I must admit that this summary dropped on me like a bombshell. During the month I have looked very little on the development of the portfolio and individual stocks and for this reason I was unaware of how poorly the result was this month (and yet there is a reason for it). The banks and energy companies are still having a bad time on the stock market and Mr. Market does indeed hate them... not without some justification I must add.
In one week the truck arrive to pick up our stuff. The day after we fly over to the UK, rent a car, sign the contract, pick up the keys and then the day after we greet the moving van when it arrives to our new home.
The move will in the end cost 2,600 € which is an excellent deal to go to the UK. Thanks Martin!
Yesterday I had to transfer the money for the six months rent + deposit in the UK and it hurts to pay out 4,200 GBP (5,460 €) in one go.
I have now lost eight investment opportunities and before this move is finished it will be more.
We also had a joy in this entire financial disaster and that was that we got back a large part of the taxes that we claimed to get back on the tax declaration. The 4,200 € that we got back now comes exactly at the good moment to support us in the move and the remaining 1,000 € we will still have to fight with the tax office about. Each time I end up calling them up and are forced to be nasty towards them ONLY to make them follow the tax regulations as they are written. It is messed up! I am sure they get a bonus based on how much they refuse to pay out.
For the previous summary please visit Summary of April 2016 and here you can see my stock portfolio as it is.
The total invested value is now up at: 81,975 € including a realised loss of -3,757 €. No new investments were made.
The value of the portfolio is today: 73,560 € and I now have around 2,044 € in cash on the account due to that dividends have dropped in during the month. The combined unrealised and realised loss is now at: -8,414 € (-10%) which is bad.
DAX dropped during the month of May down to 10,103 points which means only -0.2% and well... I would call that pretty flat. My own portfolio did very poorly and I lost -1.7% during May which means this round goes to DAX even though it comes from that I received large dividend payments from my companies and the DAX index, that I follow, does not account for dividend payments.
Conclusion: Another month lost to DAX mainly due to dividend payments. Even if one would not consider this then still the share prices for banks and energy have continued dropping and I am not pleased.
3 comments:
Glad I could help, hope that everything runs smoothly with the move, I will keep fingers crossed! Have a good start there you two!
Interesting to hear about evil tax men in Germany too. I had very strange calls with the tax authority in Sweden this year. They tried so much to be service minded AND decline my rights at the same time.
How does taxes compare between Germany and England? Will you keep more after the move?
@ Martin
Thank you!
@Frihetsfokus
Hahaha, well... here they do not even try to be service minded so I would claim that you are worse off than me.
Generally taxes are lower in the UK... however... for me the situation is a bit different since I was working as "selbständig" here in Germany which meant that I paid no retirement money (hence My Contrarian Adventure got started), I paid no unemployment money and I was privately health insured so I paid around 26% in taxes + 7% health insurance (the government health insurance is around 15%).
In the UK I will end up paying taxes around 22% + national insurance 8% which makes it similar to my current situation... however... I have realised that many costs in the UK are similar to or even higher than in Germany WHEN using GBP and EUR... which means many costs are 30-50% higher in the UK. That was a chock to me to realise.
As an example... My car insurance in Germany costs me 270 €. In the UK I will pay around 750 to 1,000 GBP for a car insurance per year. I almost fell off my chair when I realised this. I´ve found that in most countries... by the end of the day... you have pretty much a similar amount of cash left in the end of the month.
There are however ways to profit... the best and most profitable would be, as an example, working in Switzerland but living in Italy, France, Germany or Austria. A secondary one is to live and work in an expensive country and then move to a cheaper one to get more bang for the bucks an example is retired people in Sweden going to Portugal. But you all know this and some of you probably even know how hard it is to arrange.
Things are complicated... In the UK they have what they call ISA... something similar to ISK... but completely without taxes up to around 15,000 GBP per year (high fees for trading though!). If my wife gets a job I should be able to save 2,000 GBP per month (in the last year I tried to save 2,000 €) but financially it will be better to give that money to my wife so that both of us can try to max out the ISA. If she does not get a job... well... then I can only save 1,000 GBP per month which is my original classic saving plan.
So... I really do not know what it will look like financially but one thing is for certain. I need this change with or without financial benefit!
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