I havent been motivated to write about these last months from February till this 6th of June. Many things have happened I lost lots of money being addicted to trading in the month February and March. Also some recent news about the buying of a light motorcycle so theres 3 hours of life energy saved a day for my girlfriend.
I will write all my income expenses reports from February till may to have it on record and for public view for everyone to see how I as a young millenial am able to cope up from the losses that’s been generated and improve myself on my financial behavior.
I have been such a good boy in the saving and spend it all in that month of February. Im luckily now by the past couple of months there havent been any drawbacks about gambling. The month of March was my last month of gambling all the spendable money after expenses in the EUR/USD currency using sprinters,turbo’s,speeders. Came to the conclusion that I am just not good at researching short term market movements as I lost about 200-300 euro’s a day with that gambling. Still need to get used to the DividendGrowthInvestment way that people like NomoreWaffles and DividendMantra do.
My Portfolio will be updated very soon as I have bought shares of 24 Quality Dividend Growth Companies.
Month of February has passed and I just want to say it was a really crazy month. Last month of January I found out about stocktwits.com and been reading about “GENE” also known as Genetic Technologies and saw it going up more on the trending page then 100% sometimes even 150++ % a day and so I sold (which was stupid)
The dividend growthstocks that I had in my portfolio to start trading that “GENE” stock by buying in on a price of 1.44$ doubling up the money spending my 2k euros on the stock when the price went towards 4.68$ in one day and quadrupling it to obout 7-8k euro’s the first day.
Eventually after several days I went from about 4.68$ a share to 11+$ a share. I was all crazy thinking of doubling and doubling again had a total balance of aprox 16000 euro’s.
My girlfriend told me on the couch stop going any further sell it all or else you will lose it all.. and by the time it was on 16000 euro’s i got quite addicted by thinking of doubling it again that the stock might have further room to grow from 11$ towards 20$ the *gambling* continued from 29th of January till the 18th of February. Sold it all but just before the end of the trading session I bought it all back at the highest price as u can see on the chart it went lower and lower. So I sold it again with another loss. Finding more about next targets on stocktwits lost me even more money so I lost ALL of it.
Not listening to my girlfriend made me lose close to 16000 euro’s. There will be no “next time I will listen” as I WONT be trading any stock/currency anymore. Buy and Hold is what I am gonna do. I now really know how it feels on losing my whole retirement savings. Lucky I didnt lose it later in life by losing for example of 300.000 euro’s.
This is my first year of being a Dividend Growth Investor and now know that the more activity is on my account the less money I make. Slow and steady Buy and Hold really is the key.
I have never been trading stocks in my life and I was just SO excited by the amount of money I gained by trading in several days that I just couldnt take careful steps anymore to protect myself.
Gambling is and will allways be risky on the stockmarket, many people allways try it again and again just to try earn back the losses but thats the problem i’ve gotten that month aswell.
I just want to prove to the world that a young father at the age of 26 with a low taxi salary can be financially independant within 20 years by investing about 1000 euro/1200 dollar a month. My aim is 45 to be free of my chains of working and spending all my time with my girlfriend and son by traveling over the world. There’s just so much to see and so little time. Even this past year I’ve worked all the holidays except summer holiday just to earn some more money.
By living a frugal lifestyle I’m able to cope with the 1000 euro investment a month that I’m gonna be making starting in January 2015 as I do need to save some money for some future planned expenses.
So each month I will update the Income & Expenses for the previous month so this update will contain the month of december 2014. I am tracking every euro of what comes in and what goes out, so what you see is exactly what I have earned and spent (rounded to the nearest dollar). As this blog is international ill just keep it in US dollar and use the currency calculator on google using the term “euro to usdollar”
Income From February 2015: | |
Salary Income | $1771 |
Other Income | $222 |
Tax Authority | $289 |
Total Income | $2282 |
Expenses From February 2015: | |
Mortgage + Utilities | $863 |
Auto | $11 |
Student Loans | $53 |
Insurances | $164 |
Gifts | $16 |
Everything Else | $647 |
Total Expenses | $1754 |
Income
This is now my third income/expenses report that I’m posting about.. it does seem a bit awkward by just sending it out to the world for public view, but I am for real and want to spread my word across the globe through the internet. The word that wealth can be made by those like me that have a low salary income and by living a frugal lifestyle, just by investing all the leftover money in high quality dividend growth stocks for early retirement.
The salary that I received this month was a bit normal being at 1594 euros. Just about average. Might not look good but hey its atleast a bit above minimum income wage. I dont need a high income to be FI.. probably arround 1200 dollar a month would be just fine for me. Everything above that will give us holidays to foreign countrys. By the time we are FI I will sell my appartment for probably arround 150.000 euro’s which will give us another dividend income boost. We will by the time we reach FI arround the year 2030-2035 be visiting alot of foreign country’s starting in europe.
The month of February was bad as I had zero Quality Dividend Growth Stocks.
The Tax Authority consists of $289 as they are paying the rent of my mortgage. $222 was received from my partner to help with the bills she wants to help me getting us to Financial Independence earlier. She donates it to me monthly from now on speed up our process.
Still getting too much from the tax department/Tax Authority every month so that goes towards my savings account. That once they come to reclaim the money that they’ve send too much then I’ve got it set nicely aside.
Expenses
The expenses have been about the same, except the everything else category as that was a bit too big.
Mortgage and utilities consist of :
$554 mortgage $39 cable tv/internet $142 electricity/gas $128 VVE for homeowners association
Auto
My auto was not used by myself and my girlfriend fills the tank for her job as she needs it more then I do. I am on my bicycle for a total of 80 minutes a day up and forth from my job. Used 11$ to fill the tank for some drives.
The student loan I have with the interest percentage 1.5% will be payed with this amount of $53 for a while until the total amount of $7085 – now because of the falling euro -> $7642 is payed in full.
Gifts
Bought a present for a friend that started living on his own and didnt have decent light So I went to the IKEA and wrapped it up as a present and he was happy with it.
The Everything else
This month all the money was lost upon the trading of the GENE stock. The Everything Else also consisted of Vacuumcleanerbag 33$,monthly bankrelatedcosts 2$,hosting of this website 7$,new shower faucet 50$, 555$ lost on option24.nl website trying out options trying to recover from the losses,because I was sad losing all the portfolio money on the Gene stock.
Savings
This last month of February 2015 I have managed to save 0% of my income. Could have saved % more if I Wasnt a nucklehead and sticked to my goal of investing in high quality dividend growth stocks.
The savings goal I have for this year 2015 will be 60% a month of my total net income. Might not make as I started out bad this year. But I keep optimistic for the rest of the year as I have done a terrific job for myself to save a lot to start out my forest full with seeds.
Now on to Income/Expenses of March!
How did it go for you in February? Have you ever gambled?
Hey DDT,
Reading your 2015 story, it seems that you have learned a very valuable lesson! Better at the start of your journey than at the end. You have plenty of time to work out a good and sustainable strategy.
I also lost some money exploring in a greedy mood options. I now stay away from this greed actions. I am index investing for now, looking to add DGI over time.
AT
Amber,
Thanks for reading. Yes Indeed im so lucky to have had the feeling of losing a whole portfolio.
I know the consequences now and will keep on diversifying and staying away from the EUR/USD currency trading and the speeders/turbo’s and all that.
Selling any stocks will be out of the question, unless the fundamentals have changed alot.
Felt like I had to share it with the readers as I havent been that active since then.
But I will add more Income/Expenses reports of the months March,April,May these coming 2 days.
Vanguard IndexFunds is what you have?
DDT
I have ishares funds. I have a whole post on why: https://ambertreeleaves.wordpress.com/2015/05/24/how-to-create-a-simple-asset-allocation-with-trackers/ Mainly tax reasons and lazyness (not needing to invest the dividends as there are no dividends)