Summary of Year 2021

It has been a while since I last posted on this blog. That’s because I sold all of my portfolio during the first half of the year. We used the proceeds as down payment and additional expenses to buy an apartment. I should have provided an update earlier but was too lazy to calculate and summarize all the transactions that took place. 🙂 Also, there was no motivation, since all of our investments were directed towards equipping the apartment.

Stock Portfolio Sold

I sold all of the companies in my portfolio during a period of 2.5 months:

These sales amounted to €27512 and after fees it generated a profit of €3844 (that’s excluding any dividends previously received from the companies). I already made some selling at the end of 2020, to reduce my tax burden for 2021.

Buying an Apartment

We bought an unfinished 3-room apartment of 59m² in May 2021. The total price was €166k (€151.5k for apartment and €14.5k for underground parking). Of course, it takes more money and time than I previously expected to finish it 🙂 I am tracking all the expenses (including down payment, paper work, designer services, materials, transportation etc.) and so far we spent ~€53k. €25k from this amount was for the down payment. Also, ~€9k from this amount is borrowed from bank as mortgage.

It’s not fully equipped yet but we can see the light at the tunnel’s end. We should be able to move in to it in a few weeks time, if everything goes according to plan. However, it will take some more time and money to live comfortably. Roughly, it should take ~€22k more to fully finish and equip the apartment. €9k of this amount will be borrowed from the bank which is agreed already and will be included to mortgage.

In the end, the expenditures will look something like this:

Even though it takes a lot of time, money and energy, I am glad that we made the decision. Our daughter is 3 years old already and it will be great to have a separate bedroom for her. I don’t treat it as an investment, as we are planning to live in it for at least 10 years. That’s why I’m not worried if the retail estate prices suddenly drop. The main thing is to be able to cover the mortgage and that shouldn’t be a problem.

Me and my wife were hesitating if we should buy a bigger appartment/cottage/house away from the city centre or a smaller one in the central part of the city. We decided to go with the latter one. We don’t enjoy driving, so living walking distances to workplaces/kindergarden gives us more flexibility and time. Being able to work from home changed the dynamic but I still enjoy going to office to spend some time with my colleagues. I usually work 3-4 days/week from the office, so it’s good to be able to go there on foot when I want to.

Other Notable Things

2021 was a tough year with some financial headwinds and a lot of stress. However, there were a lot of bright things as well:

• I managed to read 17 books;
• We had a nice vacation at the Lithuanian seaside with our friends;
• I started working in a new position (at the same company) which brings some new interesting challenges;
• I did sports everyday consecutively for 277 days in a row (starting from 1st October 2020 and ending during vacation I mentioned above).

Looking Forward

I am really looking forward to 2022 as it should bring some pleasant experiences. We will move in to our own apartment at the beginning of the year which will be a big change. It will take some more time to get back to investing game but I should be able to start investing again in the middle of 2022. However, before that, I think we will have some vacation abroad as we didn’t have one for almost 4 years already. Also in the plans is getting back to triathlon (I was mainly running and doing strength training in 2021).

I hope you had a nice year and I’m wishing you to have an even better one in 2022! 🙂

Thanks for stopping by!