Sunday morning and I am writing this blog post on a plane… Internet is available for 20$ on a plane and my experience with Internet on planes has been very positive.
In the past two weeks, two articles in the financial newspaper caught my attention. The first article on Moneytalk talked about the fact that Flemish people are having more difficulties to save money. For one out of three households (33 %) it was very difficult or impossible to save money in 2018. This was the case for 39% of the Belgian families. If you add the families that said that it was “rather difficult”, then you get a number of 68% (Belgian) and 62% (Flemish) of the families.
With current high tax pressures and high utilities bills (Internet & Electricity), it is for families difficult to save money. The second article that caught my attention was an article with the title ” Flemish people save more than Wallonian people”.
Saving money gives the Belgian a good feeling, it seems. A survey of the bank ING revealed that especially the Flemish lady loves to save. 69% of the Belgian people say that saving money gives them a positive feeling. The survey revealed that there’s a big gap between Dutch (77%) and French (54%) speaking people who say they love saving money.
There is also a gender gap. 67% of the men say they feel good when saving money, while that percentage increases to 74% with women. The savers are not optimistic about the evolution of the saving interest rates. 55% believes it will stay the same. 22% believes it can even go down. Today is already close to 0. (0,11%)
Although interest rates are low, the Belgian household doesn’t think about investing his money in the stock market. 35% of the people say they will invest even less….how sad is that.
This saving behavior of the Belgian people really strikes me year after year…how low the financial literacy of people is…they simply don’t know how to grow money. Don’t become a slave of the bank !
Market Analysis
The media is sounding the alarm that the stock markets will go down again. What is your perspective as an investor, is the key question, you have to ask yourself. Are you a long term investor or a short term trader or both ?
The S&P was down 22 points but it ran into a strong resistance zone, so it’s normal that there was a selloff after 11 weeks running higher… some investors simply take profit. It can’t keep on going up and up. You have to put everything in perspective. US economic positives still outweigh the negatives.
When we analyse the performance of the SPY (screenshot 24 March) we can clearly see that the SPY continues the trend. Can we attack the All Time highs or do investors start to fear a recession ? Bonds are currently bought up again so this could a sign that a recession is on the horizon. The economic climate in Europe is definitely not positive. The latest Manufacturing data from the German economy last week were disappointing and Germany is the engine of Europe.
Below you can find a 2 year chart of the SPY.
Personally I have pressed the pause button on my dividend investments and will focus on preferred stocks with a fixed % income going forward to add to our portfolio. For the other actions, read below in my final words section.
Let’s dive in the numbers of my January Passive Income Income Report.
My Passive Income in February 2019
In February 2019 we received a total of 432,27 $ passive income. We received dividend income from our ETFs and we didn’t do any options trades.
Below you see the monthly summary overview of the cash flow coming into my bank account.
The Euro/Dollar trend
We keep on following the EURO/USD valuation. With our increased FOREX trading knowledge now we also see money making opportunities. Do you also see a clear downtrend on the EUR/USD ? Look at the lower highs each time.
The Euro will get weaker as the economy will struggle going forward.
Last week we saw a big drop of the Euro against the JPY currency. I look at currency pairs completely different now compared to 4 months ago.
So many opportunities for making money…
Going forward
In April we will keep on focussing on our Smartphone challenge and prepare some strategies to earn money when the markets pull back. The past 1,5 month has been quite interesting for our Forex trading learning curve. Next wednesday we will provide you with our progress and a status report on our learning curve.
This is the end of this blog post.
In 2019 we will send out ONE newsletter per month to our blog followers. Life can be busy sometimes and people lose track of following a personal finance and travel blog. Subscribe and you will get one email per month highlighting what you missed…
Thanks for following us on Twitter and Facebook and reading this blog post. We end with a quote as always.
No Comment
You can post first response comment.