December 19′ Personal Net Worth Report And More

In Monthly Net Worth Reports by Shlomo Freund5 Comments

 

Here is my monthly report of our personal net worth progress for December 2019 and other financial and life updates. 

I’m sharing this to show how important it is to track your net worth and seeing the progress. Tracking is what I also expect and advise my clients to do.

From tracking your personal net worth and see how much you are worth, you can learn what works and what you should change in your finances.

It’s the first step to eliminate money as a source of stress and gain confidence in your future finances.

If you’d also like to see how much you are worth the way I do, I created this tool, especially for my readers. You can get it here.

Also, if you’d like to read the previous report to get the flow of things, you can check it here – November 2019 personal net worth update. Here are all the previous reports.

If you don’t know what the net worth definition is, check it here.

Last thing, If you are looking to eliminate money as a source of stress and gain confidence in your future finances I invite you for a free financial fitness call with me. Just click the link and book a time on my calendar

Let’s jump in!

OVERVIEW

This month our personal net worth went down by -0.21%, and our savings rate was 37.8% 

here is an important note. I found out that I made a mistake in calculating our yearly savings rate. So, what I mentioned on my last monthly post of when to use median vs. Average is not applicable.

I found out that mistake thanks to my friends on our FIRE mastermind group.  I was happier after that specific discussion, as our savings rate is much better than I thought.

Of course, this is the last report of 2019, so on a yearly calculation our savings rate was: 47.54%

One more thing about this report format. I got in touch with a bunch of people from my list and other groups I’m part of to get some feedback.

What I found out that some people think the report is too long and reading it on mobile phone while in a rush is not practical for them. I’m thinking to split this report into two parts next month. What do you think? Is this report too long for you to read in a single take?

Please send me a message about this, or post a comment.

Crowd Investing Alert: My page is getting traction and I’m glad to see that. I managed to build a system together with my virtual assistant to publish new projects on 4 3 crowd investing platforms (Kuetzal is out, see below). I see more people using it every day which is great. 

So, if you are into crowd investing, give a ‘like’ to the page. Also, give me feedback on what else you’d like to see there.

 

Envestio: All of Envestio’s projects are paid on time. There are currently 3 projects running all with nice yearly returns of 19-20%. 

If you do decide to join Envestio through my link, I’ll get some bonus from them to invest more in my portfolio, and you’ll get an extra 5 € bonus + 0.5% cashback for the next 270 days after you invest.

Crowdestor: Crowdestor has its new platform design live now. It’s much better than the previous one. Crowdestor, are releasing new projects in the fastest pace than all the rest of the platforms. Quite impressive. 

They have a great range of projects with recent ones paying 21% yearly interest.

personal net worth personal net worth

All Crowdestor projects are paid on time. 

If you decide to join Crowdestor through my link you’d like to get 1% cashback for your next 90 days. I’ll get a bonus from Crowdestor of 1% of your investment about, at no cost to you. sign up through this link

Kuetzal: Kuetzal became the black sheep of all my crowd investing platforms. As I mentioned in the last report, Kuetzal status is unclear. 

Discussions at the crowd investing community debate if it’s worth asking for a buyback of your projects (and loose 10%), or not do that and let the platform survive and overtime pay the investors.

The current situation is that investors who either asked for withdrawals of their funds from profits or asked for a buyback were not performed, though been replied with either automatic message for the withdrawals or an email back saying that the buyback will be performed in two weeks.

I asked for withdrawal and buyback, got the messages and indeed none was performed yet.

A message from today someone at the community got back from Kuetzal states that their bank account is blocked and they try to unlock it and pay back the funds.

Another message stating that a blogger writing about crowd investing will meet them on January 15th. So, let’s see if this meeting will actually happen and what he will report back.

I’m actually contemplating if I should count Keutzal now towards my personal net worth or report that as a loss. I think it’s worth giving it another month and understand where things are going. Then I’ll make a decision.

For now, I don’t recommend investing in Keutzal’s projects and also decided to stop generating alerts on its projects on my Crowd Investing Alert page.

21.1.20 Update: I no longer recommend Kuetzal. I invested through them. However, large parts of that business were a scam and under investigation. I’m not sure I’ll see my money back in this case.

If you do decide to join Keutzal through my link, I’ll get some bonus from them to invest more in my portfolio, and you’ll get an extra 0.5% cashback for the next 180 days after you invest

In addition, use the coupon code FREEFINANCIALSELF when you join. You’ll get 15 EUR bonus instantly into your account that you can invest right away.

Wisefund: Wisefund feels like it’s not mature enough yet. They are the newest platform and for now, publish new projects pretty slow. I hope they increase their pace soon.

Wisefund’s payments are all on time. 

If you do decide to join Wisefund through my link, I’ll get some bonus from them to invest more in my portfolio, and you’ll get an extra 0.5% cashback for the next 270 days after you invest.

A word of warning here. Crowd investing is a new industry and loosely regulated. Therefore, be careful when you do choose to invest with either of the platforms. Yes, the returns are great, but the risk is also high.

LOANS & OTHER INVESTMENTS

UK property: After my trip to Liverpool in December where I saw 5-6 potential properties. We decided to go with a property that is relatively large of mixed-use, commercial and residential. That’s the one that made the most sense for us business-wise. 

For now, we are going into the negotiation stage, so I can’t yet share too much. Will do once there is more progress.

US property: I updated that the rest of the portfolio suppose to be sold until the end of 2019. It’s still too early into 2020, so I don’t have more updates on this. Hopefully have something for you (and for me) next month. 

Loans:  No news in this front. 

OUR PERSONAL NET WORTH ANALYSIS

US & Israeli Stock portfolio: This month the portfolio is down a bit. Not too bad. 

Important word here: One of my stock investment strategies is value investing.  Compared indexes had a tremendously good year (30.43% before dividends), while mine was a lot lower. Is it hard seeing this? Yes, of course. However, overtime value investing proved itself, therefore, a single year would not mean a thing. I have good stocks which I got at good prices and at some point will get to their real value. This is when I’ll reap the benefit.

US Real estate investment: As I mentioned above, I hope that by the end of January, this investment will be sold. 

Bitcoin: Slightly down. 

As you can see from the last breakdown of my investment from mid-December 2019, I did forget to add in my Bitcoin holding. It’s a small percentage of the portfolio. I’ll update that for next time, Probably at the end of the quarter.

BREAKDOWN OF INVESTMENT

 

personal net worth

PERSONAL LIFESTYLE AND PROFESSIONAL LIFE UPDATE

TWITTER EVENT

A few days ago, I was invited by VCBuzz to be a guest of their Twitter chat speaking (or typing) about “How to live Flexible lifestyle“.

It was a fun event and very engaging. If you want to look back on what it was all about, check my Twitter account.

 

TRAVEL

So, my travel plans got messed up, due to family reasons. My mother got hospitalized for 2-3 weeks and having 2 operations. I had to postpone the Beijing trip and the Ski trip for now.

We actually planned the month quite well. We had an Airbnb rent for the whole month and decided to stack together 3 trips this month; UK (Only me), Beijing (Only me) and Ski Trip (Me and my daughter).

My wife would have gone to her parent’s place anyway, if I wouldn’t be home, so basically the house was supposed to be empty anyway.

But as you see we planned and…

So, here is the current plan: 

  • The United Kingdom – 11th-17th of December  Done
  • Beijing- 29th-2nd of January Postponed not sure to when yet
  • Europe Ski Trip – 2nd week of January  Postponed not sure to when yet.
  • New York  – 12-19th of February
  • Vienna – 24-26th of February

Planned but no date set:

  • Family trip to Europe Postponed for now

If you are around, get in touch and let me know. I always like to meet my readers.

ETSY STORE

No changes in my store this month. I now have products for adults and not only for kids.

In a nutshell, let’s say you’d like to save for a vacation somewhere. I created a vacation savings tracker for people to visually see how much they saved for that vacation and keep them motivated towards that goal of making it happen.

I have this product for ten countries so far (Italy, France, The Bahamas, Spain, Germany, Japan, Jamaica, The Dominican Republic, the United Kingdom, and India).

For kids, I created countdown activity for the family vacation (31 countries so far). The kids can color the flag of that target country counting down the days before the trip.

I have a request pls. I’m looking for feedback on these products. Please go to the store and check them out. If you decided not to buy, please leave a message in the comments or send me a message on why you decided not to buy it eventually. That will be very helpful.

And here is a tip. When people give you a compliment and good feedback it’s wonderful for your ego but is zero help making progress. Bad feedback, is where you can learn and make improvements. So, I’m looking to improve.

Here are two examples:

vacation savings tracker

Click the image to go to the listings

 

vacation savings tracker

Click the image to go to the listing

etsy

READING UPDATE AND READING CHALLENGE

So, I broke my reading challenge and read 19 books in 2019. My new goal is 22 books for 2020.

I finished reading the book titled The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money by Ron Lieber. I liked this book. However, it brought so many cases and stories which was interesting, but I didn’t finish it with too many takes.  There were just lots of details. The only thing we implemented was the ‘Save-Spend-Give’ jar system we do with our daughter’s allowance. 

I also finished reading the book The Danube: A Journey Upriver from the Black Sea to the Black Forest by Nick Thorpe. I wouldn’t say I liked the book. I like geography, I like travel but that was too heavy with details. Some paragraphs were random stories one after another of a description of places.

He used the same format of a book as The Black Sea by Neal Ascherson. He also refers to that book. I read Neal Ascherson‘s book a few years ago and liked it much more. It’s hard for me to say why though.

I’m currently reading a book called The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge. I’m about a third done. And wow, what a read!

It’s amazing what our brain is capable of and there is a lot of hope from research for people with different brain disabilities as well as for old people.

Bottom line, our brains’ plasticity, let’s us learn things at the same level as when we are younger. However, conditions change (We are lacking the ‘drive’) and therefore it’s harder for us. 

The Author highly encourage old people to learn a 2nd (or 3rd?4th?5th?) language. That helps their brains plasticity and raises the brain’s functionality in general, not only in the brain parts related to language.

I invite you to follow my Goodreads profile and hope to follow yours.

SHLOMO’S BOOKSHELF: READ

The 4-Hour WorkweekThe Danube: A Journey Upriver from the Black Sea to the Black Forestהנפט של פוטין: המאבק על עתידה של רוסיהCity of Djinns: A Year in DelhiInside the Third ReichModern Sicily: The History and Legacy of the Mediterranean Island Since the Middle AgesExpat Secrets: How To Make Giant Piles of Money, Live Overseas, & Pay Zero TaxesThe Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to EatAnne Frank: The BiographyUltimate Blockchain Technology: Mega Edition – Six Books – Best Deal For Beginners in Blockchain, Blockchain Applications, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Mining and InvestingA Brief Travel History of Hungary1984The Little Book That Beats the MarketLearning Chinese CharactersHow to Raise a Wild Child: The Art and Science of Falling in Love with NatureThe One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary ResultsThe Richest Man in Babylon -- Six Laws of WealthA People's History of the United StatesThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal ChangeYour Money or Your LifeEarly Retirement Extreme: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Financial IndependenceContent Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More

 

2019 Reading Challenge

2019 Reading Challenge

2019 Reading Challenge
Shlomo has
read 19 books breaking
his goal of
18 books!
hide

 

LEARNING SPANISH

I traveled to South America for 5 months in 2004-5. After about two months of traveling, my Spanish got to a level I was able to communicate what I needed and even more after about two months.

I knew that my Spanish skills were at its peak when I was trekking in the Bolivian jungle with 2 french guys who didn’t speak Spanish and a Bolivian guide who didn’t speak English. So, I had to be the translator.

Since then, my Spanish stayed back there and I used it very rarely. It’s basic now.

Thanks to my friend Mikkel Thorup, I got to know Olly Richards programs from I Will Teach You A Language. I decided to sign up and level up my Spanish.

I actually signed up together with my wife. I want to be able to speak Spanish fluently for when we travel (two trips in my mind of Spanish speaking countries sometimes). From her side, most of her colleagues are Spanish, so that will help her communicate better with them.

So far, the program is really enjoyable!

EXERCISE

I’m still doing my stretching exercises. Almost daily. However, I should do them a few times a day. So, not there yet. 

MASTERMIND JOINT LEARNING

We are about to finish another cycle in our mastermind. Our joint learning was about withdrawal plans. Unfortunately, we did only a single session out of 2. This is because we found out that most of the withdrawal plans published are focused on the American market. It’s only applicable to one member of our mastermind. 

I searched for bloggers who publish their withdraw plans out of the US, but didn’t find any. So, if you did publish a post on this and don’t live in the US, let me know. I’m interested to read.

JUST LIFE

NOW OVER TO YOU

So, how is this update helping you?

Did you discover anything new?

Are you tracking your finances and see the progress?

Is this update too long? Boring?

Feel free to add a comment, I read them all and promise to reply.

Comments

  1. Great blog I enjoyed to read it. What I would like to see more is the finances a bit in detail. For example 14% in Crowdinvesting, how much is that actually in Pound / USD?
    Check out as a possible example : https://euromoney.blog/monthly-portfolio-updates/ where you can see really well what is invested where

    Keep up the good work!

    1. Author

      Thank you Marc for the comment. Just had a look at your website too.

      Why knowing how much it’s in pound or USD matters to you?

  2. The update is great .It isnt too long ,just the right length and the details are interesting too

Leave a Reply to Tino Cancel reply