February was a great month which I spent chasing the sun in Turkey, Austria, Italy and Germany. I enjoyed what felt like the most perfect everlasting spring ☀️ with a mix of snowboarding, snowkiting, running, traveling, visiting friends and family…. and working remotely!
Snowkiting in Austria.
My passive income in February 2020 was 977.69 EUR (~1085.87 USD) which is my third-highest monthly passive income in history. *celebrate*
Corona Virus, Global Economy, and P2P market. While the European P2P market has “recovered” from the shakeup in January and many platforms have indeed become more transparent and more responsive – as we investors have become more careful, the global outbreak of the Coronavirus has caused an upheaval in all stock markets around the world. My MSCI World ETF has been affected and lost in value – which sounded terrifying at first, but was actually good news. More below.
On to my passive income numbers for this past month!
March 2020 Passive Income Investment Portfolio
March 2020 Passive Income Update
My total passive income in February 2019: – P2P lending: 630.30 EUR – Real Estate Lending: 46.15 EUR – ETF Dividends: 98.57 EUR – Stock Photos/Videos: 202.67 EUR TOTAL: 977,69 EUR (~1085.87 USD)
P2P Lending & Real Estate Lending Update – March 2020
Total Passive Income from P2P Lending, P2P Real Estate Lending, ETF Dividends and Stock Sales.
The Dolomites are my favorite region in the Alps. Summer as Winter.
P2P & Real Estate Lending Overview – March 2020 Passive Income Update
As part of my March 2020 passive income update, here is a quick overview of passive income that I was earning this past month from four (4) P2P Lending and two (2) Real-Estate P2P Lending platforms that I am investing in.
Mintos: With 32,100 EUR auto-invested on Mintos in loans from 24 loan originators (all with ratings from A+ to B) in 20 countries, my interest income from Mintos in February was 303.24 EUR (=self-calculated interest rate of 9.41% p.a.).
While other platforms that I am invested in (Swaper, Grupeer, Twino) provide slightly higher interest rates, Mintos is and remains my absolute favorite P2P lending platform due to its incredible diversification possibilities and its historical performance.
Mintos is by far the biggest P2P marketplace in the European P2P Lending market (market share of around 45%) which allows me as an investor to greatly diversify my investments in terms of country, loan originator, duration, rating, etc. within the platform itself.
I passionately follow Mintos grow and thrive. Within the last year, the value of loans funded through Mintos more than tripled to 4.3 billion Euro (3x increase), invested by the more than 234.000 investors (2.3x increase). A team of 180 Mintos staff members are supporting their global operations (3x increase).
This past month I adjusted my Mintos auto-invest portfolio slightly to auto-invest in loans starting from 10.5% (only accepting loan originators with A+, A, A-, B+, and B rankings and with BuyBack guarantee). If you are new to Mintos, have a look at my Mintos review which includes my auto-invest settings.
Swaper:A great month on Swaper! Most of my 9,000 EUR are invested and my interest rate on Swaper in February reached a whopping 12.90% p.a. (= 118,12 EUR in earnings in February) which is really unbeatable at the moment.
Given that Swaper specializes on short-term loans (14 and 30-day loans which are all at 12/14% interest p.a.), a certain amount of cash drag (in my case 10-20%) is unavoidable as loans are constantly being repaid and new loans have to be auto-invested in. Looking at my historical interest rates (see graphic below), one can see that even with a bit of cash-drag, Swaper performs great.
Also, following my due diligence “homework” in January when I looked at all platforms that I am currently investing in, my feeling with Swaper remains positive. If anything, I am thinking of increasing my investments on the platform this year.
What else? Swaper continues its promotion that all investors signing up through this link will receive a “VIP Swaper Loyalty Bonus” if they invest more than 5000 EUR for three consecutive months! This means instead of a 12% profit, you’ll earn 14% if your account balance is above 5000 EUR for three consecutive months!
My Swaper monthly income and interest rates
Grupeer:Update 28 March 2020: It appears that Grupeer is currently facing issues/delays with processing withdrawals from their platform, most probably due to the global COVID-19 crisis. I asked for clarifications from their team and will update this article as soon as I have more news. Until then, I can not recommend to invest on Grupeer.
Twino: I returned to Twino with 5.000 EUR in December last year – and so far things have worked out well. 3,800 EUR are already auto-invested and the remaining 1,200 EUR will hopefully be auto-invested soon. My February return on Twino was 35,25 EUR in interest payments (= 8.39% interest p.a.).
While interest rates on Twino are lower than on other platforms, I see Twino as a great platform to diversify my portfolio. Similar to Swaper, Twino specializes in short-term loans (30-day loans) and provides payback guarantee. However, different from Swaper, most of the loans on Twino are paying only 10% interest p.a..
According to P2P Marketdata, Twino is the second largest P2P Lending Platform in the European Market (after Mintos) with a market share of around 6 percent. Twino has been operating since 2009 and currently employs more than 50 employees.
What else? I will update my Twino Review over the coming weeks.
Twino average interest rates by loan duration (c) Twino
EstateGuru: Another excellent month for EstateGuru. After I increased my investments on EstateGuru to 5.000 EUR in December last year, I am fully invested in 15 real estate projects in Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Lithuania.
All 15 projects are performing on time. My average interest rate on EstateGuru is 10.81% p.a. which is great. For me EstateGuru is a great platform to diversify my risk by investing in real estate loans that are either secured with a first-rank mortgage (physical security), personal guarantees, or are backed with a mortgage.
As I mentioned in previous posts, almost all my loans on EstateGuru are either bullet or full bullet loans, which means that either principals or both interest+principals are being paid in full at the end of the loan period. Unfortunately, that means that some months I receive large interest and principal payments, some months I receive nothing. In February, I received 12.21 EUR in interest payments.
What else? My EstateGuru review explains details as well as shows how to receive a 0.5% bonus as a new investor. I just saw that EstateGuru has some new loans available (10.5% p.a. & 12.00% p.a.).
My EstateGuru portfolio as of 1 March 2020 (c) EstateGuru
CrowdEstate:As I have mentioned in previous posts, my experience on CrowdEstate is negative and I am on my way out. 3 out of 8 projects are significantly delayed and bankruptcy has been filed against one borrower (H.M Seafood OÜ) for non-payment of debts and the refinancing planned by the sponsor to repay another of my loans failed (Kreutzwaldi 59c, 65610 Võru (IX)).
Overall I am not satisfied with the performance of the CrowdEstate platform, especially in comparison to EstateGuru, which is running like a charm.
I suspended my auto-invest on CrowdEstate in January and withdrew my first 600 EUR in early February. The transfer arrived the next day, which was great. After my withdrawal, I still have a total of 1,400 EUR invested in CrowdEstate, which I will slowly withdraw as princial and interest payments are arriving.
The Dolomites during sunset. UNESCO World Heritage for a good reason.
Exchange–Traded Funds (ETF) Update – March 2020 🥳
My decision to start investing in the MSCI World ETF back in 2016 was one of the best decisions of my life. I am explaining details in my ETF portfolio post, but in a nutshell, I believe there is no better and more cost-effective way to save & invest long term (e.g. for retirement) while earning passive income from dividends.
Since I started investing in the MSCI World ETF in 2016, the value of the ETF has increased by 38.52%. The shares that I bought originally for 145.09 EUR a piece are today valued 198.50 EUR. February was a dividend month and I received 309,96 EUR in dividends.
Coronavirus and my ETF portfolio
The spread of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) is severely affecting global economies and the 1600+ companies under the MSCI World are affected just as much. The UBS MSCI World that I have invested in since 2016 has dropped in value from 224 EUR to 194 EUR per ETF over the past 4 weeks. In total numbers, that means that my ETF portfolio (~69,000 EUR) has lost 7.44% of its value in February.
My ETF Portfolio since beginning of this year (c) justetf.com
At first, this looked like very bad news. But it was actually the opposite. It was the perfect opportunity for me to double down and to invest and buy more MSCI World ETF at a significantly lower price. In fact, in my most recent three monthly summaries I mentioned that I had been waiting for a good moment to buy ETFs at a lower price. This moment is now.
That means that I gave myself another two weeks to watch the MSCI World ETF to see if the prices are dropping any further. Once I see that prices are going up again, I will invest an additional 10,000-15,000 EUR in MSCI World ETF shares.🥳
Performance chart of MSCI World UCITS ETF (c) justetf.com
My 1,000 EUR monthly ETF savings plan
My 1,000 EUR monthly ETF savings plan which I talked about in my January Blog Post,runs in the background and keeps buying MSCI World ETFs worth 1000 EUR on the first of every month. More about my ETF savings plan and why it was such a great idea to go back to an automated saving plan in this blog post.
Overview of my current ETF portfolio (c) justetf.com
Antalya and its beautiful old town and Marina
That’s it for my March 2020 Passive Income Update! If you are interested, please follow my journey on my Facebook page Financial Freedom Journey for more frequent updates. And as always: If you have any questions or comments, please pop them in the comment section below. Or get in touch via Facebook or Email.
