November 2019
Legacy investments
Over the years I have made some investments when I had some spare cash.
- I pay Ā£200 per month into an endowment policy. I took this out in 1998 for 25 years and it is due to mature in 2023
- I have a stocks and shares ISA held with BMO
- I have a stocks and shares ISA held with L&G
- I have a 50% share in a buy-2-let apartment that needs all its cladding removed and replaced. The property is mortgaged and has minimal equity.
New Investments
Earlier in the year while researching investing I decided that property was going to be part of my portfolio. I made an initial investment of Ā£1000 in Property Partner in Feb 2019, the largest crowd funding platform in the UK for property purchase and rental. The next month (March 2019) I also put Ā£1000 into a peer-2-peer property development loan platform called UOWN. In April 2019 I invested a further Ā£1000 into CurveBlock, a new property development company that looked exciting. All a bit random so far!
In September 2019 I discovered The Sun Exchange. This is a crowd-funding platform for the purchase of solar cells that are then leased for 20 years providing a monthly income. I made my first purchase in September of Ā£1031 and followed up with further purchase in October of Ā£466 and November with Ā£416. I plan to continue this moving forward, investing in at least 1 project every month. Income from the 20 year lease starts at around 7-8% pa increasing every year until it has reached around 20% pa.
Further investigation of the P-2-P crowdfunding of property development loans, led me to Crowd Property. This is the largest platform in the UK, being FSA regulated and offering investments wrapped in an IFISA. I have chosen this as my preferred platform for this type of investment. My first investment of Ā£500 was in November. The plan is to invest Ā£500 every month. The interest rate on the loans are 8% (tax free in an ISA). With lead times of 12-18 months on most of the projects I wonāt really feel the income for over a year.
My final investments at this early stage are in Cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin (BTC) and the stablecoin TUSD. The BTC I have placed on the NEXO platform where it will be loaned out earning me interest of 5-6% pa in BTC. The TUSD is invested across 2 platforms, the first is NEXO where it earns an interest of 10% pa, the second is in a margin lending fund with Invictus Capital. Again the currency is leant out and returns to the fund are in the range of 10-15% pa. I plan to make regular investments of $200 to the Margin Lending Fund per month. With regards to the BTC I plan to invest every month but I am unsure how much yet. In November I invested Ā£38.
Monthly Income
A gentle start with just Ā£8.70 in the first month!
The Lazy Way 2 FIRE 