Here is my monthly report of my personal net worth progress for February 2020.

I’m sharing this to show how important it is to track your net worth and seeing the progress. Tracking is what I also expect and advise my clients to do. 

From tracking your personal net worth and see how much you are worth, you can learn what works and what you should change in your finances.

It’s the first step if you wish to go nomad or basically get to any goal in life.

If you’d also like to see how much you are worth the way I do, I created this tool, especially for my readers. You can get it here.

Also, if you’d like to read the previous report to get the flow of things, you can check it here – January 2020 personal net worth update. Here are all the previous reports.

If you don’t know what the net worth definition is, check it here.

Last thing, If you are looking to get your finances ready to go nomad, book a free financial fitness call with me. Just click the link and schedule a time on my calendar. 

Let’s jump in!

OVERVIEW

This month our net worth went down by -3.9%, and our savings rate was -19.2%.  When analyzing to numbers, this additional drop (accumulating to the previous lousy month) is due to the coronavirus effect on the markets. Had it not hit the markets, we would have been at a minor ~0.9% drop on our net worth.

Anyway, this is part of investing.

What I did in the last few days is buying more of the stocks I held because of the market drops as mentioned before I’m following a value investor whom I trust, and he recommended doing so. It’s is also a fundamental value investing strategy. 

I’m confident it’s ok and glad to use the cash in my account to get better returns in the future.

Kuetzal and Envestio lawsuits

I joined both lawsuits to recover the money of my investments. These are two lawsuits that were organized by a few people in the p2p community. I can’t disclose the details, but we are talking about a large number of Kuetzal and Envestio investors representing a massive amount of money to be claimed.

I’ll keep updating what I can if anything new happens.

As I mentioned before, I’m more cautious now about the crowd-investing platforms. I get payments on time, but now re-invest only part of the sum, and the rest I withdraw back.

Crowd Investing Alert

I started this page for following crowd-investing platforms projects. Now that there are only two platforms there, I’d like to add new ones. I’d like to hear your recommendations on it. Which other platforms would you like to see next in there? Please comment below.

So, if you are into crowd investing, give a ‘like’ to the page.

Crowdestor:  

Crowdestor keeps publishing new projects at a good pace. Though I can tell, they don’t get funded as quickly as it used to be.

There are currently two active projects with returns of 24% and 17.5%

They also have four coming soon projects (You can see those in Crowd Investing Alert )   later today and tomorrow.

All Crowdestor projects are paid on time. 

If you decide to join Crowdestor through my link, you’d like to get a 1% cash back for your next 90 days. I’ll get a bonus from Crowdestor of 1% of your investment about, at no cost to you. sign up through this link

Wisefund: 

Wisefund is publishing new projects very slowly. For now, they have only a single project running.

They don’t have a coming soon section, so you can’t tell what their plans are moving forwards.

Also, big news for them. They introduced a secondary market. This means it’s a market where people can buy other people’s loans if they wish to liquidate and go out of an investment. This is replacing the buyback guarantee other platforms have (or had) and there are some interesting opportunities now.

Have a look:

Wisefund secondary market

Just like with Crowdestor, when I get interest payment from them, I withdrew some and re-invest some. It’s unlike before where I’d re-invest the whole amount back.

All Wisefund projects are paid on time.

If you do decide to join Wisefund through my link, I’ll get some bonus from them to invest more in my portfolio, and you’ll get an extra 0.5% cashback for the next 270 days after you invest.

LOANS & OTHER INVESTMENTS

UK property:  No news here, unfortunately. We are still at the negotiation stage with the owner. 

US property: As I updated last month. There are three properties left in Birmingham, Alabama. They will continue to be rented out and generate cash flow until the market is right to sell them. 

Loans:  No updates here. 

New IRA service provider: As I mentioned in the last update, we moved to a new provider. We managed to save on management fees as well as on the trading platform costs that the old IRA provider had. 

NEW ACCOUNTS:

New US bank account – I decided to open a US bank account. I dug on where it is possible to open an account without having to live in the US and found that it’s possible with TD bank.

Also, their minimum balance requirements are as low as $100 in the account.

Why am I doing this?

US credit cards have very generous signup bonuses. So, you can get miles/points when joining and buy a flight ticket with those. In Europe and Israel, it’s nothing to compare.

However, most credit card companies in the US require you to have a social security number (SSN) or TTN. I don’t have either. But after some research, I found that I can open a bank account and get a debit card.

Then after a few months, I’m able to apply to some of the credit cards (probably not the best ones out there). But since they see that you have transactions on your account, you’d be able to get a credit card and start getting credit score.

The next step (probably about a year forward), you can apply for the better cards (that don’t require SSN) that give you excellent signup bonuses. This is where I’m hoping to get.

If there is enough interest, add a comment here that you are interested, and I’ll write a detailed post about the process: “How to get a US credit card for non-US citizens.”

N26 account and card – N26 is a bank in Germany that aims towards people who travel a lot need the convenience and flexibility of cheap online banking. They also have nearly zero currency exchange rates, just like Revolut, which I have already.

I’m pleased with Revolut. However, I’d like to use N26 as a backup option to it since sometimes they require verification of your funds on the account, and this can take several weeks sometimes where you have a limited account on those periods.

So, the card just arrived, and I had to verify my identity with them, and now it’s activated.

OUR PERSONAL NET WORTH ANALYSIS

US & Israeli Stock portfolio: Coronavirus hit hard on our portfolio, and that’s expected. I decided to buy more of some of the stocks as they dropped. In such a case, it’s when the opportunities are in the market, and that will pay off later on. 

Bitcoin: Nothing too exciting here, Bitcoin dropped a bit since last month. No news practically.

NOW OVER TO YOU

So, how is this net worth update helping you?

Did you discover anything new?

Are you tracking your finances and see the progress?

Is this update too long? Boring?

Feel free to add a comment, I read them all and promise to reply.