First month of 2023 is in the bag and a lot got done this month.
I’ve spent most of my free time building out moneybren.com, and I now have over 50 articles published on the site.
Some of the new articles in January:
- How To Invest In Gold In NZ
- Research on a small NZ tech company
- How to short stocks in New Zealand
- An introduction to multi betting for matched bettors
- An introduction to the FIRE movement
I’ve also built out a Calculators page, which I will be adding to over the next few months.
Check out some of these helpful calculators you can use when planning your finances:
- NZ GST Calculator
- NZ Income Tax Calculator
- Compound Interest Calculator
- Expected Value (matched betting) Calculator
- Stock Valuation Calculator
The site did 1,314 page views which is up around 4x on last month (312) but it’s still in the very early stages. Hopefully this continues to grow nicely over the year and we might be able to start earning some ad revenue before 2024.
As for the side hustles, I didn’t have time to be working on any other sites or even matched betting to be honest. They still ticked along and brought in a little money though.
Matched betting
The matched betting profits for January was $161.73 AUD over 18 bets, so a very light month (on a normal month I’ll easily place over 200 bets).
However, this was also due to not having many active accounts as it’s been 3 years and I’ve exhausted a lot of the options now.
If you’re interested in getting started in matched betting, there is no better place to start than my free guide, or if you really want to hit the ground running, consider my premium course Simple Bets.
Niche sites
I didn’t spend a single second working on my niche sites last month, but they still added around $500 to the moneybren portfolio.
This site that I was supposed to be optimising actually made about $300 USD but won’t get paid out until this month, so that will show in the February update.
I’m definitely stretched a little thin these days (remember moneybren.com is my side hustle, not my day job) so the niche sites will probably be on the backburner for a while.
The good thing about them though is they keep ticking along in the background, whether I work on them or not. Obviously they perform much better if I improve them each month, but as the upkeep cost is practically zero, there’s no harm in leaving them alone to work on more important things.
If you’d like to get started on niche sites, my free guide is here!
Stocks
The portfolio performed very well in January.
This isn’t unexpected, “the January effect” is a common phenomenon which happens because people sell stocks in December to harvest tax losses, then start to rebuy them in January, so it’s common to see a rally. Don’t be surprised if we pull back in February.
Nonetheless it’s nice to see the portfolio so far in the green during a bear market. Certain stocks performed very well, especially retail. I hold both MYR and NCK in the portfolio which are both up significantly (MYR almost doubled).
META also had a strong end to the month after posting better than expected revenue and significant cost-cutting. I did call META as being underpriced on my Instagram page a few months ago (which is when I bought it) so not unexpected.
Other than that the portfolio mostly ticked along as usual.
Part of the reason the portfolio has been so resilient during this bear market is I have a very prudent framework for picking stocks. There is a strong focus on fundamentals and extremely low risk stocks that still have upside. If you’re interested in learning more about building your own portfolio, my course Simple Stocks is the perfect place to start!
Portfolio Breakdown
This portfolio value is made up of the following:
⠀⠀
BOOM weekly savings: $3,474
⠀⠀
Decluttering: $6,200 (all detailed in my course Simple Flips)⠀⠀
⠀⠀
Matched betting: $45,646 (get started with my free guide!)
⠀⠀
Flipping: $2,676 (all detailed in my course Simple Flips)⠀⠀
⠀⠀
Surveys: $150⠀⠀
⠀⠀
Simple Courses sales: $7,875⠀⠀
⠀⠀
Sharesies bonuses: $140⠀⠀
⠀⠀
Leftovers from Chinese New Year Instagram giveaway because people didn’t want free money: $90⠀⠀
Leftovers from 500 follower Instagram giveaway because people didn’t want free money: $300
⠀⠀
Personal dividends: $2,014
Niche Site A (Home Remedies): $5,562 (get started with my free guide)
⠀ Niche Site B (Fitness): $2,619 (get started with my free guide)
Niche Site C (Superfoods): $153 (get started with my free guide)
moneybren.com: $91
Interest: $53
⠀
Sharemarket gainz: $849
Want to invest in stocks but don’t know where to start? Check out Simple Stocks!⠀
Top 10 Holdings
Nothing new in the portfolio at all.
There’s nothing really on my watchlist either that I’m planning to take big positions in.
Unless the market dumps heavily and we see some very cheap prices, I expect these holdings will probably not change too much in the coming months.
However, you might see the Bitcoin allocation hit the top 10 if prices come down significantly in Q1.
