Blog Archive: July 2017

Athens International Airport

| Airports | 22 seen

Athens International Airport "Eleftherios Venizelos", commonly initialized as "AIA", began operation on 28 March 2001 and is the primary international airport that serves the city of Athens and the region of Attica.

It is Greece's busiest airport and it serves as the hub and main base of Aegean Airlines as well as other Greek airlines. Athens International is the 28th busiest airport in Europe.

I had a chance to visit Athens airport, during a short connecting flight by Aegean Airlines from Tbilisi to Chania (see: About Tbilisi - Athens - Chania (Greece) flight by Aegean Airlines ) at the start of June 2017.

Athens International Airport

AIA is located between the towns of Markopoulo, Koropi, Spata and Loutsa, about 20 km (12 mi) to the east of central Athens (30 km (19 mi) by road, due to intervening hills). The airport is named after Elefthérios Venizélos, the prominent Cretan political figure and Prime Minister of Greece, who made a significant contribution to the development of Greek aviation and the Hellenic Air Force in the 1930s.

 As to-date, ownership is divided between the Hellenic Republic (Greek State) and Private Sector in a 55%-45% stake following a PPP scheme for the airport company. Currently, private investors include the Copelouzos Group (5%) and PSP Investments of Canada (40%), following purchase of Hochtief's shares.

The city center is reachable by metro paying a special 10 EUR one way price. Airport also features a locker room to store you baggage, as we actually did, while decided to spend a few hours in city, before returning to airport for our next flight to Chania, Crete. Price for locker room EUR 9 in total.

The airport currently has two terminals, the main terminal and the satellite terminal accessible by an underground link from the main terminal. It is designed to be extended in a modular approach over the ensuing years in order to accommodate increases in air travel. These extensions are planned in a six-phase framework. The first (and current) phase allowed the airport to accommodate 26 million passengers per year. When the airport originally opened, the current phase called for a capacity of only 16 million passengers per year; however, the capacity was able to increase without progressing to the next phase thanks to advanced IT logistics. The sixth and final expansion phase will allow the airport to accommodate an annual traffic of 50 million passengers, with the current layout leaving enough space for five more terminals to be added. As such, the parallel runway system currently in place has been designed to accommodate flight traffic with this high equivalent annual passenger load upon completion of the final expansion phase.

Chania International Airport (Greece)

| Airports | 17 seen

Chania International Airport, "Daskalogiannis"  is an international airport located near Souda Bay on the Akrotiri Peninsula of the Greek island of Crete, serving the city of Chania, 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) away.

Moreover, it is a gateway to western Crete for an increasing amount of tourists. The airport is named after Daskalogiannis, a Cretan rebel against Ottoman rule in the 18th century and is a joint civil–military airport. It is the fifth busiest airport in Greece and 8th in Balkan peninsula in terms of passengers. From 2010 to 2016 has a great increase about 100% in passengers arrivals. The airport is connected with many countries (about 30) from Europe and Asia especially in summer season and with flights connections in Greece and Cyprus whole year. 

I traveled to Chania with connecting flight through Athens from Tbilisi and back with another connecting flight to Riga via Copenhagen in June 2017. We headed to Crete for about 3 week vacation. 

Chania International Airport

The focus on civil aviation for the west of Crete has not always been on the current location. It was the airport of Maleme that served civil flights up to 1959, and dating back to the end of Second World War.

Maleme (Military) Airport was constructed by the British Military, shortly before the Second World War. When the war was over, the facility was used as the main public airport of Chania.

In 1959, this activity was transferred to the military airport of Souda. 1967 saw the construction of the first passenger terminal and parking space for two aircraft. In 1974, the airport also began to serve international flights. Because of insufficient capacity, there was the need for a new terminal building. Eventually, in 1996, the new terminal was ready, measuring a surface area of 14,650 square metres (157,700 sq ft), with 6 aircraft stands in front. It has a design capacity of 1.35 million passengers per year. In 2000, it was officially named Ioannis Daskalogiannis.

The airport can be easily reached by car via the main road network. The city of Chania is about 20 minutes drive away. Other than by car, the facility is linked by airport buses to the city of Chania, from where transfer to other buses is possible. The airport buses depart 7 times daily. Journey time is about half an hour. Passengers can also take a taxi to any destination across the island. The taxi stand is located just outside the terminal. Taxis operate as long as flights depart and arrive at the airport.

Postcards from Athens

| | 10 seen

Just like in the case of postcards from Istanbul, we had just a few hours to spend in Athens, Greece, between layover flight to Chania (Crete). 

Equipped with camera and adventurous spirit we dive in the narrow streets of Athens to discover it's beauty and visit some ancient sites.

Square in Athens

One of our first stops in the city center arriving from Athens airport. 

Graffiti in Athens

View towards Athens

From distance Athens seems very similar to Tbilisi, the place from above picture reminded me some scenes from our hiking trips in Tbilisi near Turtle lake. See: Hiking in Tbilisi - Turtle lake (Kus Tba) - Vake Park

Archeological excavations in Athens

Streets of Athens

There is a metro station somewhere around, here I bought a sim card from Vodafone, see Planing a trip to Greece: How to get a Prepaid SIM Card with Internet

Ancient site of Agora

Read more here: Ancient Agora of Athens

Modern architecture in Athens

That said - another city, another postcards from! 

Ancient Agora of Athens

| Tourism objects | 18 seen

The Ancient Agora of Classical Athens is the best-known example of an ancient Greek agora, located to the northwest of the Acropolis and bounded on the south by the hill of the Areopagus and on the west by the hill known as the Agoraios Kolonos, also called Market Hill.

It was at the start of June, when I first visited Athens, Greece during a brief layover flight to the island of Crete, see About Tbilisi - Athens - Chania (Greece) flight by Aegean Airlines. We had about 10 hours between our connecting flight, once we left Athens airport we took the metro to the city center and just explored, without any particular goal or something. 

We found ourselves visiting Ancient Agora of Athens site, pretty cool right?

View towards Ancient Agora of Athens

After an hour of wanderings around narrow streets of Athens, we finally noticed this place.

Excavations at Athenian Agora

The ancient Athenian agora has been excavated by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens since 1931 under the direction of T. Leslie Shear, Sr. They continue to the present day, now under the direction of John McK Camp.

Territory plan at Ancient Agora

After the initial phase of excavation, in the 1950s the Hellenistic Stoa of Attalos was reconstructed on the east side of the agora, and today it serves as a museum and as storage and office space for the excavation team.

A virtual reconstruction of the Ancient Agora of Athens has been produced through a collaboration of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Foundation of the Hellenic World, which had various output (3d video, VR real-time dom performance, Google Earth 3d models).

Railroad near Ancient Agora in Athens

Pretty cool combinations - where Ancient world meets modern.

View towards temple

Panoramic photography

Made a quick hand held panoramic photography.

The museum is housed in the Stoa of Attalos, and its exhibits are connected with the Athenian democracy. The collection of the museum includes clay, bronze and glass objects, sculptures, coins and inscriptions from the 7th to the 5th century BC, as well as pottery of the Byzantine period and the Turkish occupation.

Q2 2017 Online Income Report - $6,116.98

| Blogging | 8 seen

Wow - that was fast, another quarter of year just passed and we are already in the middle of year. Last three months have disappeared as another flicker. Time flies. 

Now let' s see how did it go for my online ventures in Q2 2017 (April, May and June).

During past three months I've traveled a lot - in mid May we went for a short trip to Germany (Dortmund area), then after about a week returned to Georgia for a week via Istanbul, Turkey. And in the start of June we fled to Crete, Greece and spent amazing 3 weeks there. That's a lot of countries in just 3 months. 

Despite my concerns after Amazon Associates reduced commission fees for select product categories (starting March), last quarter managed to beat first quarter of the year by $154.  And here is why - diversification of online income streams. Since the start of 2017 I've launched tour booking platform in Georgia - tourgeorgia.eu and I'm starting to make first earnings from dividend paying stocks and peer to peer lending. 

I cover separate series on dividends and peer to peer lending, make sure to check them out also: Dividend income

In short second quarter of 2017 (April, May and June) earned $6,490.16 what is an awesome more than double growth if compared to the second quarter of year before (see: Q2 2016 Blog Traffic & Online Income - 133,939 Users / $3,034.76), and as already stated even a slight increase if compared to previous quarter (see: Q1 2017 Online Income Report - $5,886.46) 

About Website traffic in Q2 2017

Currently there are two websites  - the blog you are currently reading and tourgeorgia.eu. 

ReinisFischer.com

Another record breaking quarter if compared by visitors, more than 236,000 users in just three months, that's average of about 78,000 users monthly. 

Website traffic Q2 2017. Data source: Google Analytics

Pretty impressive numbers here, IMHO. If compared to the second quarter a year before, my personal blog in second quarter of 2017 have experienced more than 78% growth. If I would manage such high growth rate in second quarter of 2018, that would mean more than 420,000 users in three months after a year. That's well above my current target  - 100K users monthly. Great. Blogging have turned out to be one of the most successful online things I've done so far.

Q2 2017 vs Q2 2016 website traffic. Data source: Google Analytics

Tourgeorgia.EU

Originally first launched in 2011, this website made a re-launch from scratch at the last days of March 2017. This is first full reporting quarter for tourgeorgia.eu. I keep separate monthly income reports there as well

tourgeorgia.eu website traffic Q2 2017

3,295 users, though humble but IMHO a decent number for about a 3 month old website. You can see from the graph above there are some traffic spikes a start of the each month. For the past three month  spent some dollars on Facebook to drive traffic there at start of the each month. It worked good for traffic driving, but didn't converted well in actual bookings. As by now most of the bookings happened on tourgeorgia.eu have come from referrals links from my blog and Google Search Landing pages.

We got 26 bookings in the past three months, which is a nice, but a little bellow my expectations having at least 10 bookings per month. The future, though, seems nice and right now I feel I could report double that numbers after a year.

About Income in Q2 2017

There are some cool additions to my online income - in the past quarter I've added a new income source - dividend paying stocks, which I hope will grow in future.

  • ReinisFischer.com - $5,890.85
  • Tourgeorgia.EU - $452.53
  • Mintos.com peer to peer lending - $91.41
  • Dividend paying stocks - $57.38

Total: $6,492.17

Expenses:

  • Facebook Ads: $78.18
  • Linode: $135
  • Virtual Assistants: $160

Total: $373.18

Goals for Q3 2017

As usual, goals are my favorite part of these reports - I'm looking to have about 250,000 users for my personal blog and about $5,000 income total. Let's see how dividend paying stocks and peer to peer lending will help to achieve this goal.

Dollar-Cost Averaging as part of Cryptocurrency Portfolio

| Crypto | 55 seen

Those of you following my blog in the recent weeks (months) probably have already noticed, since the start of the 2017 I've been building my retirement portfolio from scratch. It has been already more than 6 months since the start of this journey and the great news are following, I'm at 80.27% from this years goal to invest $8,561. (That's roughly about 31% from my annual earnings).

If at the start of year I thought that I will invest in mutual funds, stocks and peer to peer lending, and also I thought that to save $8,561 will be really tough (hard but doable), then now 6 month later I have found that it is quite possible to put some chunk of money from earnings month to month in savings and I'm more than sure that I will save more than $8,561 this year (I'm looking right now to save in total for 2017 $10,000).

Also for my investments I've extended portfolio to cash and crypto currencies.

As I like to think - it's all about finance discipline and smart decisions.

Now, when speaking about smart decisions and investments in crypto currencies, this is the part where I'm very uncertain - right now I'm not seeing investments in crypto currencies not at all as smart decisions, as they might be ponzi schemes or something. Here is the thing - I'm not using bitcoins to order pizza or buy electronics, I'm not using crypto currency by myself and I still don't see there a lot of use from it. I kind of understand crypto concept, but as I see it right now, while it wont go mainstream - there are a lot of unknown still.

On the other hand - I see a lot of opportunities here, and that's the reason I decided to allocate small space in my portfolio for investments in crypto currencies - right now I decided to allocate up to 5% from total investments in crypto currencies.

Portfolio with Crypto currency included, July 2017

By July 2017, crypto currencies takes 2.3% from my total net portfolio. Still a plenty of room to grow to 5%

It was at the end of June 2017, when after a small talk with a fellow affiliate guy about crypto currencies I thought I should start investing using dollar cost averaging, each month constantly buying some coins. I opened an account at coinbase. See: How & Why To Buy Crypto Currencies (bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin) Online - Coinbase

​Once I was able to verify my ID on coinbase I bought first crypto currency - ethereum, see: First Investment In Crypto Currencies - Bought 0.2 ETH for EUR 50

To track my progress with crypto currencies I built a simple but powerful Google Spreadsheet, see: How To Track Your CryptoCurrencies Portfolio Automatically Using Google Spreadsheets

Tracking crypto currency portfolio

About 2 weeks later from my initial plan of acquiring digital coins - I can proudly report that I've bought not only ETH, but also bitcoin and litecon, by spending EUR 50 for each of the currencies. And I'm planing to spend about the same amount of money each month until the end of 2020. That's about 3,5 years or about EUR 6300 to be invested in crypto currencies by the end of 2020. 

In the past two weeks value for my investments in three popular crypto currencies (Ethereum, Bitcoin and Litecoin) have lost value for -6.51% (and not counting in commission fees paid on Coinbase - total 6 EUR

I'm planing to purchase more coins after a month, and then again after a month and so on - dollar cost averaging:

Dollar cost averaging (DCA) is an investment strategy with the goal of reducing the impact of volatility on large purchases of financial assets such as equities. Dollar cost averaging is also called the constant dollar plan (in the US), pound-cost averaging (in the UK), and, irrespective of currency, as unit cost averaging or the cost average effect.

By dividing the total sum to be invested in the market (e.g. $100,000) into equal amounts put into the market at regular intervals (e.g. $1000 over 100 weeks), DCA hopes to reduce the risk of incurring a substantial loss resulting from investing the entire "lump sum" just before a fall in the market. Dollar cost averaging is not always the most profitable way to invest a large sum, but it is alleged to minimize downside risk. The technique is said to work in markets undergoing temporary declines because it exposes only part of the total sum to the decline. The technique is so-called because of its potential for reducing the average cost of shares bought. As the amount of shares that can be bought for a fixed amount of money varies inversely with their price, DCA effectively leads to more shares being purchased when their price is low and fewer when they are expensive. As a result, DCA possibly can lower the total average cost per share of the investment, giving the investor a lower overall cost for the shares purchased over time.

Now, if would stick with my 5% goal in portfolio for crypto currencies for next 3 and a half years, that would mean my portfolios total net worth would be at around EUR 120,000. Yes, sounds unreal, as of today, by writing these lines it stands just at ~ EUR 6,200 but time, discipline and decisions will show. 

If you want learn more, make sure to subscribe to the investment e-mail newsletter bellow or read dividend income reports.

Phidias Lounge Bar in Athens

| Restaurant reviews | 13 seen

Phidias lounge bar in Athens was mine second cafe / restaurant in Greece, as just early in the morning we arrived from Tbilisi to Athens and had a few hours before our connecting flight to Chania, Creete.

We used spare hours and from Athens airport went directly to the city center by metro. 

Phidias lounge bar in Athens

Since we hadn't been to Athens before and were kind of limited in time, we decided to visit only things that will be close to our route, that's how we turned out near to the Ancient Agora of Athens site, after wondering around (and not inside) for about 2 hours first cafeteria that crossed our route was Phidias lounge bar. 

Just now, when writing these lines and using Google maps to locate this place, I learned that there is actually a hotel Phidias, and lounge bar is just an extension. Maybe next time when going to Athens, it' s good idea to book hotel Phidias, price seems fair - about EUR 90 per night. And a lovely sight towards Ancient Agora of Athens site.

While I was bussy ordering cold frappe, my seat was already taken:

Greek cat

What a lovely mate to enjoy coffee with. Meow!

How To Track Your CryptoCurrencies Portfolio Automatically Using Google Spreadsheets

| Macroeconomics | 199 seen

It was just recently I made my first investment in cryptocurrencies, I spent EUR 50 to acquire about 0.2 Ethereum. As I bought them for a long term (buy and hold) and actually I'm planning to acquire more coins every month using dollar cost averaging and decided to build a separate Google Spreadsheet to track value changes, gains, or losses.

For support please visit the Terramatris website: Custom Google Spreadsheet Development for Crypto Currency Portfolio Tracking

I see investments in crypto currencies as a great alternative to diversify my portfolio. Right now crypto currencies stand at about 0.8% in my portfolio and I'm looking to increase it to about 5% by the end of 2017. 

Update: This article originally was written back in 2017, the formula(s) listed in this article have changed several times. If not working look into the comments section for any help

The idea of the following spreadsheet was inspired from a regular stock tracking sheet, see: Simple Google Spreadsheet to Track Stock Portfolio Changes Using GOOGLEFINANCE

Here is a catch, to get real-time updates in Google Spreadsheets you will have to use =IMPORTXML function to get real-time updates from some crypto currency exchange service. Luckily a Reddit user lawnchairwiz have provided us with solution, see: Easy Way to import ETH price into google sheets

For those that use Google Sheets to track their ETH transactions, here's a quick way to get the price from coinmarketcap.com:

Copy the URL http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/ into cell A1.
In cell B1, type in =IMPORTXML(A1,"//span[@class='text-large']")

You now have the ETH price in cell B1

I built a simple cryptocurrency Google Spreadsheet tracking real-time prices for bitcoin, ethereum and litcoin

​

Tracking cryptocurrency portfolio with Google Spreadsheets 

Let me explain a bit in details:

Column A - Currency - pretty self-explanatory

Column B - for each cryptocurrency entered in Column A add respective value from coinmarketcap.com

  • Ethereum - http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/
  • Bitcoin - http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/
  • Litecoin - http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/litecoin/
  • And so on

Column C - paste following:

=IMPORTXML(B3,"//span[@id='quote_price']/@data-usd") =IMPORTXML(B3,"//span[@class='cmc-details-panel-price__price']")

you will get a real-time price in USD

Optional

I'm purchasing coins in EUR currency and I would love to see their value both in USD and EUR

Column D - paste following

=C3*GoogleFinance("CURRENCY:USDEUR")

Using GoogleFinance function you will get real-time USD EUR value

Column E (Coins) - enter how much coins you have

Column F - how much did you spend on them

and so on.

Here is a working Google Spreadsheet, File -> Make a copy 

For support please visit the Terramatris website: Custom Google Spreadsheet Development for Crypto Currency Portfolio Tracking

First Investment In Crypto Currencies - Bought 0.2 ETH for EUR 50

| Crypto | 37 seen

It was in the late evening of July 3d, 2017 when I finally successfully bought my first crypto currency - I paid EUR 50 and get for that - 0.2 ETH. ETH stands for ethereum. Wonder what the heck is that? Don't worry, me neither.

Or let' s say this way - I know there have been bitcoin around for about a decade or something, though I don't see any practical reason for using that, while real money is in power. Right? It was so until about two weeks ago, while sipping freshly squeezed orange juice in rental apartment in Crete, a fellow affiliate marketer contacted me and we started to speak about investments, stocks, peer to peer lending and ... crypto currencies. My buddy told me he is doing some kind of arbitrage day trading stuff with crypto currencies. 

As I'm quite opposite - buy and hold investor, and since the start fo 2017 I've been building my wealth portfolio from scratch by investing in stocks and peer to peer lending, idea of having long term investments sounded very appealing to me and I decided to allocate about 5% space in my portfolio for crypto currencies. 

Investment Portfolio July 2017

That small pink pie slice represents investments in crypto currencies, total 0.8%

I opened account at coinbase.com (See: How & Why To Buy Crypto Currencies (bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin) Online - Coinbase) and decided to invest EUR 300 in 3 different crypto currencies, like this:

  • EUR 100  - bitcoin
  • EUR 100 - ethereum
  • EUR 100 - litcoin

those are three crypto currencies currently available on coinbase. As a long term minded investor I decided I should buy three instead of one, for a simple reason - diversification, if two goes down, then one might go up.

Unfortunately I cannot report smooth experience with coinbase, actually at one start I was ready to give up on my idea on investments in crypto currencies at all, as it was just too complicated, I spent about 2 days trying to verify my ID there, once I verified it, I spent another two days trying to verify my bank account without success, somehow I managed to verify my MasterCard and just out of luck I managed to spend EUR 50 + EUR 2 fee to purchase +0.19996802 ETH.

Buying crypto currencies on coinbase

Soon, if converted back to EUR, my precious 0.19996802 ETH lost some 60 cents in value.

My first impressions about coinbase.com are awful, pain in the ass, you name it. Buggy system, unknown errors - ahh...

Right, I'm not here to complain, but if you are reading this and considering to open your account at coinbase.com, think twice- read dozen of negative reviews about them before investing. After reading countless negative reviews about poor customer service, lost money and God knows what else evil stuff on coinbase - STILL the urge to acquire crypto currencies was so huge, I would say even greedy, I still kept with coinbase. As for some reason, I still believe coinbase is one of the most transparent and seems largest crypto currency platforms.  Now writing these lines I hope coinbase will improve their service and system in future.  

Instead of EUR 300 in three crypto currencies I've spent just EUR 50 in one, and that's my initial investment for a long term in ethereum. I still hope to spend at least EUR 50 on bitcoin and EUR 50 on litcoin this month, and in the future I'm planing to use average dollar cost investment by purchasing each month more for fixed, let' s say 50 EUR, price. 

Are you investing in crypto currencies? Could you leave some feedback? Positive or negative. Please comment below!

About Tbilisi - Athens - Chania (Greece) flight by Aegean Airlines

| Travel guides | 7 seen

There is a pretty convenient option when traveling from Tbilisi to the island of Crete (Greece), probably there are some direct charter flights, but at the start of June we opted for a connecting flight Tbilisi - Athens - Chania by Aegean airlines. Bought online tickets about a month prior, and in fact didn't paid too much (about 200 EUR for two persons)

This was the first time for me traveling to Greece, and I quite enjoyed option to spend few hours in Athens and visit some of the Ancient world sites. Really cool.

Now, that said - I've another airline company on my radar, when traveling to or from Georgia. Aegean is is the largest Greek airline by total number of passengers carried, by number of destinations served and by fleet size. A Star Alliance member since June 2010, it operates scheduled and charter services from Athens and Thessaloniki to other major Greek destinations as well as to a number of European and Middle Eastern destinations. Its main hubs are Athens International Airport in Athens, Thessaloniki International Airport in Thessaloniki and Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus. It also uses other Greek airports as bases, some of which are seasonal. It has its head office in Kifisia, a suburb of Athens. Although the airline is the largest airline in Greece, it is not a flag carrier.

Inflight magazine at Aegean

Pretty comfortable Boeing, most probably, A320 , plane with enough legroom. During flight Tbilisi - Athens (which is about 2 hours), there were not much entertainment on board, just some free magazines and of course free lunch. On the other hand for a flight Athens - Chania (a few hours later) - there were onboard tablets and quite lovely selection of games, movies and documentaries (I remember I watched something about robots). I did find it actually quite strange that for a 50 minute flight Athens - Chania, there were more entertainment options than during Tbilisi  - Athens flight. But as the flight time is short, it' s perfectly fine with or without tablets, right?

Free lunch during Tbilisi - Athens flight

As this was my first time flying with Aegean airlines I feel pretty satisfied and as I really enjoyed Crete (we spent about 3 weeks there, more on that in upcoming posts) - I will DEFINITELY return to Crete and Greece, without doubts - with Aegean airlines. 

What about you? Have you flied Aegean? Drop a comment!

Simple Google Spreadsheet to Track Stock Portfolio Changes Using GOOGLEFINANCE

| Macroeconomics | 315 seen

There is a super simple and easy way to track your stock portfolio with real-time price, cost basis, market value, value gain, even individual stock weight in the portfolio, net yield on cost and current net yield from dividend payouts, and of course total gain values using Google Spreadsheets and GOOGLEFINANCE function.

For support with this Spreadsheet please visit the Terramatris website: Custom Google Spreadsheet Development for Crypto Currency Portfolio Tracking

Currently, I hold 9 stocks in the Baltic equity market (Nasdaq Baltics), I add about one or two new stocks each month, I started simple creating a really simple spreadsheet and manually entering stock data, I like to keep an eye on my stock portfolio few times during the week. For actual stock prices, I'm looking on Nasdaq Baltic's website. Though in my manual spreadsheet pretty much of the rest is automated, still entering the actual stock price is time-consuming and can result in an error. 

I decided to try GOOGLEFINANCE function and see if can Google fetch data for the Baltic market. It can. 

As an inspiration for this simple, yet handy spreadsheet I took the following template: Using Google Spreadsheets to Track Your Dividend Portfolio, and if you are up to a highly customized, multi-currency portfolio I suggest using that template instead of mine.

But if you are up for a really simple version, click here and get mine: Simple Stock Portfolio with Dividends by ReinisFischer.com

Simple Stock Portfolio with Dividends

Open and save as a copy this sheet and start entering your values. Here are a few hints:

  • Ticker: enter your stock ticker here
  • Shares: how many shares do you have
  • Cost basis: enter a total value for each investment
  • Under 2017 enter the total dividends you have received for each stock in 2017. In case you are reading this in 2018, 2019, or 2027 change 2017 to the current year.

Stock prices are received automatically each time opening spreadsheet:

=GOOGLEFINANCE(B3, "price")

Where B3 represents the ticker name from column B

For support with this Spreadsheet please visit the Terramatris website: Custom Google Spreadsheet Development for Crypto Currency Portfolio Tracking

June 2017 Dividend Income Report - $53.42

| Investments | 12 seen

Welcome to the second (#2) dividend income report, covering earnings I've made from dividend paying stocks and peer to peer lending in June 2017. 

I started my wealth building adventure (portfolio) in January 2017 with a simple goal to invest $8,561 this year in several batches. Now, six  months latter I'm publishing my second dividend income report. 

In this article you will learn both how much I've received in dividend income also I will publish my net worth, with few tables.

Make sure to check out first dividend income report: May 2017 Dividend Income Report - $65.45 and subscribe to the latest dividend income report updates at the end of this article

About Portfolio in June 2017

Most of my investments right now are concentrated in the Baltic states and Georgia. My portfolio consists of investments in Georgian Lari and EUR currencies. For the sake of this and all future articles I've converted all  final/total currencies to the US dollar, although currently there is no position in my portfolio with direct investments in US dollar. 

 At the end of June I've invested in total $5,645.27 what equals to 65.94% from my 2017 planned investments.  I've reached 0.57% from my ultimate one million dollar goal by the time I will turn 60 (in 2045)

Net worth June 2017

The total value of my portfolio was $5,709.95, making difference between invested and value: + $64.68. There is a slight decrease in value growth if compared to the previous month, when difference was at +$109.86

The growth, though slow and decreasing, have happened because of two reasons - stock prices have gone up and currency exchange rates (I have investment of about 4,500  in Georgian lari)

About Investments in June 2017

Last month I invested additional EUR 465 in Nasdaq Baltics stock market and GEL 700 in mintos.com peer to peer lending.

Investment portfolio June 2017

From money invested in Baltic equity market I bought following shares:

  • Tallina Vesi (TAL: TVEAT) - 15 shares
  • Ekspress Grupp (TAL: EEG1T) - 200 shares

I bought Tallina Vesi stocks because of two reasons, firstly I believe they are among one of the best dividend paying stocks in the Baltic market, see: Dividend Paying Stocks In Nasdaq Baltic Market By Yield, second they made a dividend payout in June. 

Ekspress Grupp promises a nice dividend yield in July. They owns some of the largest Baltic online news sites, as a publisher I understand online media probably is not the best investment opportunity with decreasing revenue from advertisement, but again as a publisher actually making income from digital properties I find this investment, let' s say nice addition to my portfolio.

Dividend Income June 2017

From equities bought in the past and from investments in peer to peer lending marketplace Mintos.com, I got following income:

  • Nordecon - EUR 8.1 (dividend yield 3.21%)
  • Tallina Vesi - EUR 7.29 (dividend yield 3.88%)
  • Mintos.com - EUR 31.43

Total: EUR 46.82

Now, I've already expressed my ambivalent feelings regarding investments in peer to peer lending, especially in the Georgia and Baltics, as I find these markets pretty volatile, but for now mintos.com peer to peer lending works as a charm, I have more than half of my investments there in Georgian lari with 17% annul return rate. I really love the news that at the end of June a new loan originator from Georgia have joined mintos to offer business and agricultural loans on platform. See:Georgian Microfinance Organization BIG joins Mintos marketplace

Now, speaking about investment in Tallina Vesi and Nordecon, June saw some value decrease for both stocks, despite paid out dividend both stocks makes a negative return right now in my portfolio. I'm sure I will keep Tallina Vesi and buy more shares in the future, as they are an utility company, kind of Baltic Blue chip, then regarding nordecon I will keep an eye on it, and there is a great chance I will sell it in the future, as in truth I'm not vey well educated about their business model. One I know for sure, both stocks will stay in my portfolio until next year's dividend payout's. Though if there will happend a dividend cutoff - then nordecon is one to go. Let' s see how things will develop

Monthly income to the date

During past six months, dividend income from my portfolio have produced a whooping $146.61, or 2.597% year to date yield

Monthly income chart June 2017

As you can see from chart above, last June wasn't the best in terms of dividend income, May was. In general, my total investments are rather small not to say humble, and I find I will be rather boring dividend income reporter for next couple of years. What I can see now, it will be hard to push for new heights in coming months, although from what I can see now, next month should be the record breaker, and should earn more than $100/mo, which is actually one of my smaller goals, see: Investment Goal #1 - $100/mo from Dividend Payments. But speaking of other months - August, September - right now I don't see to earn more than $50 per month. Time will show of course, make sure to subscribe to updates below. 

Goals for June 2018 Dividend Income

As always, I would love to end my income report with some future goals/plans. In next June, I'm looking on dividend income at $150. For sure, that will ask to invest much more, one of the things I'm looking to do next year - to buy and hold US stocks, for that I'm looking to open a discount stock brokerage account and deposit at least $10,000. As you can see right now my total net worth is not even close to that, so yeah having a decent discount US stock broker will ask me to save at much higher rate,