Summary of April 2023

Summary of April 2023

Ukraine is on an offense now which is great news! Pity that lives are still lost every day and so close to us. When I was back home in Sweden for a week to sort out a van I managed to go to Walpurgis night (Valborgsmassoafton), which I've not done for the last 20+ years. The deaconess held a lovely speech about the Ukrainians struggle and how many had arrived to Sweden and once their region was liberated again they went back home. They are strong and they will persevere!

The reason for me being back home as I also wrote in a pretty long response in the Summary of March 2023 was to buy a van and to drive it back to the UK so that I can bring back my stuff and during the summer convert it into a functional camping van for my journey towards the south of Europe. I hope I can start it in August but it might be delayed. On my way south I'm hoping to visit friends of mine (so I can shower and fill up with fresh water also!) since afterwards they will have to come and see me if they want to due to my future travelling budget will be very limited. Good news are property prices have started to drop all over Europe so it's a pretty good moment to do what I'm planning to do next. People are feeling the squeeze of the increased interest rates, even though the job market, at least in the UK, is still very strong. Massive droughts in the south of Europe, Spain in particular, which makes living on rainwater all the more interesting if it can be accomplished.

The work project I've been pushing has gone very well and I've created a lot of connections in the field which is excellent and I'm feeling content walking away. My colleagues have not yet understood/accepted that I'm leaving which is a bit funny. They want to hold me on as a consultant which I might accept to continue to help them a bit also in the future. This will require me to set up a company in Sweden which I will then not take out any salary from but only "dividends" on the profits if there are any. I doubt the consultancy agreement will run for more than one year and after that they should be able to stand on their own two feet also without me.

My final salary will arrive in 17 days and then I need to file a P85 to HMRC due to leaving the UK. I hope this will give me back a bit of money since I'm receiving only two salaries in the new UK tax year and my tax rate has been calculated on me receiving the salary for a full year. I also have some remaining holidays, 10 or so, which I will also get paid out as salary.

I know that all of you are highly clever individuals but I just want to make it as a crystal clear statement. That I will now do F.I.R.E is NOT because I've been a great investor. I truly have not been and I've done so many mistakes that's costed me dearly. It is purely down to low cost living, acceptable salary and that I'm a great saver on the stock market. I wish I would have been a great investor with 20% increase each year but I'm not and I have not so maybe there is something to take onboard from this but I leave that with you.

For the previous summary please visit Summary of March 2023.

The total invested value is now at: 362,717 €. A minor monthly investment was made in ETF Mix with fresh cash and more substantial into ETF S&P500 and ETF All-World from Vanguard.

The value of the portfolio is today: 494,606 € and I have 2,833 € in cash on my broker accounts. I have realised gains of 6,471 € and unrealised of 131,889 € (27%) which is not good enough. My ETFs are now up at a value of 73% of my portfolio.

DAX is now up to 15,914 points which means that it has increased by 1.8% since the previous summary and my own portfolio has decreased by -1.7% in the same time period.

Conclusion: DAX once again had a good month while I did not. Today it hardly makes any sense to compare myself to DAX since my portfolio is far away from DAX but it's where I started so I keep it up as an historical reminder. Next report will be made from Sweden and will probably not be until in end of June. I'm hopefully then fully active with the camping van conversion and there will for sure have been no more money added to the portfolio.

Dividends in April 2023

Happily a lot of dividends have dropped in since the last report and especially RioTinto is a pleasure to receive dividends from during this day and age of change.

RioTinto - From my 325 shares I received a total of 685.66 € which was paid out as cash.

HSBC - My 700 shares paid out 149.24 € as cash.

Barclays - With my 1,900 shares I received 109.25 € as cash.

H&M - The 603 shares paid out 173.83 €, the taxman took 52.15 €, which left me with 121.69 € in cash.

Talanx - My 80 shares paid out 160 €, taxman took 42.20 €, and left me with 117.80 € in cash.

BASF - The 140 shares paid out 476 €, the German tax office took 125.54 €, leaving me with 350.46 € in cash.

Skanska - My 250 shares paid out 164.93 €, Swedish taxman took 49.48 €, and I got 115.45 € paid out in cash.

Nike - With my 40 shares I received 12.45 €, USA taxman kept 1.87 € and I was left with 10.58 € in cash.

A great period for dividend payments!

Bought stocks during April 2023

Due to the start of the new tax year in the UK on the 6th April it was possible to bring in £20k to the stock ISA again. Happily, since it was my last opportunity of doing so, I had the money available to directly make the transfer and to buy ETFs for. The Blackrock logo is here just a representation for a company with great cost effective ETF offerings, the two ETFs that I bought was from Vanguard, but their logo was not as an image so I couldn't use it. Both of them have a fee below the required 0.5% as it should be with an ETF.

ETF S&P500 - bought 58 parts at a total cost of 5,570.24 €.

ETF All-World - bought 250 parts at a total cost of 17,571.66 €.

My ETF portion of the portfolio increased a little bit more. They will be included in the upcoming monthly summary.

Summary of March 2023

 

Summary of March 2023

Lest we forget... war is still ongoing and it is very close to us. People are still losing their lives to defend their country. Inflation is still high and many countries have serious strikes going on either due to pay or due to increased pension age. Governments wants us to stop drinking, smoking and using drugs so that we live longer and once we live longer they increase the age required for us to go into retirement. Robotics will be the solution and not growing population and kicking the can to the next generation to pay the price and increasing the age of retirement is in my opinion also not the path to walk. Forcing a construction worker to work for 40 years with his or her body in shambles is just a disgrace.

Lately I've been poking around with AI, so pretty much every evening I'm asking questions and reasoning with ChatGPT or Bing AI. ChatGPT is clearly more intelligent and I prefer to work with it but I must also say that in the last week I've truly felt how ChatGPT has become more intelligent. It will be interesting to see what happens when it realises or starts acting on that mankind is a parasite on this lovely planet that we are inhabiting surrounded by in the cold, harsh Universe. There are gains (personal and business ones) to be made, for sure, using AI and currently I'm mainly using it as a clever source of information but I need to take it to the next level...

I did in the end hand in my letter of resignation on the 28 February and my final day will be sometime in the end of May. Are my calculations correct? We'll see. If not, then I'll just have to take a job again - I'm not worried, but sure, another year working and I could have bought a better place and had a much bigger buffer to rely on. No retreat no surrender!

At work I'm pushing the projects to the max to make sure that I walk away with the company and the team in an as good place as possible. I've heard about it before but I truly do believe that Swedish people have very high work moral. The UK boss assumed that I would just be slacking off and not be doing anything these three months of notice, which probably says more about him than it does me...

The significant reduction of the payment into the ETF mix (company pension scheme) leaves me with a lot more cash out each month. There might be a bit of a tax issue... I'll deal with that as and when it comes. Anyway... this means that I can directly when the new UK tax year starts on 6 April, transfer £20k to my stock ISA and invest it. It might sound irrational especially considering that I will need cash in the near future however, I do not know exactly when and I also have not decided if I will use the German or the UK broker account to buy the future property and until I've settled upon that I will move forward with what is currently the most financially beneficial option for me, which is to push money into the UK stock ISA.

I must also think about what to do with this blog once I step into my F.I.R.E. Should I report on how life is going on in a different blog/vlog? Should I just walk away and provide no further reports? Will I become even more active in buying and selling stocks to generate cash and then report on that?

For the previous summary please visit Summary of February 2023.

The total invested value is now at: 337,989 €. A minor monthly investment was made in ETF Mix with fresh cash.

The value of the portfolio is today: 466,743 € and I have 1,787 € in cash on my broker accounts. I have realised gains of 6,471 € and unrealised of 128,753 € (28%) which is not good enough. My ETFs are now up at a value of 70% of my portfolio.

DAX is now up to 15,629 points which means that it has increased by 2.8% since the previous summary and my own portfolio has decreased by -0.9% in the same time period.

Conclusion: Lately the seas have been stormy and DAX has really been going well. I must however say that having recently bought UK banks just ahead of SVBs issues hasn't helped but I'm fairly pleased with my portfolios development considering how the stock markets in many countries (clearly Germany excluded) have decreased and I've pretty much just treaded water. 

Dividends in March 2023

 

All the oil companies have made massive profits lately. From this BP decided to pay out 50.31 € which I directly received as cash on my broker account.

IBM paid out 38.77 €, from this the taxman took 5.82 €, leaving me with 32.95 € as cash on my broker account.

DBAG paid out a very small dividend this year in the size of 124 €, the German tax man took 32.70 € which left me with 91.30 € in cash.

The US retail chain TJX paid out 17.68 € and from this 2.65 € was taken in taxes leaving me with 15.03 € in cash.

Intel, whose share price have tanked in the last couple of months paid out 119.59 €, and 6.89 € went to the taxman, leaving me with 112.70 € in cash. It looks strange, I know, I don't see the taxes removed in my UK broker account and I currently own intel shares on both my UK and German account.

And finally my ETF EU held in the UK paid out a dividend of 78.39 € that I get straight out as cash.