Time for a blog post update on one of our portfolio’s…while waiting for a plane in the airport of Kiev, Ukraine. I will finish it on the plane and post. Thanks for reading !
Did my mom travel in August ? Yes, she did…she travelled to Bogota, Colombia to attend our wedding. Colombia is a beautiful country and we can definitely recommend you to visit this country in South-America. Read here one of our blogposts
It was a fantastic wedding full of emotions and fun. Colombian people are very warm people, something people in the Western countries tend to forget sometimes while being active in the ratrace system…
What happened in August 2017 ?
In the month of August, there was a lot of media attention for the “Summer” Agreement of the Belgian government who once more attacked the investors….I will write a separate blogpost about that!
Good news was that the minimum pensions are raised. This is good for people who worked all their life. The government already taxes enough from the working class.
I saw politicians brag about this achievement but I think there’s nothing to brag about. It is still not sufficient to pay a pension home or home care. Read our blog post on how a government makes you completely bankrupt.
How you can lose all your net worth and also make your kids poorer….
Another interesting advertising of a bank catched my eye in August. A foreign bank claimed that Belgian investors should stop DONATING money to Belgian banks. The bank claimed that more than 818 million euro was paid by Belgian investors buying funds at other banks. This could all be cheaper ! They even built a simulator to calculate the difference in purchase costs…
In November last year I visited several banks to ask advice on how to invest my mom’s money. All bank advisors recommended their own managed funds with a purchase cost of 2 to 6% and a yearly cost of 3%. So the statement is definitely correct !
The sad part is that a bank advisor will NEVER tell you the costs unless you ask explicitely! Never invest in funds with a cost % higher than inflation, is our advice. You will never beat the market with an investment in funds. Did you notice that the best performing funds are next year’s worst performing funds? Why would you buy and hold such investments forever?
Well, I hope you learned something here. In case of any questions, don’t hesitate to shoot us an email.
Now you can read our Dividend Income August 2017 Report Out for my mom’s portfolio.
Dividends received in August 2017
During the month of August 2017, we received 198,35$ dividend income. We didn’t hit the 200$ mark but we are happy.
Here you find the overview of all dividend payouts during the year 2017 compared to 2016.
Portfolio management
During the month of August, we had another “sick apple” in our portfolio. The company CPTA announced a potential cut of the dividend and a bad forecast of three loans in the portfolio. The stock dropped from 12 to 9$ in three days. We cut it loose and lost 700$ on this transaction. Damn ! It could have been much worse if we waited two more days…
We also sold one of our monthly paying ETF. We did a stop loss limit under the stock as the markets were very volatile due to the international tensions with North-Korea. The stock blew through the stop loss and we sold with a small profit. So now our cash position increased to more than 50%. We realize that this will have an impact on the dividend but we believe the markets become more nervous…
Dividend Income Growth
My mom’s dividend income has grown about the 2000$ mark but we had to swallow a 700$ loss. So we will subtract this loss from our dividend income. We have now a total of 1462.10$, painful I know but that is part of investing. Cut your losses quickly is KEY !
Going forward
In current high priced market, we are not eager to buy stocks or ETFs at those high prices. Some analysts say we can go much higher. Well..we stay prudent. We will not pursue our goal to get to our monthly 200$ objective. As we learn about options investing, we look to sell options with the cash available. We are working on an options strategy that will put the cash of my mom at work. We will try it out first in the virtual portfolio. We keep you informed…
We are also working on two strategies to earn money in a declining stock market…keep on following us and you are the first to know !
How was your month of passive income? How do you generate money for your retirement? Let us know….
Thanks for following us on Twitter and Facebook and reading this blog post. We end with a quote as always.
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