Stock buy!

Just bought 52 shares of HCP at the price of 35,31 USD per share. Its a strong dividend champion that has increased its dividends for 30 years straight at an average rate of 3,1% per year. Current yield is over 6%
From now on I only have my eyes on dividend champions, contenders and a few other strong companies like Apple for example. I wont be buying any baltic stocks for a while because of a lack of their dividend strategies.

Oil prices have dropped again so I might get some more companies related to that as the prices have dropped. I dont like that I have a big amount of my stocks in the energy industry already though.

Month summary: November 2015

Another month that went by quite fast. Lets get straight to the numbers.

I managed to save 74,9% of my income which is worse than previous months, the reason is some unneccessary(some were actually necessary as well) spendings. Next month should be much better because Ive been reading www.mrmoneymustache.com blog and I got some inspiration from there, for example Im driving a lot less now and using my bike to go to work as often as possible :)

Also a good choice as Im still trying to lose some bodyfat, Im still not under 10% but I still have 1 more month to accomplish my goal :)

Passive incomes

Social lending
Bondora generated 18,29 EUR of income and Im definately not adding any more money into the platform, not sure if I will start taking out though.

Mintos made me 19,09 EUR , I added 200 EUR there this month and I will probably add some more money soon. I really like the buyback guarantee they give for a lot of the loans :)

Stocks paid 4,94 EUR dividends and all of it was from BBEP. Next month should be better because CVX will pay its quarterly dividends :)

And finally 16 EUR  from some other loans.

 

My portfolio, all investments combined is now worth almost 20k! Standing at 19605 EUR

 

One more step closer to being financially free :)

How was your month?

Protein fluff aka low calorie, cheap snack

Id like to share a simple recipe. I like it a lot because its low calorie and high protein which is perfect for someone like me who likes to eat a lot not just snack some small bites while dieting to lose fat.

You can experiment with different ingredients, careful though because too many berries can make it quite expensive.
Have fun experimenting!

Stock buy!

This time I bought 37 shares of ONEOK (OKE) at the price of 34,42 USD per share with a 7,15% yield. The company has increased its dividend for 13 years straight and hopefully continues to do so.
The stock prices in the energy sector are just too sweet at the moment to not buy them. Although it would be good to diversify my portfolio between different sectors a bit more. Theres a few stocks that I would really like to buy in the future, on of them is Coca-Cola company (KO) for example and other companies that have a good dividend growth rate.  Dividend growth rate is actually one of the main things I look in a company before buying their stock, Its perfect to have your passive income rise 5-10% every year without adding any stocks in your portfolio.

This month I will do at least 1 more stock buy, Ill check for something with a good price at the given moment.

Month summary: October 2015

October went by really fast, I almost even didnt notice when the month was already over.
I finally made myself a proper plan to lose that extra fat, I wasnt going anywhere without a plan but Ill talk about this and some nice low calorie snacks in another post :)

Lets look at the financial side now.
I managed to save 74% of my income in October. Worse than last month but its because I did some emotional buys but I dont regret them as I like to sometimes buy stuff too not just save. Its good to save for the future but you have to live in the moment as well not only think about the future.

Passive incomes

Bondora made me 23,26 EUR which is a new record :) And I didnt invest any extra money on the platform as they change something all the time and I dont want to read about all the changes so often. I want it to be passive.

Mintos hit a new record as well with 21,46 EUR. On that platform I actually added 200 EUR in October and I will get some more on it in the future as I really like the buyback system and the new Georgian 1 month loans with 12% interest are really nice as well.

Estateguru got me 12,63 EUR. I didnt add any extra money but I do have 400 EUR sitting on my account waiting for a project. I like the ones paying monthly interest more so I havent invested it yet.

Stocks paid me 4,8 EUR  dividends again. The only one paying was BBEP. I also bought 130 shares of TVEAT on the baltic market at the price of 13,6 EUR per share. This should add 117 EUR extra yearly income as dividends.

And one other loan got me 16 EUR of interest.

 

Its nice to see that the passive incomes are growing and growing! 

My portfolio stands at 16595 EUR and its mostly in stocks (67%):

Hopefully next month will be even better!

Stock buy!

Another stock buy:)

I bought some more shares, 130 to be exact of Tallinna Vesi (TVEAT) at the price of 13,6 EUR per share. This increased my monthly dividend income by another 10 EUR.

Lets see what the prices will do but my next buy will probably be on the US market. Oh and I added 200 EUR to mintos a few days ago. I really like the buyback guarantee they have.

Month summary: September 2015

Summer is over and weather is getting colder... I got to feel some last summer warmth in Hungary where it still was +28C. Of course it started raining when I arrived and it also rained when I had my competition. After all it was still a very fun trip which motivated me to start training harder again and compete in higher level :)

Lets look at the investments now.

At first my savings rate was at 86,7% which is good because I had to repair my car this month and the trip to Hungary cost a bit as well (I managed to save on food during the trip as food in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia was MUCH cheaper). Savings rate is high because I managed to earn more in september than average - had some bike shows and worked a lot as always.

Lets look at the passive incomes!

Lets start with P2P loans. In bondora I earned 21,8 EUR and mintos made me 17,52 EUR. Both of them are new highs for me. I might add some more money into those sites but I havent decided on it yet.
Estateguru made me 5,63 EUR as last month, next month there is an increase expected as I invested into one other project in august.
And one other loan paid me 16 EUR interest, this one will continue for another 17 months.

From stocks I got 4,8 EUR dividends from BBEP.
I bought 325 shares of TKM1T from the baltic stock market, they will pay dividends once per year so I can expect a bigger pay in spring. Chevron corp. will pay 4x per year so I can expect dividend payment sooner too as I bought 19 shares of CVX- this buy also achieved one of my goals to invest total 13000 EUR this year, I have invested over 15 000 now! Im planning to buy more dividend stocks from the baltic and US market every month now. Ill buy whatever is cheap at the given moment.

Total passive income was 65,7 EUR for September which is a good improvemet over August.

 

My portfolio stands at 15070,62 EUR and its divided mostly into stocks

 

Lets see where I will invest next month. I dont have a strict plan at the moment other than buying mostly stocks but I might put some more into mintos and/or bondora and/or estateguru. Only plan is to keep investing :) and continue doing it aggressively.

 

Competition in Hungary

Last sunday I was at a competition in Debrecen, Hungary. I didnt know anything about the comp until the organizer sent me an invitation. I decided to go and it was very motivating for me.
It was raining all morning and other classes had to ride in rain. Luckily for the Elite class riders the rain stopped and sections started to dry up, some of them were still quite slippery though.

Slippery sections and rain wasnt as big problem as was my forearms. I got really really strong arm pump and it was just impossible to ride. I felt like I cant use the brakes and every second my grip will slip and I will crash. That cost me a lot of points but fortunately I still made it into the finals.
I drank a lot of water and rest my forearms and I managed to climb from 6th to 5th position in the final. It was an ok result but I know that I could be on the 2nd place without the forearm problem. But I can only blame myself for not training my forearm stamina, Ive had this problem before but not as bad. First place would have been impossible for me as the winner Hegedus Laszlo was just too strong as he should be being the top 4 rider in Europe.

Now Im highly motivated for the next season and I will prepare for it much better, I already made myself an 8 month training plan. In 2016 I want to ride as many world cups and probably the world championships as well.

A video of one of the sections

Time to train hard!

Stock buy!

Yesterday I made 2nd stock buy this month. I bought 19 shares of Chevron corporation (CVX) for the price of 77,33 USD per share. Now I have 2 companies from the energy sector. A lot of companies from that sector have good prices at the moment. And that means the current dividend yield is also good at 5,5%
Chevron has raised its dividends for over 25 consequtive years already so thats good news :)
Maybe Ill buy more of it in a few months, we will see. Now I just need to hold the current ones.

Stock buy!

A few days ago I bought some more TKM1T from baltic market.
I got 180 shares for 6.15EUR
and 145 shares for 6.14
Total 325 shares with a 6,5% yield.
I achieved one of my this years goals to get at least 8000 EUR worth of stocks in my portfolio and Im planning to buy more soon :)
I prefer stocks over other investments in my portfolio because I could always sell them easily (price might be lower though but its still possible to sell them) and I like to invest in companies instead of giving out loans for people to buy stuff they dont need (all loans are not taken on that purpose but a big chunk of them are).
Anyway Ill keep my eyes open for some other stocks soon, Im planning to buy some every month or after every 2 months. And not only from the baltic market so the choice of stocks is huge :)

Legs getting stronger :)

Progress

Legs are getting stronger and vertical jump is improving!
September goals are to lose a bit of weight as Ive been lacking discipline in the end of August...
Current weight is 99kg which is a bit too much, I want to get down to 95-96kg.
Im still hitting the gym once per week and doing bodyweight work 2-3x per week. Also some cardio and of course trials training.
Ive gained some motivation again for some serious training so everything should go uphill now :)

Keep training!

Month summary: August 2015

August went by really fast and finally there were some days with proper summer weather. Im the one who prefers at least 25+ C though, +30C would be perfect :) Maybe I live in the wrong country? I dont think so because I like it here, I like the change of weather but Id prefer shorter winters and warmer summers. Winters are short at the moment but unfortunately summers too.

Enough of weather, lets talk about savings in August now. Savings rate was 85% but I didnt save much more, just had some more extra work which increased active incomes.

My favourite part - passive incomes.

Lets start with Bondora. I received 20,24 EUR interest from there. I added 140 EUR of extra money in my portfolio and had a plan to add around as much monthly until the end of 2015 but as they made some changes again, Im not so sure. I havent looked into the changes yet so I dont know what to expect but Id like my portfolio to be as passive as possible. If I have to learn about changes all the time then it becomes like an active job and I dont like it.

Im much happier with Mintos, I didnt add any money this month but probably will in September. I received 16,03 EUR in interest and late payment fees. I think that a few mogo loans went 60+ days late and I got my money instantly back, not sure where I can cofirm it on the site though.

From Estateguru I received 5,63 EUR of interest and I added 400 EUR to a new project. So far all good with Estateguru and I really like that all the loans are for only 8-18 months. In bondora your money is stuck for 60 months for comparison. Anyway Ill probably add some more money on my account for new projects as they seem to fill up very fast and if you dont have any free money on your account then you might miss your chance to invest in new project.

And finally the dividends. I received 4,8 EUR from BBEP, this is also the only company in my portfolio that pays dividends monthly.
To increase my dividend incomes I bought some more stocks in August. I added 324 shares of TKM1T at the price of 6,16 EUR per share with 6,49% dividend yield. Lets see how the prices change in September but I definately want some more dividend paying stocks from the baltic market.

In August I received a total of 46,70 EUR in passive incomes. Which is a bit more than 9% of my set first level of financial independence.

Total I have invested 11779,7 EUR which is really close to my 2015 total goal of 13k.

And a graph to show how my investments are divided.

 I will continue very aggressive investing at least until 2016 summer but probably even longer. I think that its important to be as aggressive as possible in the beginning. When passive incomes are bigger then you can slow down a bit as the passive incomes itself will build up your portfolio nicely :)

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!

Current training plan

My main goal is to get more POWERFUL, to do that I need to increase my relative strength. Which means shredding off excess fat (that stuff only glues me on the ground) and get stronger while not increasing too much muscle mass.

I measure my bodyfat twice every week to see where Im at, at the moment im at 12% so getting under 10% is not very far. Should be just a few weeks away :)

My current week plan looks like this:

Strength training

Monday - heavy lifting in the gym
Single leg squats 6x3
hamstring curls 3x10
bench press 4x10
weighted pull ups 4x8
cable flies 3x12
weighted rows with cable 3x12

and some assistance excercises for arms, shoulders and core

Wednesday and Friday

As its summer I like to train outside as much as possible so on these 2 days im doing bodyweight work.

Pull ups 4x8
dips 4x8
handstand pushups 4x8
Interval sprinting for 8-12min

On these I progress with excercise variations

Cardio

On wednesday and saturday mornings I ride with my road bike for an hour.

Trial

Monday morning and thursday night is technique training
On tuesdays I ride long sections and on every other day I ride as much as I can/want to for fun :)

A few videos of this weeks strength training:

 

Another stock buy

Last six months the oil supply has been bigger than demand which has caused the oil drilling companies to crash hard (especially the ones using offshore platforms as their expenses are still the same, a few have even stopped paying out dividends) . Ive decided to take the risk and buy small amount of Breitburn Energy Partners LP stocks. I bought 150 shares at the price of 4,35 USD. Current dividend yield should be around 11% but if the oil prices recover (just raised the demand by tanking my car full hehe) then I should be earning a lot more. It will take time though, all I need now is some patience.

Stock buy

A few days ago I bought 1200 shares of Silvano fashion group at the price of 1,43 EUR per share. That should give me dividend yield of 7%. It was a bit risky buy because the company sells its products mainly in Ukraine and Russia and the situation there is not the best. This has also brought the price down for the stock. Hopefully the situation gets better and the stock will recover.
Good thing is that they will also pay dividends already this month :)

Month summary: June 2015

June was a busy month and went by really fast.

First lets see how am I doing in the 50% savings club, I managed to save 83,4% of my income which is a really really good result :)

Passive incomes!

In bondora I got 22,72 interest, not much more to say about it, I still have more bankrupt loans than I have gained interest in the 8 months Ive invested there. The system was a bit different when I started and I gave out big chunks of money to wrong lenders :(
I dont plan to add any more money into bondora yet, Ill see how the current portfolio performs for a while.

I also started to invest in Mintos. I put 700 EUR in there at start and gained 1,32 EUR interest in June. So far I really like it and I plan to add more money in there.

I didnt gain any dividends in June but I bought 130 shares of Tallinna vesi at the price of 13,5EUR which should give dividend yield of 6,7%. Im definitely going to buy more of that stock when the price will drop a bit more.

600 EUR went also into estateguru to Pakri project, it should raise my passive income 5,6 EUR every month.

Total passive income was 24,04 EUR which is around 7 EUR more than last month. Small sums but Im investing quite aggressively now and the incomes should change a lot in the upcoming months!

Stay tuned!