Ladies and gents, another month went by, which means it is time for another monthly portfolio & savings update to count in November 2021.

November In A Nutshell

This was probably one of the oddest months I can remember.

In reference to my 9 to 5, work levels fell rapidly, and I soon found myself from being stressed and overloaded to literally having to engineer something to do.

Simply, my brain is not used to doing anything, and this sudden drop has been slowly becoming mental torture to me. Just the fact of having to stay sit in a place for the mere reason of getting paid but not being productive has brought me all sorts of thoughts:

  • I want to reach FI faster, how?
  • Bored with my job (even when I am busy, it’s becoming less and less fulfilling)
  • Should I go for a career change?
  • What about handing in my notice and going full time into learning web development for one year? My cash reserves are OK, I could afford it.
  • Or perhaps I could work as a self-employed and focus on learning coding part-time?

These are all immature thoughts in need of some mediation before they turn into a decision. For me, it’s hard to think about abandoning the mechanical engineering field. I’ve been interested in it since I was a kid (my father was already a mechanic). After all these years of studying and accumulating experience in the field, I am highly valued in the sector, which is good for keeping my ego in a healthy condition. Becoming a good developer at my age looks challenging to me, since you see the best programmers start early on (take Elon Musk as an example).

But, challenges is something I lack these days, and since it used to be a source of energy to keep me motivated, I feel like my fuel reserves are about to cross the minimum levels. Hence, why I am craving a need for a change.

Would the learning challenge be worth it, considering the long term potential it has? As you can see, I have some food for thought before we close 2021!

Now, putting the professional part on the side, the rest has been great! In Portugal, we continued visiting several places during the weekends. Maybe I should write a blog post about my experience and whether it could be a good place to FIRE? If that sound like an interesting thing to read, please let me know down below the comments.

Next, let’s dip into the numbers for this month:

Quick Recap of November Numbers

  • Portfolio value: €179,761 (+2%) – details HERE
  • Contributions to the portfolio: 4,225 €
  • Monthly growth from investments: €1,371
  • Passive income: 1,188 € – details HERE
  • Savings Rate: 19.2%

Contributions

  • €112 to UK Work pension.
  • €1,989 to buy FTSE All-World Acc shares.
  • €1,528 to buy crypto
  • €800 to my dividend portfolio.
  • €-204 withdrawn from P2P.

Comments

The pound sterling fell slightly against the euro (1.18 to 1.17), hence the mismatch on the recap numbers.

Overall, and counting in my contributions, my portfolio has managed to make a small increase of €3,525.

My passive income continues to be in a steady course. I am slowly entering a trend where passive income from dividends increases while P2P income decreases, which is part of my long term plan.

Monthly Income and Expenses

This month, the family income was £5,622.7 (6,579 EUR).

This includes my job income, passive income and my mum’s pension income.

I had some people questioning me why I include income that’s not mine in my reports. I’ve mentioned why before. My mum’s disability is over 80%, and taking that I have no siblings I am now the person managing finances as a group, hence why I include them in my spreadsheets. That also includes her care costs that ramp up to €1,300-€1,400 a month, insurances, bills, taxes and so on. These are all costs that I would have to cover from my own pocket if her finances went under. Personal finance is PERSONAL and varies from household to household, and from individual to individual. Why? Because we are all unique and live under different circumstances. Reporting it this way is my way to manage it better and improve our finances as one sole pack.

Anyway, leaving this behind, I incurred a lot of expenses this month. The biggest one, a roof repair bill that came in November last minute 🙁

Other out of the normal expenses include gifts I purchased on Black Friday’s sale. This has seriously impacted my saving ratio for this month, achieving only a sad 19%. As I recall, I think this is my worst saving month since day one.

Here’s a sort of breakdown overview:

My total passive income has covered the 34.8% (37.7% last month) of my total yearly expenses.

Portfolio Performance

As I like to do on a monthly basis, this is a breakdown of all my current and past investments:

Please note, links containing a star (*) are either affiliate or referral links. P2P lending is a risky business, so you could end up losing all your invested money if you choose to join any of these platforms.

** 20 % discounted to estimate future withdrawal tax payments

Another month covered mainly by green, except for my dividend portfolio, Global Clean energy ETF and $LUNA coin which was covered in red.

As we seem to have entered into a highly volatile market environment, some of these values have fairly changed, especially crypto investments which are being brutally hammered at the time of writing this update.

Crypto Portfolio

I contributed a bit more to my crypto portfolio.

I bought $500 worth of $ETH and used it as collateral in Nexus Terra. I was hesitant to buy and stake Ethereum directly, as the merge to ETH2 won’t happen until Q1/Q2, which means I wouldn’t be able to withdraw until that time.

I was also hungry for risk and got started on Time Wonderland $TIME, which is a DeFi 2.0 protocol.

This is a high-risk personal experiment I am taking, and by no means I’d recommend adding much into these DeFi 2.0 protocols if you ask me.

I believe it’s important to know what’s our money personality type before digging into high volatile investments. In my case, I am aware of having a little gambler inside, and hence why I sometimes enjoy participating in these sorts of investments. We shall see how it goes! 🙂

Alternative Investments Portfolio

My alternative investment portfolio provided me with €78.1 (€60.94 last month) of passive income.

Not a lot to report on this section besides the news on Reinvest24 removing the 1% entrance fee in exchange for a success fee that will be changed at the end of the investment period, a good move to compensate investors in earning higher returns. I hoped this move would encourage investors to fund Eberswalde German rental project, as I am waiting to buy some shares once it is 80-90% funded. Instead, it seems only development loans are being funded quicker after the news.

Apart from Reinvest24 and Estateguru, I keep withdrawing funds from whichever platform I can.

In case you’d be interested in joining any of these two platforms, these are my referral links:

Dividend Portfolio

My dividend portfolio this month generated €44.05 of passive income.

This was the outlook of my holdings at the end of the month:

dividend stocks november 2021
Holdings November 2021

As usual, I reinvested all dividend payments in the same stock.

As I mentioned in my previous update, I needed to pump in some money into my dividend portfolio to keep it in line with my investing strategy, and adding a semiconductor dividend payer can potentially be a good way to invest indirectly in the upcoming digital era. So, I did my homework and compared some chip stocks, being this the result:

The right call for me would be to just buy an Index Fund or ETF that tracks the whole semiconductor sector and call it a day, as predicting which semiconductor will do better long term can easily become a loser’s game.

High competitive environment = high speculation levels.

But, as I want to keep it fun and keep building my dividend portfolio little by little, I went for adding my 18th dividend growth stock in and bought 1.62 shares of Broadcom $AVGO. This will add an extra $19.8 of pre-tax annual income. Every little adds up!

Dividend Payments

I received dividend payments from a total of 6 companies:

  • AT&T (T): €15.75
  • Bristol Myers (BMY): €5.49
  • British Tobacco (BATS): €9.79
  • Mastercard (MA): €0.58
  • Realty Income (O): €3.62
  • Toronto Dominion (TD): €8.82

Here’s an update on my year-over-year dividend comparison:

Monthly dividend monthly chart November 2021
Monthly dividend income chart

€24 earned last year vs €44 this year. For the time being, it’s only a small quantity, but wait for the compounding machine to start getting traction from the 3rd/4td year! ?

The €45K Project Fund

Another month has passed, which means I saved another €60 as a non-smoker, cash that goes into my 45K Project Fund.

For now, I am investing it all in a global clean energy ETF.

So far, The 45K Project Fund consists of:

  1. Abundance Investment: €1,476
  2. Kiva: €454
  3. Qardus: €180.4
  4. Global Clean Energy ETF: €998.3

So far, I have recovered 6.91% of my loss = €3,108.7

€41,891.3 left to go.

Related content: How I FIRED 45k with algo trading, Investing Ethically, Recovering €45K through Investing in Myself First

Goals and Habits 2021

Lastly, It’s time to have a look at how I am doing with my 2021 goals and habits.

All my goals are monthly measurable, so I’ve built a table to keep an eye on the progress, this is how it is going so far:

Goals and Habits This Month

Goals and habits, November 2021

Goals and Habits Previous Month

goals and habits october 2021

Besides spending more time than I should on Twitter, I also spend more time working on my goals. I had the sudden Teams call from work while doing some push-ups, but I think I succeeded in concealing it! 🙂

Despite this month efforts, it’s quite likely I won’t manage to complete many of my goals for this year, but I shall be doing all my best nonetheless, no excuses to keep on improving.

That was all for this month, we shall “see” each other again in January.

For anyone reading this, have a wonderful festive season. Merry Christmas!

HOHOHO 😀