July Update
Each month I update my accounts and monitor my spending and ensure I am on target with my savings goals. Here I will list my assets that make up my long term savings and a few comments on the rationale behind including them in my portfolio. The asset allocation changes from year to year depending on where I see value or what interests me at the time. However I do like to try and spread my money to achieve smoother returns. Below I’ve listen them in order of their current weighing:
Buy to Let £45,907 52.3%
This makes up the vast majority of the total fund. The property which is a 1 bedroom apartment in Glasgow, UK is currently valued at £66,179 on zoopla.com which is down by almost £1,000 on the June valuation. It was purchased in January 2016 for £57,000 with a home report valuation of £70,000. The property is mortgage free but I did use a personal loan and some low interest credit card cash advances to help fund the purchase. Unsecured debts amount to a £11,021 personal loan at 3.7% interest (about 3 and a half years remaining) and £4,250 credit card debt at 2.3% (which expires in September) and I have added an new credit card loan of £5,000 fixed at 4.9% until June 2022. The rationale behind this new loan is that the £4,250 credit card loan is coming to the end of its low rate and I wanted to have the liquidity to pay it off. The 4.9% interest is kind of at the top end of loan interest rates that I will accept so this will be paid down pretty quickly (possible before the end of the year). As mentioned before the apartment is currently let at £500-a-month giving a net return of just under £400-a-month.
Pension Funds £18,116 20.6%
This includes 3 funds from current and previous employers and a small UK index tracker fund. This is also the only stock market exposure currently in the portfolio. Some of the funds are invested in Emerging Markets and Asian Stocks with the smaller funds in UK and other Global Stocks. I add £200 a month to one of these pensions still and the value of these has increase about £400 since June.
Zopa £11,749 13.4%
Zopa is a peer-to-peer lending platform which I have been using for many years now. The money currently invested yields about 4.6% including the “early adopter” bonus of 0.5%. About £500 of the total is in the holding account earning zero interest. Withdrawn about £1,000 from this since June but as I have a fair amount of cash on hand at present I may add a few thousand here to get some return before paying down some of the debts on the property.
Crowd Property £3,000 3.4%
This is a fairly new addition to the portfolio. Crowd Property is a peer-to-peer lending platform for housing developers. I’ve been using it for about 18 months and had two loans paid back so far. The current total is spread over 5 developments with an 8% interest rate. A new loan of £1,000 was added this month increasing my exposure in this asset class.
Thai Bank Account £2,298 2.6%
A regular savings account which pays 2.5% interest. As I am currently based in Thailand I wanted to offset some currency risk by having some assets in the country. Currently adding 25,000THB (£568) a month to this.
Gold £1,592 1.8%
A total of 7 gold sovereigns which have been periodically bought over the last 10 years. The valuation is based on the spot price of gold which is probably a bit lower than the actual resale value of these. They make up a very small portion of the total portfolio and they look nice. Gold price down a bit against the Pound so valuation fallen by about £30 on the June update.
UK Bank Account £5,007 5.7%
A UK savings account with an interest rate of 1.05%. Used mainly when money is earmarked for investment and can earn a minimal amount of interest rather than sitting in my current account. This is fairly large this month as the new loan has been paid into it. Looking to move a bit to zopa and paying down the other credit card soon.
NS&I Premium Bonds £100 0.1%
The minimum investment possible and really just incase I get lucky and hit the £1,000,000 jackpot.
So there is the long term savings portfolio. The portfolio is currently valued at £87,771 up from £87,345 the previous month. The portfolio saw a net loss of 0.37% for the month. This loss mainly came from a reduction in the buy-to-let valuation. In addition to this I added a further £756 of new money to the portfolio.
In addition to the long term savings portfolio there is £4,512 in extra cash held in bank accounts in UK and Thailand giving a total net worth for June of £92,283 (June: £91,749).
Generally slow but steady progress for last month. The fall in the buy-to-let being the main drag. The stock portfolio (pension funds) increased by about £200 and rental payments of £440 managed to offset most of this.
