Financial summary: December 2019

This month I learned more about diversification and the key action was to start spreading my investments across different instruments, i.e. I will avoid putting all of my money into P2P platforms. Given that I’ve already done a bit of research into Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) that is where I will look to divert some of my income.

P2P income

December saw increasing returns after the deposits of the previous months.

gosavy.com

I’m moving out of this platform due to a lot of defaulted loans. The returns are “good”, because of late payment interest that I’m receiving for loans that do not show up in the total anymore and are considered “lost”.

finbee.lt

I’ve already invested a lot into the FinBee platform and I think it’s amazing. After reading more about diversification I will aim to spread out my money among several platforms a bit more equally and will therefore stop adding money to finbee even though I really want to.

paskoluklubas.lt

I’m on the fence about this platform due to an increasing number of bad loans and the returns being just below my expected 1% per month. I want to keep some money in just so that I don’t put all of my eggs in one basket, but I won’t be putting in more money for now.

crowdestor.com

My investments range from €500 to €1,000 and I’d like to keep them this low, but currently there’s no auto-invest functionality, which is really annoying. I’m bad at remembering to regularly check-in. However, I’m glad that at least some (not all) projects are big enough so that if I log in a couple of days after the project has been launched it is not fully funded. Other than that, the platform has received an update to looks and remains a pleasure to use.

This month the returns have been a bit disappointing, so will continue monitoring the platform to see how it does over time. May wait until they implement auto-invest functionality before making further investments.

envestio.com

The returns this month have been above my expected 1% per month, which is really nice! However, the projects are still slow to come on this platform and there is no auto-invest functionality, so it’s really frustrating. I will not add any more money to this platform before the number of regularly added projects picks up and/or auto-invest functionality is implemented and/or my circumstances change.

kuetzal.com

In December Jorgen from financiallyfree.eu published a blog post detailing his concerns about Kuetzal. Given that I’ve started investing in Kuetzal on his recommendation, I will also stop investing for the moment to see how the situation develops and will be redirecting all of the interest to other platforms. I won’t be exercising the buyback option because all of my invetments are relatively small (€1,000 or less with 1 exception) with a short time duration (<24 months).

swaper.com

The cashdrag hasn’t disappeared and continuously floats at around £500 to £1,000. The interest isn’t terribly exciting either, so will continue monitoring the situation.

grupper.com

Interest I’ve received from this platform was much lower than I expected. Will continue monitoring the situation this month to see whether it improves. If it doesn’t will need to make arrangements.

mintos.com

I’m moving out from this platform because I no longer have additional pounds to invest due to my recent change in income (more on this here). The platform was also struggling to generate enough pound loans and eventually completely stopped issuing them.

fundingcircle.com (ISA and non-ISA)

I’m moving out from this platform because I no longer have additional pounds to invest due to my recent change in income (more on this here).

fundingsecure.com (ISA and non-ISA)

I was moving out from this platform because I no longer had additional pounds to invest due to my recent change in income (more on this here), but fundingsecure.com went into adiministration. The FAQs about the administration process are being regularly updated on their website, but it is still unclear as to what’s going to happen with my investments. For the time being I will consider the entire portfolio with fundingsecure.com at risk. However, the accrued interest amounts displayed in the platform continue increasing, so I will carry on recording it.

Primary income

• +£1,136.43Stock options
• +£2,824.27Salary
• +£345.75Pension
• +£250.00Tax refund on SIPP contributions
• =£4,556.45

Stock options at Nested.com

The amount of pounds I receive in stock options went up because of my recent decision to sacrifice part of my salary for additional stock options. This month the amount is lower than the one on a previous, because I’ve noticed that vesting happens on the 1st of the month, so I was recording it for the wrong month. Next month it should go back up to the same amount.

Pension

I will aim to make full use of the £40,000 annual allowance, but won’t worry too much about maxing out my carry-forward as there’s still plenty of time to reach the £1,055,000 lifetime allowance.

AJ Bell

• +£22,933.36Start
• +£436.49Growth
• +£250.00Government contribution
• =£23,619.85

Royal London

I haven’t had a chance to sort out my investments here yet, so will aim to do so this month.

Cashflow for the month

• +£4,556.45Primary income
• +£1,452.96P2P income
• -£2,228.40Expenses
• =£3,781.01

As expected, expenses during December were very low, so we managed to get a good saving rate even with the adjusted stock option timing.