFs so not usually pay out in May (expect something in June from EXSA and a bigger payout in July from VAL). Need to hope for some solutions to the late loans in the portals... Maybe hope will not be enough.

The portfolio value was 22818,72 on 30.04.2019, which is 904 higher than a month ago which quite well agrees with the larger deposits of the April. 

 But how to boost the monthly income? Hope that portals like CrowdEstate and EstateGuru will cover it? Add more money to high-interest risky portals? Add more money to less risky places? Not sure. What would you do?
We are already through a quarter of a year. Time has gone by fast, I have been really busy and can not wait for the better weather to come around. I feel like I am constantly deprived of something in Estonian winters, and I guess it is sunlight. I am all for the spring weather to come around! So yay for spring and nay for another transition to daylight saving time! Next quarter also includes some vacation time. All is good!

How did March go?

Looking at the deposits, I deposited only in few portals this month. My current auto transfers to CrowdEstate and LHV are still active so these are done as usual. I also added some money to Grupeer and Envestio. All together I deposited 540€ in March. I would like to deposit even more on Envestio and CrowdEstate but in both sites, my money is sitting on the account as there are not as many new projects coming to the site (or I am missing them). Hopefully, things pick up in April. Looking at the future in CrowdEstate I should have many projects ending in June and July so I hope that there will be many new projects coming up otherwise my money sits there...

 Income for March

CrowdEstate 47,69
Mintos 36,83
EstateGuru 28,73
Envestio 5,90
Grupeer 4,39
Bondora 0,08
LHV Growth Account 4,36 € and 3,18 $

Income for March was 127,98 € (and 3,18 $) which is 4,13 a day. 
As you can see, again the CrowdEstate was the best one for the income. Overall, the order of portals is the same as last month with the added LHV which did not pay out dividends in January or February for me. Comparing to the last month the Bondora and CrowdEstate did underperform compared to February and all others improved slightly. Compared to February the income was 12 € less, but compared to January (was 97,79) this month was about 30 € better. So I guess an average month looking at the income.

 The portfolio value was 21914,75 on 31.03.2019, which is 787 higher than a month ago. As the deposits were 540 the rest 240€ is portfolio growth, mostly again like last month this is coming from the LHV Growth Account being finally positive. On the other side, the MDARA stock has dropped 50 € for me, it is still positive but not sure what this is about. They just came out with new UV products as well as hair products, so a bit miffed with this price drop.

 How was March and the first quarter of 2019 for you?
I have been Madara investor since last summer, so again this spring was time to receive another Madara box. It is something I have talked about previously here and here. I had seen this springs box advertised on Instagram and was getting worried that I had not head from Madara... Did they stop giving away the mystery box to the stock owners? No, I had just completely missed the email. Silly me.
So I had received the email on 11th of March and the deadline of making the order was 15th of March. I missed it. I found the email, between many unread ones on 17th and decided to try if the code still works for an order. If it didn't, well it was my own fault, but if it did, I would be happy of course. And it still worked :)
So I made the order late on 17th, got a notification that my order had been received on 18th, received an SMS notification that I had a package on 19th and picked it up the next day. So, all in all, I got my order in basically 3 days.

The beauty box is sold for 27,95 and is advertised to contain at least 40 € of products, which seems to be the case this time as well.
What did it contain?
  • 155 ml Grow Volume Conditioner (full size 175 ml costs 19,90€). I personally do not use conditioners for my hair, but it is a nice gift for someone with long hair. And comes in plant-based plastic packaging, which is a nice touch. 
  • 10 ml tester of their Grow Volume shampoo. The size is such that I would get 3-4 washes out of it due to my short hair, but as it is a rip-me-open type package, it would be hard to do. Probably will give it to someone with long hair who could use it in a single wash. 
  • Full-size Beach BB Shimmering Sunscreen SPF15 (valued at 21,95€ in the website). I love mineral sunscreen and with summer coming this will be used up. I prefer the non-shimmering ones personally but as mineral sunscreen can have a white cast, a bit of golden shimmer might help with that.
  • 3 ml tester of their Weightless Sun Milk SPF20. These tiny testers a quite good for short travels where I might see the sun just for a few hours on a one day. I have a half day field trip planned near the Black Sea in June. So great for hand luggage on a plane for that trip, for example. 
  • 15 ml sample of Fake It, the Natural Look Self Tan Milk. Probably big enough to get full application for feet and legs. Maybe even arms as well. Not sure, I do not usually eye-ball the amount of moisturiser I use. I do use fake tan from time to time (Dove usually), so not bad to have an extra to try of a bit higher price range.
  • 2 ml sample of the Daily Defence Cream. I own it in original size and it is great for elbows, feet, even lips. So great tiny sample for travelling. 
  • 12,5 ml Scrub Exfoliating Oil-To-Milk Scrub. This is a product I own in full size. It is not in my daily rotation as I prefer acid exfoliators to the mechanical ones... But it is a good product and I am sure to use it in my travels when I usually tend to not bring most of my skincare due to the large sizes. So no excuse for not taking this along.
So, all in all, looking at the two larger products and 2 larger samples I would say there is at least 45€ worth of value here. So I have 100 stocks with the purchase price of 7,35 a piece (you could get the packages even with less stocks), and get more than 80€ worth of products yearly. So better than 10% dividend. And they do pay out some real monetary dividends as well. So not bad, not bad at all.
Do you own Madara stock? Plan to buy? Have any other stock giving such perks?
As mentioned in my latest post I have been a bit absent lately, dealing with a loss of a family member as well as funeral organisations can be tough. And so my investments did mostly just run on the autopilot.

So what about deposits?

Mintos 50
Envestio 100

 Well, a major change might be that, as I have not seen any really interesting projects on EstateGuru, I did withdraw 200 from there. I have made some new investments there, but as projects seem to have trouble paying and new projects have low interests compared to a year ago (or even half a year ago), I have reduced my presence there for the first time. I will see how I feel in the next months. Probably also depends on how they will manage to resolve the defaulted loans. I have 4 out of 57 loans in default at the moment based on their web-page. And perhaps some more will be there as 8 loans are late at the moment. So not so happy with that portal.
I added the most funds to my Growth account, also some to the CrowdEstate as well as Envestio and Mintos. All together 350€ new money invested in January.

Income for January

CrowdEstate 40,21
Mintos 35,11
EstateGuru 15,89
Grupeer 3,24
Envestio 3,17
Bondora 0,17

Income for January was all together 97,79 € which is 3,15 a day. The best earner was CrowdEstate where actually not all loans paid on time (so some payments meant for January are late), so the sum should be bigger. Hopefully, they will correct it and payments will come in February. The second best was Mintos, which has been a rather stable portal for me although lately there have been issues with money sitting on the account even if there are loans matching my auto invest... Still, the cash drag is not constant, so still quite happy with the portal. EstateGruru was third, and I already mentioned the issues above with them. The 2 others are really small but my capital there is also small. Bondora is an old enemy which is swallowing my money. We will see if I will be able to retrieve the money I initially deposited. Still more than 200€ to get out of there, and as you see the income comes in just a few cents every month...
I forgot to write out the portfolio value numbers late on the 31st of January. So this time the portfolio value is from the first of the month (so 1st of February 2019), being 20121,54 €, which is 670€ more than at the end of a year. As you can see from the deposits as well as income the portfolio has increased more than those numbers explain. This comes from my Growth Account where the strong minus of about 7% has changed to -4,15%, still in negative but much-improved number there :) Actually, one of my funds (IEMM) is in green being on +0,10% compared to purchase price. So there is hope. I mean it has been good to buy from the red, but at the same time every time I log on to the bank, constantly seeing that the account has a loss, is disheartening.

 So, crossing my fingers for better months to come, both financially as well as personally. 
And it is time to look at all that has happened in December as well as throughout the year. This has been a quite crazy year. I have been busy at work with several large projects, one luckily ended before Christmas so this is behind me and work life should calm down a bit... well if I was not writing a 20 million Euro project proposal at the moment, it would calm down...
I had also health troubles and many hospital visits in 2018, managed to acquire a rare disease and now can honestly claim I am one in a million. Still, more hospital stays and tests to come but the main threat to my life seems to be in the past, at least until the next flare up.
So it is time to look back on the financial year and gather some thoughts for 2019 as well. 2019 goals will be a post on its own, but here I will look back at the December as well as on the whole year, and I decided to add a net worth update as well, so a lot to go through here. So let's get on with it.

First a short look at December.

Deposits and withdrawals:
-10 Bondora
100 Envestio
50 Mintos

Managed to withdraw 10€ from Bondora, added 50 to Mintos and CrowdEstate, 100 to Envestio and 450 to Growth Account. So all together 640 € of deposited money.

Interest and other income were as follows:
CrowdEstate 39,54
Mintos 30,36
LHV Growth Account10,90 € and 2,46$
Envestio 4,19
Grupeer 2,67
Bondora 0,09

CrowdEstate was the best earner being more than 10€ above the monthly average of this year. Mintos was the second best but did underperform a bit compared the monthly average of 33,27. EstateGuru and LHV were solid performers. Two new portals have obviously small sums coming in and the Bondora is a disaster in its own right as always. 
The last monthly income of 2018 was 113,08 or 3,65 a day.

With all these portals plus the MDARA single stock the investment portfolio was all together 19451,24 € on the 31.12.2018.

And the yearly wrap-up

First of all, I did some math and realised that based on deposits to the investments (and not technically to savings), my savings rate of 2018 was 40,7%.

I do not calculate XIRR or monthly interest or something similar but if I base calculations on the portfolio value of 31.12.2017 and look at the interest gathered in 2018, the interest rate was 9,66%. I guess calculating it so is not ideal as I do deposit money throughout the year as well, but at the same time, many of my investments are longer-term bullet investments which pay at the end of the term. Therefore many investment payments are delayed as in portals such as EstateGuru and CrowdEstate my average investment terms are respectively 13,7 and 17,4 months. So this seemed like a logical compromise of looking at it- and I clearly state how it was calculated. 


Now to the yearly deposits. My depositing to different accounts was rather uneven throughout the year, being based both on the opportunities (Mintos cashback in May) and also on how much money I could save up. The May deposit was done partly from the savings (or the so-called snowy-day-fund) and therefore for the next 2 months, I had to fill that up again...
But basically I do the pay yourself first by having both monthly and weekly transfers to investment accounts, and if there is money "left over" by the end of the month that goes to where I feel like at the moment. 

The income is very uneven which is caused mainly by the fact that I have a limited amount of investments in portals with larger payment limits such as CrowdEstate (min investment 100, with 100 increases) and EstateGuru (min investment 50, with increases of 1 allowed). So these projects end or have larger payments only during some months, and so those months peaks and others are really low. The income could have been a few cents more to have lovely round and even number, but what can I do. The final income of the year 2018 was 1199,37.


Longer time view of my deposits is even more uneven as in the beginning, I invested my savings just sitting on the savings account. I do not have such buffer any more to put in the game. The trend seems to decrease but I hope that in future it will flatten out.  Although that might be tricky as the few outliers tend to effect such graphs a lot. The final amount of yearly deposits was 6445 €.

Income seems also to drop every year, being larger in the first part of the year and smaller in the second half. This comes from having larger projects ending usually in the beginning of the year. I guess larger building projects tend to do most of the building works during summer, interior things and the finishing details in autumn- winter and most sales happen and the loans are paid back in early spring... Also in 2017 and 2018, I received the TVEAT dividends June influencing again the first half of the year. The bigger spike in July 2018 came from both CrowdEstate as well as VAL (one of my LHV Growth Accound funds) paying dividends.

What else?
In August I made a goal for myself that by the end of the year I should have 1/3 of my investments in LHV Growth Account and that I probably will not add any more portals. Well, I messed up both. 
Even if I would recalculate my LHV to the purchase price (and not account the strong minus there) I would not have 1/3 in there it is around 30% mark, but not more. It is also partly due to testing 2 new portals. Well, at least that was not a goal or a promise really. That was me stating that I do not expect to add any new portals.

I think I should actually do a small portal by the portal review as well, but that post will come later- otherwise, this post will twice as long. 

So time to wrap up with my yearly statistics, just one more thing to do...
I think the end of a year is also a great time to calculate my NET WORTH again. I made a longer post about it HERE. So I will not go into it really here, all the calculations are the same and I have included the same categories. But the NEW WORTH of Snowy at the end of 2018 was 33 859,05, which is 2571 more than in September.

How was your year? What are the best investments? Is your monthly investing income as variable as mine?
October has been a really busy month for me. I was abroad on different meetings several times altogether for almost a third of the month and this means really long hours and little sleep. Also in the beginning of the month, I was again in hospital- the health issue does not want to settle down.
Most of November should be a bit more manageable, although the end of November and beginning of December I will be abroad for 3 weeks in a row. So I guess I need to wait for Christmas for things to calm down again. And chronic illness and all this traveling and busy schedule mean that I feel major fatigue constantly. But that is life, isn't it? One more reason to strive towards (at least partial) Financial Independence. But at the same time I do love my job, but maybe full position is not the best for me.

 So how did October go?

 I withdrew 10 € from Bondora (I have not been able to sell more loans there, unfortunately), and deposited 50 € to Grupeer, 150 € to CrowdEstate and 500 to LHV Growth Account. So I have added 690€ of new money to my investments.
Looking at Grupeer- part of the money is sitting uninvested as there are no projects. I hope this is a passing problem, if not I might close my small portfolio there.

 Income was much better than the few previous months mostly due to LHV Growth Account dividends.

 So income in October was as follows:
Mintos 36,72
LHV Growth Account 33,30
EstateGuru 16,33
CrowdEstate 14,61
Grupeer 2,95
Bandora 0,38
All together 104,29 € or mathematically 3,36 € a day.

 The portfolio value was 17942,69 € on 31.10.2018. When looking at how much I deposited in October and how much my account value has increased during the month it is clear there is something amiss. And this is the fact that all my Growth Account investments have taken a hit during the market drop what has been happening in the past weeks. At the lowest point, it showed that my portfolio was down 8,5% compared to the purchase price. Now the stats are better which comes both from market slowly improving with some of my funds as well as me buying more shares, so the average purchase price has gone down and therefore the numbers also look better. At the moment on 1st of November, it is down just 6,76%.

Exact numbers are here, as always.


Just a brief update on the Madara Cosmetics stock owners box, that I talked about when I bought the stock. 

As I said previously, ordering of the box was really easy and it came quickly in the mail. They promised it would arrive before the end of the month and it actually came already by the 15th, I think. 

The box is nicely packaged and all 4 products arrived safely. This time there was a night creme, lip balm, shimmering body lotion and a probiotic face mist. Knowing Madara prices it looks like the value was as promised. To be fully honest I am a bit less excited about this package compared to the spring one. Not sure why, maybe because I have a lot of lip balms and body moisturisers to be used up, so these do not excite me at the moment. But winter is coming so both are very useful, I am sure. The face mist I left in the office, in the dry office air it has been lovely to use it few times a day :) Night cream is nice and light- absorbs fast and smells good. No results yet, but I like it and will use it up.
One of my previous posts I talked about the fact that Madara offers a stock owners loyalty programme sending them newly developed Madara cosmetics before these items will be available to be purchased individually. This is the mystery box they also offer on their site. But people owning at least 26 stocks get it for free. 
At that time I had no idea how this sending out of the boxes is organised, but I was curious. 

Now I know. 

I got an email to the email address I used when registering to the Madara insider programme. The email reminded stock owners that the insider perk needs to be ordered before 30th of September and should arrive by the end of October. So it is an easy process, you go to the Madara online shop, add the mystery box to your shopping cart, add a species discount code reducing the value of your order to 0€, then just complete the purchase like normal by choosing how to receive your order and that is it. Very easy and efficient. So now I just have to hope I really love what is inside as I am supposed to get two boxes because I had ordered the autumn box way before deciding to buy the stock (and before I knew of the stock owners perk they offer).

I will post about the contents when I receive the box. 
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.
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.
Let's start by stating that I do not know how to analyze stocks. Total noob here in this, but I do feel I have something to say here... So please keep reading- it is a short post and I will get to finance in just a few sentences but the short introduction to this post is needed I think.


I have been using Madara skincare for almost a year. I am not totally loyal to them, I also use other companies. My main goal is great value at a great price. I LOVE Madara products I have tried so far - so I think they fit in this category.
I love them so much that I even ordered their beauty insider box last year- this means I will get 2 mystery boxes (one I got in April, and one will come in October) for the price of 37,95 € and the retail value of the products of at least 80€. A great offer isn't it? Even if I get something I know I won't use - I could gift the unopened product so someone who probably has more use for it. And I did love the first box I got :)

So let's get to the stock for a moment. Madara came to the Nasdaq First North Alternative Market in the end of last year, and current price as I write this post is 7,70€ per stock. Something that is quite hidden on a Madara website, is the info that if you own at least 26 Madara stocks and you sign up on their website- you get these boxes for free. So at a current price to get this offer you need to invest about 200 €. Meaning that looking at the price of the beauty box you will earn back the investment in about five years, and if you look at the retail value of the products it will take two and a half years. Yes, the "dividend" is in cosmetics, but hey, for a 200€ investment you get 80 € worth of cosmetics. That is 40% yield a year. Also based on the prospect they have paid out dividends in previous years so real monetary dividends could be expected as well. Any money you might make from the stock itself would be a bonus. But even if the stock value decreases somewhat in 5 years, but they keep up the beauty insider box offer- you would still be quite OK. Also as Madara does not just produce their cosmetics but produces for other brands (if I am not mistaken) so this might help in case when Madara brand has some negative press or something- they do have several lines of income. And as a woman who uses skincare daily with these somewhat free boxes, I spend less on skincare as some are just shipped to me- for example, I won't need to look for a great SPF for the summer as I have a big tube of it now.

I have no practice or real knowledge in stock picking, but based on this calculation- I guess I am going to buy some. Of course, you get just one box even if you buy hundreds of shares so the skincare "dividend" will be lower then. Buts still, it is an intriguing offer.

Does anyone know any other companies offering perks to owners like this? Does Tallink offer free ferry tickets or Olympic free gambling money?