With some delay, I will walk through each position of my portfolio below as usual.
Where I started the year and where I’m at now
Between Q1 and Q2 2023, there was not much movement in my positions. I am mostly following my strategy without any big moves. As usual, you can find an overview of each position in my portfolio below, along with some comments on the changes since the last update.
Portfolio Breakdown
40% ETFs (Q1: 38%)
I am very glad that this position continues to grow. Increasing my ETF exposure has been my main focus over the past two years, and it is really paying off. I am still dollar-cost-averaging (DCA) into ETFs, and I have now surpassed 200K invested here. I plan to keep investing into ETFs each month. Hopefully with time, slow and steady wins the race.
25% Real Estate (Q1: 26%)
For the time being, I am not planning to increase this position further, aside from the natural growth that goes along with the mortgage pay-downs. I had interest in a few properties, but even though prices are coming down, the financials did not make sense to me in the current interest rate environment.
As I have mentioned before, I do not make any assumptions on property value changes here, I only measure my equity as compared to the initial purchase price. When prices go up, that means I’m likely undervaluing this position. When prices go down, it could be the opposite. Still, this way makes more sense to me than trying to “guess” where the market prices currently are.
17% Cash (Q1: 18%)
This position is slowly decreasing due to my dollar-cost-averaging (DCA) into both ETFs as well as crypto. I still carry quite a large balance as I am waiting to pay capital gains taxes from a property sale in 2022 (due in late 2023). I will be extremely happy when I can finally pay those taxes and have a clean view on my cash position. I’m still waiting for some paperworks, so it will probably not happen before Q3/4 this year.
12% Pension Funds (Q1: 12%)
After finally sorting out my second pension fund last quarter, I only carry one private pension. Sadly, that one I really cannot cancel. It has a reasonably large balance and decent investment choices, so while I can no longer contribute to it, I do need to hold onto this until my retirement age. I’d prefer the cash, but at least this one isn’t terrible. As a result, I expect this position will shrink over time in percentage terms as no more contributions can be made, but hopefully it will rise in total value.
6% Crypto (Q1: 6%)
My crypto balance is relatively stable as prices have not moved much recently. While I do continue to DCA into crypto each month, the amounts involved are quite small. I was aiming to keep this part of my portfolio at 5% or less, but I can’t say that I am sad about the rising prices either. If they continue to go up, I might eventually take some gains off the table to rebalance my portfolio. But at 6%, I am not concerned about any imbalance quite yet.
0% Loan Notes (Q1: 0%)
This position is a bit of a weird one. Initially, I thought this investment would basically be a substitute for bonds for me, as it offered quite decent returns around 5% – 8% annualized interest as well as a positive social and environmental impact. However given that the interest rates are now barely matching inflation, I feel like the associated risk may not be in line with the expected reward any more. Therefore, I am slowly drawing down this position as investments expire.
How did I do with regard to my goals?
In my last update, I promised some more concrete financial objectives for 2023, but alas … I have not gotten around to setting them yet. I am still hopeful that this will be one of my next posts though. Fingers crossed!
Bottom Line from Q2 2023:
Not many news this quarter, but I strongly believe that making few moves and otherwise staying the course is a winning long-term strategy, so to me this is still a good quarter.
Readers, have you ever taken a holistic look at your portfolio? What did you learn? If you haven’t yet, what is stopping you? Did you set yourself financial goals for 2023? How are you tracking against them? I look forward to hearing from you in the comments!
Money Savvy Ladies 