Saturday 8 February 2020

Regrets...

Broken Heart
To pinch the lines from the classic Frank Sinatra song... Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention.

I am not finally divorced! A 2.5 years marriage leading to a 2 years divorce proceeding and I am now out on the other side. It went ugly. As an explanation for how ugly... I own a summer house together with family members in Sweden. Before I got married I demanded that a prenuptial agreement had to be made regarding this house to protect the rest of my family members. She signed it, it was sent in and registered at the tax office in Sweden. Her lawyer managed to twist it into that the document had not been created according to German regulation and was therefore not valid. And, funnily enough, according to German regulation he is correct in that statement. This means... if you get married in Europe with another European and you are potentially moving around in different European countries then you must make sure that you, with your agreement, have cowered the regulation according to each country. Just to be safe!

Another cold shower that I received from the German legal system was that not only are verbal agreements not viable but also written. Is that not sick?! If a notary has not been present then the agreement will always be void in the eyes of the law. This means that the family owned SMEs in Germany that operates according to a firm handshake and whatever they promised will be fulfilled (I love them for that! And they are making exceptionally great products) but that is according to German law a joke and void. Very fascinating!

Anyway... the divorce is now finalised. I have paid my dues to my ex-wife, I've paid my dues to the lawyer and I'm only waiting from the invoice from the court ~3k EUR but it has already been set aside. The overall costs from this 2.5 years marriage became ~46k EUR.

So now finally, finally, I will be able to start investing again!

During the cleansing operation I paid off all my debts so no more student loan, no more mortgage on my summerhouse (thinking about buying an apartment if I stay here in the UK so then I will get a mortgage again but it is not written in stone).

This means that my stock portfolio has been significantly reduced compared to what it was in 2018. It will take time to sort it all out so please bare with me a little and it will be a very sad moment when I make that first post regarding my stock portfolio.

If you feel like it then please guess how much of my stock portfolio is left?

Life is good!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for coming back!! I have been checking your blog regularly and happy to find out now that you are still committed to investing. Sorry to hear all your suffering, hope it brings you something positive after all.

Anonymous said...

Hi Contrarian Investor,

First let me say that I am very sorry to hear what you are going thru in your personal life, I hope everything gets sorted out!

Also thanks for a very good blog!!

BR JEA

Anonymous said...

Hello Fredrik

It's nice to hear from you again. Im very curious what your portfolio look like now after almost 3 years ... Good luck

Anonymous said...

Hello

It will be nice to hear from you soon :)

Best Regards

Fredrik von Oberhausen said...

Thanks for you kind words! Everything is sorted. Got the paper saying so and there are no further payments either to ex-wife, lawyers or to the court. This also includes pensions.

Woops, in the meantime I have forgotten how blogger is working with the publication of comments so I guess there are more things to get "back in the saddle " on.

I have now posted what the portfolio looks like. There are no new exciting holdings and I will now start to go through the companies that are left to see if I should still have them in my portfolio. As I think I mentioned somewhere I will in the near future invest ~2k in the mixed ETFs and ~2k on the stock market which might every now and then also be in ETFs.