August 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 £48,261 54.8%

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 £65,210 on zoopla.com which is down by almost £1,000 on the July valuation (and down almost £2,000 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 currently amount to a £10,780 personal loan at 3.7% interest (about 3 and a half years remaining) and £4,000 credit card debt at 2.3% (which expires in September). I have paid down a large portion of last month’s new credit card loan of £5,000 (fixed at 4.9% until June 2022) which stands at £2,168. I figure I will not need this much liquidity and still have sufficient funds to clear the other credit card balance of £4,000 next month. As mentioned before the apartment is currently let at £500-a-month giving a net return of just under £400-a-month.

Pension Funds £18,262 20.8%

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 £100 since July.

Zopa £12,997 14.8%

Zopa is a peer-to-peer lending platform which I have been using for many years now. The money currently invested yields about 4.4% (down from 4.6% last month) including the “early adopter” bonus of 0.5%. About £100 of the total is in the holding account earning zero interest. I have added to this this month but continue to withdraw the loan repayments which amount to about £1,000 a month. This gives me some good liquidity while earning some interest on my savings.

Crowd Property £2,500 2.8%

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 4 developments with an 8% interest rate. One of the £500 loans finished this month so my current exposure here has reduced. There is a new project starting so I may add £1,000 into that if it doesn’t oversubscribe too quickly.

Thai Bank Account £2,878 3.3%

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. No change in the valuation here on last month.

UK Bank Account £1,404 1.6%

A nominal amount in a UK savings account with an interest rate of 0.5% (down from 1.05% last month). 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 down from around £5,000 last month as I moved some to zopa and some to pay down the credit card balances.

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 £87,995 up from £87,771 the previous month. The portfolio saw a net loss of 0.64% for the month. This loss mainly came from a reduction in the buy-to-let valuation. In addition to this I added a further £768 of new money to the portfolio.

In addition to the long term savings portfolio there is £4,326 in extra cash held in bank accounts in UK and Thailand giving a total net worth for August of £92,321 (July: £92,283).

Generally slow but steady progress for last month. My spending was a bit higher than usual due to weekends away at the beach and buying new running shoes. Again the fall in the buy-to-let valuation being the main drag to the total net worth although this will undoubtedly cause future returns to increase when house prices pick up again.