Welcome to my October 2019 Passive Income Update. October was a hectic and travel intensive month (8 flights). But that being said, I loved every single place I got to spend time in (Taiwan, Qatar, Turkey, Bangladesh, Thailand). My passive income in September totalled 1,008.58 EUR (~1117 USD) without any work at all. For the first time, I crossed the 1k mark, which is incredible. How did I get there? More below.

In my September Passive Income Update, I talked about compound interest and how my investment portfolio keeps growing by itself every month – without me adding additional funds. I created a small graph to visualize the growth of my P2P Lending Portfolio over the past 6 months (and this is absolutely without adding new funds!). It’s really crazy!

Value of my P2P Lending Portfolio (Mintos, Swaper, Grupeer, EstateGuru, Crowdestate)
Value of my P2P Lending Portfolio (Mintos, Swaper, Grupeer, EstateGuru, Crowdestate)
Exploring Taiwan’s incredible night markets

Back to the October update. I was on the road for most of the month, about half of it for work, the other half for fun. I spent 11 days in Taiwan and totally fell in love with the country, its people, and its food.

The last few weeks were really busy work-wise. Hence the slighly delayed October post for which I apologize. Over the past weeks, I might have said ‘yes’ to a few too many things at my remote job. Something I want to work on next year is to say more ‘no’ to jobs. Knowing that my passive income can support more 2/3 of my living expenses, I don’t need to work 40-50-60 hour weeks. 👨‍💻

As in previous months, my passive income investment portfolio managed itself this past month. Everything is on auto-pilot and requires no work at all. I ususally log into my accounts once every two weeks just to make sure that the auto-invest is picking up loans.

Now, on to my passive income numbers for October 2019!


October 2019 P2P-Lending Interest Rates
October 2019 P2P-Lending Interest Rates

October 2019 Passive Income Update

My total passive income in October 2019:
– P2P lending: 604.68 EUR
– Real Estate Lending: 34.96 EUR
– ETF Dividends: 96.15 EUR
– Stock Photos/Videos: 272.79 EUR

TOTAL: 1008.58 EUR (~1117 USD)


P2P Lending & Real Estate Lending Update – October 2019

Total Passive Income in October 2019
Total Passive Income from P2P Lending, P2P Real Estate Lending, ETF Dividends and Stock Sales.
P2P Lending PlatformOct'19 Interest IncomeOct'19 XIRRTotal Investment
Mintos€ 317.20411.04%€ 29,000.00
Swaper€ 154.9212.06%€ 14,000.00
Grupeer€ 132.7212.43%€ 12,000.00
Estateguru€ 24.7914.36%€ 2,000.00
Crowdestate€ 10.176.10% € 2,000.00

P2P & Real Estate Lending Overview – October 2019 Passive Income Update

As part of my October 2019 passive income update, here is a quick overview of passive income that I am earning from three (3) P2P Lending and two (2) Real-Estate P2P Lending platforms that I am investing in.


  • Mintos: Mintos remains my favorite platform. Mintos has definitely gotten very popular and the many new investors have brought interest rates down to 11.04%. I updated my Mintos auto-invest portfolio changing the minimum interest rate to 9.5% (still only acceping loan originators with A+, A, A-, B+, and B rankings and with BuyBack guarantee).

    I have a total of 29,000 EUR invested on Mintos which represents 24% of my total investment portfolio. The money is spread across 24 loan originators (all with ratings from A+ to B) in 20 countries, which gives me a good diversification. My interest income from Mintos in October was 317.04 EUR with a self-calculated interest rate of 11.04% p.a.

    If you are new to Mintos, have a look at my Mintos review which includes my auto-invest settings.
Mintos has more than 200,000 P2P Investors worldwide
Mintos has more than 200,000 P2P Investors worldwide

  • Swaper: Due to some cash-drag (money not being reinvested once an old loan has been fully paid back, my interest rate on Swaper dipped in October from 14.08% to 12.06%. While as a “VIP investor” (as I am investing more than 5000 EUR), I am auto-eligible for their 14% interest loans with BuyBack guarantee, at the moment about 23% of my capital (3500+ EUR) is waiting to be invested. In October, I received 154,92 EUR in interest (= 12.06% p.a.).

    Swaper celebrated their 3rd birthday in October. To date more than 7 mio EUR in loans from Poland, Denmark and Spain have been funded through the Swaper platform. I can recommend this recent Video Interview with Swaper‘s CEO & Founder Iveta Bruvele where she shares some interesting background of the company and their future plans.

    What else? All investors signing up through this link will receive a “VIP Swaper Loyalty Bonus” if they invest more than 5000 EUR. This means instead of a 12% profit, you’ll earn 14% from day one! 💸
Swaper celebrates its 3rd birthday
Swaper celebrates its 3rd birthday

  • Grupeer: Grupeer is currently the only platform without cash drag. My 12.000 EUR are fully invested and I received 132,72 EUR interest in October (= 12.43% interest p.a.), which were immediately re-invested (compound interest!) without any cash drag.

    I started investing on Grupeer in January this year. Over the past 10 months, the 12.000 EUR that I invested have grown to 13.000 EUR, which is an incredible result.

    Grupeer continues to grow at around 15% per month, which shows how the P2P Lending industry is growing. This being said, despite the many new investors, plenty of loans are available (all protected with BuyBack guarantee) and Grupeer communicates to their investors that they work hard in order to maintain their “zero default” record.

    What else? Grupeer has a 1% Cashback offer for new Investors that investing at least 100 EUR on the platform. The offer is active until 17 November 2019 and works through this link. Read my updated Grupeer review to see my auto-invest settings and to see what to look out for when investing on Grupeer.
Grupeer has a 1% Cashback offer for new Investors investing at least 100 EUR on the platform. The offer is active until 17 November 2019 and works through this link.

  • EstateGuru: Still the same good performance: Five out of six investments are performing on-time. One investment continues to be delayed by a few days. It appears that the lender makes his payment exactly 30 days after due date. I can live with that as I receive an additional indemnity/penalty payment of 18.25% p.a. to all interest payments that have been overdue for more than 4 days. I am not too worried about the loan as the loan collateral is a first rank mortgage on a residential building with an LTV of 25.6%.

    Most of 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. I recently updated my EstateGuru review in which I explain details as well as show how to receive a 0.5% bonus as a new investor.

    What else? I just saw that EstateGuru has some interesting new loans available and I will invest some of my November salary on EstateGuru.

  • CrowdEstate: 5 out of 7 loans are on-time. 2 loans (with H.M. Seafood OÜ are delayed and it was communicated that the company “is in financial difficulties due to liquidity problems”. My remaining principal is 384 EUR (thanks to broad diversification!) and I am not too worried.

    I have invested 2,000 EUR in CrowdEstate which have been auto-invested in 7 loans with an average interest rate of 11.83 % per year. As I had mentioned in earlier reviews, I prefer EstateGuru over CrowdEstate due to their more stringent diligence and better-secured loans, in return for slightly smaller interest rates.

ExchangeTraded Funds (ETF) Update – October 2019 🥳

Still no sign of a global economic recession when looking at the MSCI World ETF, rather the opposite: My MSCI World ETF incresed in value this past month from 198.58 EUR to 201.75 EUR. 🥳

Finally, I decided to sell my DAX ETF. I initially bought them in 2016 (92 EUR per share) and then added more in in 2018 (104 EUR per share), but realized that a good share of the decision to buy them was home country bias. I sold them in October for 107 EUR per share, which I will now invest in the MSCI World (either all at once or as a savings plan to accomodate for price fluctuations).

Generally, my ETF portfolio has been doing really incredible: This year my ETF portfolio has gained 22.67% in value. Since I started in 2016, the value of my portfolio has increased by 42.37%. In EUR terms, that means that the 63,000 EUR that I invested slowly since 2016, are today valued 76,925.99 EUR and I received an additional 2831 EUR in dividends over the past three years (which I used and spent as passive income).

My ETF Portfolio since beginning of this year (c) justetf.com
My ETF Portfolio since beginning of this year (c) justetf.com
Overview of my current ETF portfolio (c) justetf.com
Overview of my current ETF portfolio (c) justetf.com

That’s it for my October 2019 Passive Income Update! I hope that all of you are enjoy the beauty of this sunny and georgeous fall 🍁. If you like to, please follow my journey on my Facebook Financial Freedom Journey page 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.

All the best and happy November,
Peter 👋