November 2020

The month of Judgement! ⌛️

It’s been a year since I decided to come out of my defined benefits pension scheme. I set myself the goal of achieving a passive income of at least £150 per month by November 2020 through investing my pension and any other spare cash in income generating investments.

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Investments

Before we look at my income this month we need to look at my investments as usual.

Another project invested into on TheSunExchange. As an investment I really like this model and am very pleased to continue investing here. I had been reinvesting my income from TheSunExchange in new projects every month. This month I changed tact. The income comes as BTC. Instead of investing it straight back in, I have decided to withdraw it to a crypto platform called LUNO where you can earn interest (similar to NEXO and Celsius). Not only will this grow the income due to interest, but I think BTC is going to have a stellar year this year so I am looking for the asset to increase in value as well.

CrowdProperty saw my usual £500 investment at the beginning of the month. Later in the month I then deposited a further £10,000. I would like CrowdProperty to be a significant portion of my portfolio moving forward. I think instead of regular small investments, more sporadic larger investments will allow me to structure my portfolio better. I don’t intend to invest further in CrowdProperty for a while. It might take a number of months to fully utilise all the funds, also I can direct my investments in the next few months to other projects.

I have been very disappointed with my investment with Property Partner. Rental income completely dried up this year and was only standing at 2-3% pa anyway. For this reason I decided to sell my positions at a loss and redirect the funds elsewhere. I withdrew £621 from the platform.

ElfinMarket saw my usual £100 deposit. I am considering putting a large amount into this project next tax year, wrapped in an IFISA.

My investment in Crowd2Fund has been stagnant all year as the platform paused all investments due to Covid. Now it has restarted the returns are only 4% which does not really tick the Risk-Reward box. For this reason I also withdrew my £100 investment from this platform, to be re-invested elsewhere.

I was able to top up my RoboCash investment as planned this month, adding a further €400. I am going to reassess my Euro P2P investments over the next few months and decide which platforms to stay in and which to exit. I feel I have too many investments spread too thinly here.

In crypto my regular investments were made. $200 to the IML fund, $100 of TUSD to NEXO and a random amount of BTC in BlockFi. There are significant fees involved with buying, trading and moving crypto around. I am considering moving forwards that I will make larger purchases, less frequently to offset this.

My regular FreeTrade £500 was invested in the stock market.

New investments this month are a bit experimental. One is with a crowdfunding platform for loans to Coffee growers in Mexico, EthicHub. The returns are quoted at 15% pa and has the advantage of being crypto based which appeals to me. The other investment is with JuicyFields, a crowdfunded cannabis growing business. This is purely play money and I am not recommending anyone to follow this investment. The returns are favourable, and it looks to be fully licensed and legal, but I will look closely at this platform over the next year.

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Monthly Income

Well… did I make it? Yes! 🌟🎉

Continued growth in income from TheSunExchange as expected. I think I might break the £50 mark in December or January.

The best months income from Property development loans. CrowdProperty is only just reaching a point where projects that pay back at the end of the loan term are starting to complete. This should start to look very healthy in the next year.

ElfinMarket seems to be on a steady monthly increase in income as the funds deployed increase.

EuroP2P had its best month yet, generating £20.

Crypto again is my top performer. The IML fund had a great month as margin lending rates really shot up this month leading to a healthy growth in the IML fund. My Crypto lending has really shot up in value. Not only do I have more invested, but the interest on the BTC and ETH has risen in value as the value of the assets have grown extraordinarily this month.

Dividends from FreeTrade are back to an acceptable level. Most of this year I have been investing in growth stock due to the pandemic. Moving forward I need to transition my investments into dividend generating stocks to boost my monthly income in this area.

Total income £182.77. This more than surpasses my goal of £150 and considering I have not maxed out my stock dividend potential this is very pleasing. The graph below looks a very pleasing shape, with a nice steady growth in income.

As all my income is being reinvested, by the time I hit retirement the value created by this years investments should have at least doubled, benefitting from the compound interest effect