Investing and emotions

They dont go together too well. In investing we have to be more analytical and mathematical. But when we look at the stock market we see people doing just the opposite. If something happens, for example what happened with stocks all over the world on monday because of chinese stock market crash. People started to sell and sell fast. Probably the same people are trying to buy their stocks back now at a more expensive price.
If you read investment related blogs, books etc. then nobody wants to give you any advice and thats because stock market is too unpredictable, theres just too many variables for a human brain to process and get accurate results. But Ill give some advice, dont think so much and be calm whatever happens.
Some things you can do to not get too emotional is to write down some realistic goals for yourself, this way you can track your progress and avoid stupid decisions that come from high emotional states.
Emotions should be left for your family, friends, close ones and simple math in investing.

What I do is that I just keep investing, when the price is low I buy more and when the price is high I buy less. And if the price is too high at given moment then I just choose another stock or another investing option. If you keep buying stocks for lets say 5 years then your average buy price will be below the 5 year average when you buy them in the way I do.

Keep calm and keep investing :)

Stock buy!

Today I bought some more stocks! I got myself 324 shares of TKM1T with 6,49% dividend yield.
This increased my monthly income around 10,8 EUR. Now Im holding stocks of 4 different companies.
Im planning to buy more stocks after every month or two depending on the prices. Statistically theres not much point to wait for the crysis especially when the total amount of money is not hundreds of thousands or millions.

Month summary: July 2015

Another busy and active month with a lot of aggressive investing.

Savings

This month I managed to save 82,5% of my incomes. 1% improvement over the last month but actually incomes were bigger in june but I had to buy a new washing machine then so thats why the % is almost the same in the last 2 months.

Passive incomes

This month was the best month so far in passive incomes. The total was 159,13 EUR

Huge improvement over the last months but that was because SFG paid its annual dividends where I got 120 EUR. I bought the stock in the beginning of the month. Another stock I bought was BBEP in a small amount of 150 shares, this one is a bit more of a gamble really which could pay off really well in a year or two.

Im planning to buy some more baltic stocks soon but most of the prices are still quite high at the moment, I want the dividend yield of the stock to be at least 6,5%

I might want to get some ETFs soon too, but I will have to research them a bit more before buying anything.

From Bondora I got 20,55 EUR interest, I havent added any money in there but I keep reinvesting the interests. Bondora is ok but my total is still negative because of some really bad decisions in the beginning when I started using it. My mistake was to give out 50 EUR loans to low grade borrowers, but at the time the bondora rating system was much different so I couldnt know it.

Mintos paid 7,95 EUR of interest and I really like it so far, I added another 600 EUR at the end of the month there and now I have 1900 EUR + 9,27 EUR interests invested in there. Next month the payments should be even better :)

One of my goals this year was to have over 3000 EUR in p2p lending sites and Mintos+Bondora is at 3197 EUR, goal achieved! :)

Estateguru paid me 10,63 EUR. I have invested in only 1 project at the moment. I wanted to invest into the new project in the end of the month but it got filled before I even got to make any research about it. It was an interesting one for me because I live close to the building. Im quite positive that Im going to invest into new projects when they come though, lets wait and see!

I also lent some money to a friend for 18 months. Small interest will come from there too.

Total investments at the moment stand at 9243 EUR, really close to my 13000 EUR portfolio goal which I wanted to achieve by the end of the year, I should be able to achieve it much sooner :)

In the next months I will continue aggressive investing, hopefully I can get some stocks for cheap in fall. Have to be patient.

My diet, intermittent fasting results

For the last 2 months Ive been busy shredding some fat off from my body.

And currently I look like this (28th July 2015):

Theres many ways to change your body like this and theres a way for everyone that suits him/her the best. But my favourite method by far is intermittent fasting. IF also has many approaches, Ive tried 2 so far.
24h weekly fast - I did it by not eating anything from 7pm on wednesday until 7pm on thursday. It had good results but I didnt like it that much.

16/8 daily fast - every night when we sleep we fast and Im just extending that fast by skipping breakfast and having my first meal after 3pm (on some days I also train before eating). 16/8 means that every day I have 8 hours to eat and 16 hours to fast, so when my first meal is at 3pm then I shouldnt eat anything after 11pm. This is my favourite way and currently Ive been on it for over 2 months. Fat burns off and Ive been getting stronger which is really hard to achieve while losing weight.

IF is not for everyone but I personally like bigger meals, I like to eat myself full instead of snacking small bites every hour and being hungry the whole day. I usually have 3 bigger meals and the best time to have the biggest one of them is right after training.

Ive also recommended IF to some of my clients and so far theyve loved it :) they also feel much more energetic like I do.

If youre interested then you can contact me (mart.martson91@gmail.com) and we can build an IF plan that fits your schedule and needs whether you want to burn fat or gain muscle.

Progress on the bike

I decent sized jump done a few trainings ago :)

Next post will be the financial summary of July, Ill write it on the weekend
Stay tuned!

My body stats and vertical progress

One of my goals is to achieve 90cm / 35" standing vertical jump this year. I can already do it with a run up but from a standstill my current vert is at 82cm / 32". I still have 5 months to achieve it :) so it should be doable.

Heres a vid of some vertical testing with box jumps after training yesterday.

To do that I need to get myself more powerful, Im mainly focusing on max strength at the moment. Plus I need to shred some more excess fat off, I was at 10,7% bodyfat level 3 weeks ago but now Im at 13% :( Reason for that is too much carbs, Ive eaten too many sweets lately, time to stop now and discipline myself again. Worst part of too much sugar is that it makes me sluggish and tired all the time. Id rather feel energetic which also gives more motivation to do everything I do.

I will write more about my current diet strategy soon, keyword is intermittent fasting.

Can healthy eating be cheap?

I was listening to investment radio ( www.investeerimisraadio.eu ) and they spoke about healthy eating being expensive. I cant agree with that statement.

I wont get too much into detail about food and nutrition values, Id like to keep this post simple and more about food groups and their prices. This way we can see how we can make our eating habits cheaper and more healthy.

Lets look at the most expensive food groups that people consume often: snacks and alcohol.

Alcohol - not much to talk about here, its expensive and its not really good for your health.(actually in small doses alcohol can be good but thats a story for another time)

2 options - drink and pay with cash + health or dont drink and save cash + health.


Snacks - dont we all love to snack something once in a while, especially when watching TV or sitting in front of a computer (one way to eliminate this is to be more active and we dont have so much time to snack).
With snacks its usually the expensive stuff that is unhealthy, the big C-s - chips, cookies, candy, crisps, cereals, cakes, chocolates etc. Its hard to stop eating most of them because they consist of mostly sugar. Sugar raises our blood sugar levels and we feel good and full but 20min later when it drops we feel hungry again, which means more eating.

Healthy and much cheaper alternative - fruits, vegetables and berries.
Some of them are cheap all year around and others are cheap only when in season. Off season there is also the frozen alternatives. And if you have a garden you can grow some by yourself :)
These foods contain much less or none of the chemicals that you get from the C-s.
Theyre also much less calorie dense, it means that you can snack a lot more and longer without getting too much excess energy that youre not able to use in your daily activities.

Look at the prices, a full kg of fruits is cheaper than a 200g bar of chocolate or 200g bag of chips.

2nd alternative is to eat proper food so you dont have the need to snack.

Lunch - cheapest way is to cook by yourself, you can do it during the lunch time if you have enough time or cook the night before and heat it the next day.
If both options are not for you then you can eat outside - there you just have to find some cheaper places to save money, theres plenty if you look around.
If you eat proper food then you cant go much wrong by keeping it healthy. Only thing some people avoid is that they dont eat much salad or none at all. Salad is cheap and healthy.

Supper - for the night its good to get some proteins to help body heal itself and change/build new cells. Cottage cheese is good because its cheap and its also alkaline which helps to keep your teeth clean. Some people like to add some extras in their cottage cheese, you can experiment with ingredients if you would like to.
You can eat something else too (alternatives could be black bread/whole wheat bread sandwiches with cheese, fruits/berries/vegetables or same stuff you would eat for lunch) or not eat at all if you dont like to/dont need to.


Drinks- you can save a lot by drinking only tap water (Im not saying that just because I have stocks of Tallinna vesi)
All the sodas and juices in stores are not healthy at all. Only exception is if the juice is fresh pressed.
When we are thirsty we need solvent not the solution for our cells. Sodas and juices will just make us even thirstier because we dont get the solvent our body was asking to get.

Food is a very broad topic and its hard to write short about it, I could probably write a book on the subject. So if anything is unclear or you want to know more then just ask in the comments!