Update on 2nd of January: due to a calculation error in Excel Grupeer, Evenstio and Crowdestor had incorrect interest rates. This is now fixed.

Investment update in December

Grupeer did an action that gave 1% extra buy-back if you invested 2000 EUR. Additionally their oldest Loan originators gave 14% interest on all of their loans. This caused me to invest quite heavily in Grupeer this month, transferring an extra 2100 EUR there.

I decided to end my investments in Kuetzal after some revelations came to light. I had to take a 10% profit cut there, which will lower my passive income for this month. The good news is that my passive income is high enough to take such a loss!

I had the chance to take out one of my startup investments for 200 EUR (as they needed more time to get the full funding), and I decided to do it, as I wanted to lower my exposures to these high risk investments after the bankrupt I saw last month.

Peer to peer taxes

There have been a lot of questions about how peer to peer investments would be taxed. Would an investment in a loan on a platform like Mintos be taxed

a)From the moment the principal and profit is actually written back to my bank account. In this case the money I transfer to Mintos is considered one big loan, and I would not pay taxes until all money I transferred there is written back to my bank account.

b)From the moment the interest is received on Mintos. That would seem more logical, but of course it would be less profitable for me.

Because I was not sure about this, I asked the question to the Belgian tax authorities! Stay tuned for an answer!

I also looked if there would be some way to escape these taxes. Apart from moving abroad I have not found any.

My Portfolio

Apart from additional investments of about 3000 EUR, and my buy back of 900 EUR of Kuetzal I am waiting for to be written back to my bank account I also had a growth on my Funds and ETFs. I realized that peer to peer has now gone above 1/3 of my Portfolio and my ETF, something I heavily believe in to has only reached 4.8%. So for next year I will increase my investments in ETFs to balance out my portfolio more. Even though there might be some market re-balancing, but that is hard to predict.

Lets look into more detail for each of these investment types shall we.

Peer to Peer

In my Portfolio I invested in nine p2p sites. Grupeer and Mintos have the biggest shares, followed by Crowdesector

Changes:

• Requested buy back from Kuetzal for about 900 EUR
• Additional 2300 EUR in Grupeer to take advantage of the december promotion
• Additional 175 EUR in Mintos: despite of the troubles some LO’s had I continue to have great faith in Mintos, because of the large transparency

Investment strategy:

• Preferably Short term loans (24 months max), so I can still get my money out in a reasonable time if needed
• Where investing in consumer loans always with buy back guarantee or some insurance. In this case try to spread over as many loans as possible (e.g. 1000 euro invest 10 EUR in 100 loans)
• Some sites you can invest in real estate or businesses then try to make sure there is always some guarantee behind it, preferably from the site. Limit investments in these to 100 – 200 EUR per loan to spread as much as possible.
• Spread over multiple sites, but at the same time do not sign up at every site you can find
• Try to automate investing where these sites allow it

Passive income

My passive income this month took a bump in the road, as it went to 118 EUR, since I had to take in the 10% buy-back fee from Kuetzal

Detailed list of platforms I have invested in

Crowdestor

My income on Crowdestor as been steadily increasing. My interests is rather low compared to other platforms, but thats also because loans here are larger and the payment sometimes starts after 6 months and is quarterly. Still the interest has gone up slightly ending at 17 EUR this month.
If you sign up on Crowdestor using my link you will get a 1% bonus for the first 90 days

Envestio

Evestio gave me 18 EUR profit this month. Generally this site usually gives large returns. I withdrew some cash because of cash drag earlier this month. Also some new concerns have been raised regarding Envesti

One major concern about Envestio came to me, the new CEO used to work for a company that sold clean energy that came from nowhere. A big scam of course, so its very concerning that this person is now running Envestio. You can see him in this video trying to sell this.

Projects in Envestio still get funded quite fast so that makes me believe right now investors still have confidence, but its something to watch very closely. I hope Evenstio can convince investors soon of its right intentions!

Grupeer

Grupeer income was 76 EUR this month, and it has been going up the fastest. Considering I do have a large portion invested in Grupeer the rise is understandably. Its a good platform with nice returns and I will continue to add more EUR inhere.

Check out my Grupeer review before you decide to invest, and use my referral link if you decide to join Grupeer.

Iuvo group

I decided to try out Iuvo group. My first impressions is that I got a lot of delayed payments really fast. There is also no interest on late payments in case of buyback. On the other hand the LOs seem decent quality, but still can the platform really give us the interest it promises? In my screen I get promised a 12% return almost, and I am just wondering how they plan to do that considering the investments I made.

The autoinvest was a nightmare as you need to set up many different rules. I originally intended to invest 2500 EUR, but because of all these things I kept it to a lower 240 EUR to test the platform. I hope I am to quick to judge and I will get the advertised return.

Kuetzal

Unfortunately some concerns were raised forcing me to request a buy-back from Kuetzal. A rather extreme measure.

What is currently very concerning for the survival of the platform is that there have been no new investments in the projects on the platform right now. I have been watching the projects closely and not 1 EUR was added as an investment. Thats very concerning for the future of the platform. I hope the platform has the right intentions and will survive the troubles ahead.

Mintos

Mintos had some LOs in Kosovo failing this month. Although all loans of these LO’s are secured and will be paid back, it was a few difficult days. Mintos dropped slightly to 44 EUR. I assume the Christmas holidays are causing more late payments, and also the new pending payment option of Mintos is causing an additional delay.

Mintos used to give people the interests on loans as soon as the borrowers had paid, now they only give the interest when Mintos actually receives the amounts on their account. This could delay interests for an additional 1-2 weeks. Its not really a positive change for investors, but even so Mintos remains one of my favorite platforms because of large transparency.

I also updated my auto invest with Mintos to remove any LO’s that do not offer interest or penalty’s on late payments.

Contact me for referral links on Mintos for a 1% bonus the first 30 days

Monethera

Monethera gave me about 21 EUR this month. Its a really nice income for the limited (1500 EUR) investment I did here. At the same time I need to remember this is one of my more riskier investments. and I might consider lowering my stake in Monethera slightly. Also the lack of transparancy is bothering me. They offer buy-back guarantees but do they really have the funds to cover it?

Neo Finance

I am currently withdrawing my money from this platform. As you can see the first month it made me -150 EUR, on an investment of about 1500 EUR that was quite a lot, although I do expect it will continue to make me a steadily 15-20 EUR per month the next years. That also means it will take a while before I manage to get all money out.

Interest on NeoFinance was 17 EUR this month. I need an additional 105 EUR to be in actual profit on this platform. At the same time I must admit I do feel very secure that the income will continue to come for a few more years.

If you don’t mind to go for long term investments then use my link to invest in NeoFinance and get +1% income the first year.

Peerberry

Peerberry has nice returns. I had to withdraw some cash because of cash drag, that explains the small bump in income, but Im quite happy about Peerberry as it gave me another nice 22 EUR return this month.

TFGCrowd

TFGCrowd income has been rising also and is now at 18 EUR / Month, currently it is giving the highest income return on investment, although I also consider it one of the more riskier platforms.

ETFs

My ETFs did not change much, I have not bought extra to my investments in Vanguard SP 500 Didivend ETF remain stable with another steady rise this month gaining 57 EUR in value.

I further increased my transfer to my trading bank account, now a total of 750 EUR / month and plan to increase it further so I can build up my ETFs faster and diversify. I mentioned I was looking for another ETF the iShares World traded on Amsterdam is an option to purchase extra from.

Keytrade Funds

It was a great month for my Keytrade fund as they have Grown this month with 425 EUR!

Retirement funds

I decided not to update my retirement funds all the time since for most of the funds I get an update just once a year, so I will update it also just once a year. This is from November 2019.

Startups

I had the chance to cancel investment in one startup as it could’t get enough funding. A video contracting app. I decided to cancel it as I wanted more short term investments.

Wins / losses this month

• My passive income has dropped to 97 EUR after taxes
• My keytrade funds gained 425 EUR
• I pulled back investments from Kuetzal costing me 10% buy in fee (about 100 EUR)
• Minor profit for my ETFs, 57 EUR this month
• So in total I gained almost 500 EUR (unrealized) this month or a 0.6% increase. And that despite of pulling out investments in Kuetzal
• My blog got over 400 page views this month! A nice and new record.

What is next?

I will continue to invest 50/50 in ETFs / p2p going forward. I also continue my search for a house that you can read all about here

I decided not to close my keyplan for now as it seems to be earning well, and I figured its good to keep some diversification.

I will be publishing the goals I have for 2020 soon so stay tuned!

Read my update on November update here if you would like to compare. I will also post a savings rate update soon! Subscribe and make sure you don’t miss any of my monthly portfolio updates!