Abhi’s FIRE Investment Portfolio | Updates till 2021
Abhi’s Investment Portfolio – as of December’2021
- Wow, another year done! Wish you all a very happy New Year and may 2022 be a very prosperous and enlightening year for you.
- At the start of the year I was at a net worth of about Rs.24 lakhs and by the end my net worth is at Rs.68 lakhs. Major contributor is the fact that I have moved in with my parents and rented my house. Which means about Rs.27 lakhs (the value of my property) got added to my net worth as now it is a rental home. Nevertheless, leaving this out, I still closed the year with an increase of about Rs.17 lakhs which is about the entire salary I earn in a year (post tax).
- In December my wife quit all freelance work to focus on our daughter and home. This means going forward I will be the sole income earner for the foreseeable future. But it is a worthy tradeoff. Our daughter is extremely active and absorbs everything like a sponge. Not yet 3 years old, she communicates very well in two languages, can read, spell and is learning to write. We felt having someone spend more time with her is good for her future.
- In December’21 I cashed out on 24000 American Express points to get Rs.9000 in cash. But then again, I had some unforeseen expenses in the form of car (needed repainting 🙁 ) and some purchases which ate this up very quickly.
- In 2021 I realize I made a total of Rs.1,26,340 in the form of Cashbacks and loyalty point redemptions. This is as much as one month salary for me. So being mindful of my spending and maximising has effectively helped me earn 13 months of salary compared to my colleagues who only get 12 months 🙂 Jokes aside, there is merit to being watchful of how you spend money and making use of the offers and opportunities.
- Also, the Rs.1,26,340 I mention is only cash backs and loyalty reward points. Most of my purchases are timed around sales and offer periods. Eg: The Big Billion sale etc. Which means the products I buy are much cheaper than usual. Meaning I save a lot there too, but that is not easily quantifiable.
- 2021 saw a lot of diversification in my portfolio. I started tracking things more effectively. Physical gold, Corporate deposits (Gripinvest and TradeCred) and additional crypto assets were the main additions this year.
- I continue to save about 70% of my monthly income (post tax salary and passive income put together).
- About 20% of my income is passive in nature. If I were to quit my job I will still be earning this 20% with minimal effort. In the coming years, the compounding of my investments should pay off and increase this ratio bringing this closer to 50% making it possible for me to FIRE!
- Technically since I only need about 30% of my income for my expenses and since I already earn 20% of my income passively, I can actually retire much earlier. But that is a very risky proposition as I may find myself very quickly looking for a job if one of my passive income stream is to fail. Eg a tenant wishes to vacate which means I receive no rent for a few months etc.
- I have a little under 10 years (by year 2030) to reach my target of Rs.5 Crores. It does not look easy at this point of time and it is that challenge that makes this whole journey interesting.
- Thank you for following my journey and your patience and support. I look forward to continue tracking and writing on littlesaves.com!
You can check out my earlier updates below.
What happened in November’21
- At the start of October I started moving out all my stock investments into fixed return products fearing a market slide. I am not trying to time the market, but that these levels I am too scared a correction of 10% to 15% is imminent. Only time will tell.
- To expand on the above, I have sold my stock positions. But in addition to that I have also moved all MF, retirement funds etc to debt or similar products. Eg: I switched my NPS holdings from a 95% equity to 0% equity and purely corporate debt, government debt and bonds. Similarly for other fund holdings.
- As of writing this crypto world experienced a 20% drop. I’ve bought some more crypto at these levels.
- My daughter has finally started schooling! Yay!!!
What happened in September’21
- I’ve got back the personal loan I had given to a family friend at 12% pa.
- I realized there was a Rs.2.25 lakh received and invested a few months back which was actually deposit I received for the home rented out. As this is something that needs to be paid back sometime in the future, I have included that as a loan at 0% interest as I do not pay interest on this.
- You will see a dip in my overall corpus as I have spent some money on getting life policies for my family which can’t really be considered as an investment, but is still essential in terms of emergencies.
- My Honeygain earnings are going pretty strong. I have the app installed on 2 laptops and 4 mobiles (thanks mom and dad 😉 at the moment. I received $38.50 as a payout which I collected as Bitcoin. Now this was when Bitcoin was around $42K sometime back. Now BTC is at $51K so the payout value is around $46.
- Flipkart was running a sale that allowed me to buy some gold coins at a great discount. I ended up buying 12 grams of gold coins at a few hundred rupees below the market price! On my tracker, you will notice this added to the Physical Gold/Silver section.
What happened in August’21:
- Received rent for the first time in my life. Damn, it feels good! 🙂 I get Rs.21,000 as rent, which is about 50% of my Home Loan EMI, but I am not complaining!
- Speaking of rent, my office has started calling people back to work. So in another month or two, I am planning to take a rental house that is close to my office. So what rent I get will simply flow to my future landlord’s account. At least, I need not travel 4 hours a day for work any more.
- Crypto investments are doing pretty good. Looking forward to Bitcoin going over 70K. And then falling to 25K 😛
- We took out new car for a long drive at last. It is a Kia Sonnet. It is pretty awesome! Great features and has all one would need and a lot most won’t need. Milage is not as great as our last one, but as long as the resale value is good, I don’t mind.
Borrowed to buy stocks
Yes, you read that right. I borrowed Rs.4,00,000 to buy some stocks. Yes, I have heard a dozen wise men/women advice exactly against that. There are two reasons I did it. One, I was optimistic about the market (stupid as it may sound). Secondly, I was getting a tax break on the interest I was paying to borrow, which meant I was getting a pretty cheap loan. So I just did it.
To be clear, I did not borrow to invest in some tip I received or speculate. The market was correcting to a level I liked and I wished to buy. However instead of liquidating savings, I experimented with borrowing from one of the instant loan payout folks to see how it all worked.
Would I advice others to do it? Mostly not. If this pays off well, will I do it again? Definitely not. This is a bet and I am fully aware of what my upside and downsides are. Just because it pays off well it does not give sufficient proof to bet again. On the other hand, I will have discovered a new source of fund to tap into on short notice when the markets take a dive. This time, I got the 4 lakhs in my account in a matter of 2 hours.
AMEX Offers
Some really great offers from American Express in August that I made use of. Here is the list
- Some family members were looking to book flight tickets. I offered to do it for them. I used my Amex Gold card to get them a Rs.5000 discount by booking via Flipkart Flights. Rs.5000 discount for them, all the loyalty points for me.
- AMEX is running a special offer to select customers where spend of Rs.45,000 gets a Rs.2,500 Amazon gift Voucher. The Flight tickets I booked above got me the vouchers as well 😛
- Amex is running a campaign where you get Rs.500 back for spends of Rs.1000 or more at local (supported) stores. I scored about Rs.1500 by simply buying things I need at these stores for Rs.3000, getting a 50% off in total for necessities.
- Finally, along with the 1000 bonus points you earn for Amex Gold Charge card when you spend 6 Rs.1000 transactions and another 1000 points for Amex Rewards card on 4 Rs.1500 transactions, now there is an additional 1000 points when the spend on Rewards card exceeds Rs.20,000 per month. I am now scoring a total of 3520 points per month, worth Rs.1,302 by using the Amex cards for most of my spends in the month. If you do the math, I get back Rs.1302 on a spend of about 26K, which is about 5% cashback. And most of my spends are on necessities, petrol, utilities etc which add up easily.
- Due to these points, currently if I buy on Flipkart, I use the Axis Flipkart card. If I buy on Amazon, I use my Amazon ICICI Card. All other purchases and spends are via the AMEX cards.
What happened in July’21:
- Crypto currencies are back to where they were before the most recent fall.
- My house has now been rented out and rent should start flowing in from the coming month. Moving out, painting cost me a bit in July’21.
- I’m hoping for a correction in the stock market so I can re-enter again. Patience I guess.
- Sale agreement will happen in August for the second property I am picking up in Bangalore. Once that is done I will be paying 2 home loan EMIs.
- I’ve got my new car last month and have now started paying the EMIs for it from July’21. It is Rs.53,000 per month and worth every penny due to the tax breaks I get on the car.
Shopping Spree in July’21
- There were three places where I went crazy and picked up a tonne of things.
- The Prime Day sale on Amazon had a tonne of things for me to upgrade on.
- I picked up a Google Nest Hub on Flipkart
- CRED was running some great offers on WiFi smart night lamps, WiFi plugs, remote and light bulbs.
- So now I am planning to set up a semi automated home using the Google Nest hub and the WiFi devices
- Other purchases were an AC and a mattress upgrade for my parents (they paid, I got the reward points!).
What happened in June’21:
Pay close attention as June’21 was a major month where I made a few big changes to my portfolio and my FIRE journey.
Properties
- Current home: I have vacated my current home and have given it for rent. I will be receiving a rent of Rs.21,000 per month from this house.
- Current stay: As work from home has extended I have moved in with my parents for the next couple of months. When my office calls me back, the plan is to get a house for rent next to my office. I travel over 50km per day from current home to office in Bangalore traffic. So this will save me a lot of time, plus work in my interest in terms of tax breaks.
- New Property: In addition to this, I have made a down payment to purchase another 3BHK apartment in Bangalore. The apartment is under construction and will only be delivered to me in 2024. I will be paying partial EMIs till then.
- 3rd Property: Call me greedy, but we are hoping to buy another property in a few years time in our native place. So I have started a fund to set aside money for the down payment of this property.
- Till this point of time I never added the value of my home to my FIRE portfolio as I was staying in it and it never generated any income. With me moving our and starting to earn income, this has changed. So starting this month I have added the value (not the value of the property, but the amount that I have paid up so far) as part of my investments. Starting next month the rent will be considered as passive income.
Company Leased Car
- Previous Car: I have sold my previous car that was under 3 year company lease two months back. After taking into considering everything, I made a profit of about Rs.25,000 on the car (even after including the maintenance, petrol, accessories I paid for during these 3 years). So in all I got to have a car for 3 years and at the end of 3 years got an extra 25K as bonus!
- New Car: As the benefits under Company Leased vehicle are quite handsome for me, I have booked and taken delivery of a new car in June’21. The EMI for this car will start from next month
- As mentioned on the Company Leased Vehicle post, I will be enjoying all benefits on my new car as well and it will work out to a small profit for me at the end of the lease.
Investments & Portfolio
- Crypto dipped considerably. I am itching to buy more during the dip, unfortunately since I just paid the booking amount for my second apartment and need to pay another Rs.3,00,000 for the sale agreement, I cant afford to invest more when the prices are low.
- I’ve invested Rs.50,000 in Gripinvest. The returns are decent (about 8% post tax) and this helps me in diversifying my portfolio a bit. Read the complete Gripinvest review here and my take on them.
- I’ve also moved Rs.2,50,000 from other investment sources to Tradecred for 11.5% returns.
What happened in May’21:
- With Elon back peddling on Bitcoins, BTC lost steam and plunged to $32K levels. This gave me an opportunity to move some funds into crypto. You will notice my crypto holding has doubled in May 2021
- I waited and waited to get back into stocks and then dropped the idea in favour of crypto. 5 years down the line I will either regret or rejoice for this decision. Only time will tell.
- I added a small amount into debt funds
- With less than 8 years to clear our current housing loans, my wife and I are starting to set aside a bit of money for a new house. The plan is to have enough saved up in 2-3 years time to pay the down payment for a new house and move to that one. We will then continue to earn rent from the current one.
October’19 to May’21:
I’ve been tracking my FIRE Journey from October 2019, back when I had started out with Rs.5,00,000 and a goal to achieve Rs.5,00,00,000 to FIRE early. In the past I used to write one article per month to give my updates which later on changed to have one page on which my progress is updated every month.
So here is the list of old articles that tracked my progress in the past.
- October’19 – Stocks
- October’19 – Mutual Funds
- November’19 – Monthly Updates
- December’19 – Monthly Updates
- January’20 – Monthly Updates
- February’20 – Monthly Updates
- March’20 – Monthly Updates
- April’20 – Monthly Updates
- May’20 – Monthly Updates
- June’20 – Monthly Updates
- July’20 – Monthly Updates
- August’20 – Monthly Updates
- September’20 – Monthly Updates
- October’20 – Monthly Updates
- November’20 – Monthly Updates
- December’20 – Monthly Updates
- January’21 – Monthly Updates
- Feb’21 to April’21 – Updates were all maintained on this page
- May’21 onwards, monthly updates were maintained on this page with a commentary and notes on events and things that happened in the month.
Abhi
WHO, WHAT, WHEN
Abhi is a 30 years old engineer living in Bangalore. He’s on a mission to save Rs.5 Crores by age 40 to retire and do what he loves, no longer needing to worry about a job. He hopes to achieve financial independence by building a stream of passive income sources that make early retirement a possibility.
Current Month’s Investment Snapshot
| Final Goal | Rs.5 Crores | wdt_ID |
|---|
FIRE Goals & Progress
| Final Goal | Rs.5 Crores |
|---|---|
| Current Value | Rs. 67,73,333 |
| Goal Achieved | 13.55% |
| This month’s Passive Income | Rs.41,556 |
| % saved from monthly income | 71% |
| % of income from passive sources | 27% |
| Time left | 118 of 144 |
Notes, discrepancies and things to keep in mind
Note 1: The big jump you see in my networth between May’21 to June’21 is due to me moving out and renting my house. As the property started earning rent, I included the equity (excluding the outstanding home loan) in my net worth
Note 2: You will see a disparity between my monthly income and how much I invest per month. This is due to me selling/shuffling investments and re-investing them. So when an earlier investment of Rs.1000 becomes Rs.1500 and I reinvest it somewhere else, the new investment is Rs.1500, the additional Rs.500 is not from my savings or salary, so it is possible to see my savings from Salary in a month is only Rs.X however I would have invested more than that.
My tracking can be improved I believe, perhaps over time I will tweak it. Feel free to suggest better ideas to me or ask for a particular addition by writing to me at abhi@littlesaves.com
Value of my Portfolio by Category
Asset Allocation
| Asset Class | Asset | Volatility | % of Portfolio | Target % | Current Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equity | Indian Stocks | High | 2 | 20 | 167,565.00 |
| Equity | Foreign Stocks | High | 2 | 2 | 137,788.00 |
| Equity | Equity Linked Funds | Medium | 4 | 8 | 281,540.00 |
| Fixed Income | Retirement Funds | Low | 9 | 15 | 592,696.00 |
| Fixed Income | Gold Bonds | Low | 18 | 10 | 1,191,642.00 |
| Fixed Income | Fixed Deposits | Low | 0 | 0 | 25,521.00 |
| Fixed Income | Debt Fund | Low | 7 | 3 | 476,480.00 |
| Fixed Income | Corporate Debt | Medium | 3 | 5 | 216,574.00 |
| Cash | P2P Loans | Medium | 3 | 5 | 200,960.00 |
| Cash | Cash in Hand | Low | 3 | 0 | 185,981.00 |
| Cash | Liquid Fund | Low | 0 | 2 | 0.00 |
| Cash | Loyalty & Reward Points | Low | 1 | 1 | 83,439.00 |
| Cash | Loans Taken | Low | -3 | 0 | -225,000.00 |
| Real Estate | Rental Property | Medium | 43 | 20 | 2,945,316.00 |
| Real Estate | REITs | Medium | 0 | 3 | 0.00 |
| Commodities | Physical Gold & Silver | Low | 2 | 1 | 108,100.00 |
| Crypto | Crypto Assets | High | 6 | 5 | 384,732.00 |
Better your Personal Finances
- Financial Independence: Learn to stop depending on your salary and get to a point where a full time job is just optional.
- Retire Early: Are you planning to work 9 to 5 till 65? Well Early retirement is a possibility and we show you how.
- Passive Income: Stop chasing money. With a good stream of passive income money follows you no matter how little work you do.
- Investing for Beginners: No jargons, here are easy steps that can get your mausi to start investing and making money multiply
- Money Management: Learn to manage money like a pro. Get the best of templates and tips to make your father in law jealous.
Property & Real Estate Investments
| Location | Type | Value of Property | Amount Paid Up | Rent Income/month | Loan End Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bangalore | 2 BHK Apartment | 5200000 | 2,514,000 | 21,000 | 02 Apr 2029 |
| Bangalore | 3 BHK Apartment (under construction,2024 delivery) | 4850000 | 431,316 | 0 | 31 Aug 2033 |
Passive Income per month
2020 – Total Passive income was Rs.1,86,471
2021 – Total Passive income was Rs.4,76,538
Alternate Investments
| Category | Invested | Current Value |
|---|---|---|
| Sun Exchange | 33,422 | 36,150 |
| PF | 249,918 | 582,481 |
| APY | 6,810 | 10,215 |
| Minimum Income Plan | 255,000 | 250,000 |
| Temp Loan to invest in Stocks@14% | 0 | 0 |
| Rental deposits @0% | -225,000 | -225,000 |
| REITs | 0 | 0 |
| Cash (for Emergency) @4% pa | 185,981 | 185,981 |
| Grip Invest | 50,000 | 51,830 |
| TradeCred | 251,469 | 164,744 |
| Fixed Deposit @5.5% | 25,000 | 25,521 |
| Physical Gold & Silver | 64,610 | 108,100 |
| Total | 1,097,210 | 1,190,022 |
P2P Investments
Cashbacks & Rewards – Balance
| Cashback & Points Program | Current Balance (in INR) |
|---|---|
| American Express Points | 2,533 |
| Cashkaro | 27,277 |
| CRED | 12,298 |
| Airmiles | 34,329 |
| Flipkart Supercoins & Vouchers | 1,336 |
| Hotels & Stay points | 2,593 |
| Other points programs | 2,200 |
| Quickride | 0 |
| IOC Rewards | 22 |
| Play Rewards | 850 |
| Total | 83,439 |
Cashbacks & Rewards – Redeemed
| Cashback & Points Program | Redeemed in 2020 | Redeemed YTD in 2021 |
|---|---|---|
| American Express Points | 16,000 | 25,000 |
| Cashkaro | 4,210 | 0 |
| CRED | 10,645 | 40,272 |
| All other Credit Cards | 17,927 | 19,731 |
| Flipkart Supercoins & Vouchers | 7,642 | 26,528 |
| Other points programs | 287 | 750 |
| Quickride | 19,414 | 0 |
| Paytm Cashbacks | 311 | 72 |
| Amazon Pay Card+Cashbacks | 9,735 | 13,987 |
| Play Rewards | 130 | 0 |
| Total | 86,302 | 126,340 |
Personal Finance Articles for the month
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Disclaimer
I am not a financial expert, nor am I certified to give investment advice. What you see here is completely my journey and what I am doing with my money. Take your actions at your own discretion and with care, after all it is your hard earned money and future.
Little saves is all about promoting the habit of saving, capitalizing on deals and cashbacks, putting your money to work for you and increasing your knowledge of personal finance. I never make any stock picks or which crypto currency to buy (I suck at it!), nor do I advice you to follow me. When you are on Little Saves, try to take away the good habits that worked for me, try to avoid the bad habits that did not work for me. Don’t try to mimic my investments as what worked for me may not work for you.
I do earn advertisement fees and link fees for some posts on Little Saves. This helps to partially cover my hosting charges and costs of maintaining the site. But, I never compromise or oversell anything for the income. 90% of everything that I talk about are those I personally invest in or use, having spent countless hours reading up, then investing my own money and finally bringing it to your notice via Little Saves.
