September is over!
Not a very interesting month for moneybren.com though – I worked on the site for literally one or two hours all month!
No – it’s not because I’m lazy (well, maybe kinda) but I’ve been training for a couple of sports tournaments all month and between trainings, commutes, travel and planning and so on, the site just hasn’t been very high on the priority list.
My schedule is also looking quite busy for October too with quite a bit of travel so I’m not expecting to get much work done in the coming month either.
However, the world stops for nobody, right?
So every day the markets kept ticking along, my auto-invest orders kept ticking along, all the mini businesses and investments I have kept ticking along, as they will always continue to do.
Let’s look at how the portfolio fared without me at the helm for a month.
Niche sites
I still managed to add about $1k in cash to the portfolio from niche site earnings.
These sites are kind of like rental properties – they just sit on the internet and make money from advertising and commissions. They can take time to build, but if you learn the process well and build something of high quality, they truly can bring in a steady passive income.
The niche site community has been a little on edge recently though.
With the emergence of ChatGPT and some heavy Google updates, some niches are seeing sites put through the wringer and the process is getting slightly more complicated to build a decent-earning site.
However, hustlers always come out on top and if you’re willing to grind it out, put in the hours and learn how to make a quality site, the rewards are still there for the taking.
To learn everything you need to get started on building your own niche sites, check out my free guide here.
Dividends
Had a decent dividend season in September, with four of my stocks paying a dividend this month.
In total, I cashed approximately $280 NZD from dividends.
I can still remember back when I first started this public portfolio three years ago I was flipping stuff on Trademe for $5 profit to buy stocks, now we’re cashing a few hundred dollars without even doing anything!
This is the snowball at work, and in three more years I’m sure that few hundred in dividends will be growing into a few thousand.
If you love the process, it’s a joy to watch the snowball rolling and see everything play out just like you expected.
Cashing in on the USD/NZD rate
One move I made in the portfolio this month was I sold a bunch of small US positions I had which were all in losses.
I did that because they were all insignificant positions, but together made up a couple thousand dollars, and I wanted to convert those US dollars back to NZD to take advantage of the very low exchange rate right now.
Even though I made losses on the positions overall, I’ve been able to redirect those funds into some NZ stocks that are higher conviction investments, and also remove the foreign exchange risk that came with those positions and added volatility to the portfolio.
Now that I’ve locked in the foreign exchange gains, it should dampen the losses I took on those positions and make the portfolio a little more stable as well.
Portfolio Breakdown
Market turned backwards in September so we’ll need to wait a little longer to cross the magic $100k mark.
No stress though! The snowball is up and down but all the matters is it continues rolling 😉
This portfolio is made up of:
💥 BOOM weekly savings: $4,341
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🚮 Decluttering: $7,202
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💸 Matched betting: $47,847
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📦 Flipping: $2,676 ⠀
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📝 Surveys: $150⠀⠀
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🖥️ Simple Courses sales: $9,543
🏋️♀️ 1-on-1 coaching: $390
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🎉 Sharesies bonuses: $145⠀⠀
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🧧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
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💰 Personal dividends: $2,014
🖱️ Niche Site A (Home Remedies): $8,267
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🖱️ Niche Site B (Fitness): $3,135
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🖱️ Niche Site C (Superfoods): $3,224
🖱️ moneybren.com (affiliate commissions): $4,133
💵 Interest: $61
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💹 Sharemarket gainz: $1,556
💹 Crypto gainz: $394
Top 10 Holdings
Things have shuffled a tiny bit as I sold off some US ETFs to take advantage of the exchange rate and pumped them into my NZ holdings.
However, nothing new has been added.
I’ve scoured through every stock on the NZX, and I don’t really see anything I like except what’s currently in the portfolio.
I’m also not actively pursuing any new overseas stocks for this particular portfolio, as I think it makes more sense to keep this portfolio NZ-focused so readers will relate to it more.
I continue to accumulate US stocks for my personal portfolio, but as for moneybren I will do my best to stick with NZX or ASX positions.
You can view all previous portfolio updates here.
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