Welcome to the Portfolio update of October 2021. September was filled with job interviews and negative crypto and stock market performances.
Personal update
Another month of job hunting. It looks like mega corp definitely banned me, neglecting the 7 year of good performance due to a anonymous blog post that was online for 2 days. If you’re a mega corp employee and were involved in me getting banned, then please be informed that you’re no longer welcome to my blog/life. This is my private garden party with opinions and thoughts that shouldn’t be taken to HR aka “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”.
Well job hunt continued and how destiny turned out I’ve ended up with 4 opportunities that were closing in towards the end of the month. An IT Security Specialist role (that turned out to be way underpaid), a CISO role (that I was seemingly not quite qualified for), a consulting role (that would have sold me for 200-230 CHF/h but was unwilling to pay 160k+ CHF) and an SRE role that I ultimately took. While it wasn’t my favorite job, the compensation offer was too good to be declined. Roughly 115k CHF/year more vs. the IT Security Specialist role which I would have preferred. I’ll start on October 11th!
The first two or three weeks of September I haven’t meet any friends, being unemployed seemingly has direct impact on social attractiveness or something. I also didn’t feel like meeting people. That changed in the last week where I’ve met some friends. I only realized after, that I really need that social contact outside of the family from time to time.
My bug bounty hunting adventures were a bit more fruitful in September, 50 EUR and a 500 EUR bounty were awarded. But I think the whole space is a bit abusive because as a researcher one has literally no power over the whole process. Companies can lower the severity, claim it’s a duplicate w/o need for proof, etc.
The FTTH connection stalled a bit again. While they ended up bringing in the fiber cable into our house they didn’t bother to splice them in the distribution point (the shared picture of last months update). The October ETA is definitely overdue now…
Savings Rate: September 2021
Cash flow: September 2021
Total Income: 9’420 CHF (-18’679 CHF vs. August) – First month with unemployment benefits. I would have gotten the maximum of 12’350 CHF but from that one gets 80% (70% if I wouldn’t have a son/family) and then they deduct 5 days (or 1/4) as a punishment for getting unemployed. So overall 7’130 CHF from unemployment quite ok for sending ~12 applications per months. I’ve sold the extra Casio “Blue Phoenix” watch that I had left over since March for 1’307 CHF, received 682 CHF dividends from my stock portfolio, 30 CHF from Interest on loaned out shares to short sellers and 300 CHF for fixing/replacing my sisters QNAP NAS.
Total Expenses: 7’731 CHF (-2’863 CHF vs. August) – September is one of the mortgage months (1’330 CHF for interests, 259 CHF for amortization). Then my Surround AVR broke down (used to have a Marantz SR 5015 fortunately still under warranty) and had to order a Yamaha R4V-A for 537 CHF. Then we bought new curtains for 738 CHF (18m of fabric…) and paid my sons play group which cost 380 CHF.
Savings Rate: 17.94% (-44.36% vs. August) – Low income, low savings. Should have fortunately been the lowest income month this year.
Net Worth: 1.04M CHF (-22k CHF vs. August) – Cryptos were weak, stock market was weak, income was low. Shit happens.
Stock Portfolio
Stock Portfolio value: 267’847 CHF (-2’501 CHF vs. August)
| Stock Symbol | # Shares | Current price | Unrealized P/L |
| VT | 1666.44 | 101.83 USD | 23’685 USD |
| ARKK | 371.58 | 110.53 USD | -211 USD |
| AVUV | 552.72 | 75.61 USD | 1’658 USD |
| AVDV | 436.51 | 64.61 USD | 794 USD |
| ABBA | 48 | 19.67 CHF | 457 USD |
| Total | 3012.59 | N/A | 26’384 USD |
While the 2.5k CHF value decrease doesn’t look too bad you have to account for the fact that I’ve invested another 5k CHF. So compared to end of August we’re down 7.5k CHF.
Shitty month but I’ll stick to the plan.
Crypto HODL Portfolio
Current HODL portfolio value: 265’925 CHF (~6.5 BTC) (-11’463 CHF vs. August)
The other contributor to the net worth loss… SELLtember hit hard but I’m optimistic for UPtober to bring us back up a bit.
Crypto Gambling Portfolio
I optimize for BTC growth in this small crypto portfolio. No new funds were added this month.
Gains/Losses this month: -2’760 CHF (-0.04800589 BTC vs. August)
I’ll just post my Binance portfolio picture here:
I underperformed the general BTC trend which lost 6.96% while I lost 19.05%.
P2P Portfolio
| Platform | Value |
| Bondster | 897 EUR |
| DoFinance | 4179 EUR |
| FastInvest | 3120 EUR |
| Flender | 1616 EUR |
| IuvoGroup | 1315 EUR |
| Mintos | 1650 EUR |
| PeerBerry | 817 EUR |
| RoboCash | 0 EUR |
| Swaper | 9.84 EUR |
| Viventor | 2009 EUR |
| Wisefund | 1000 EUR |
| Total | 16’615 EUR |
September Income from P2P Portfolio: 50.50 EUR
Noteworthy updates:
I liquidated a total of 347 EUR of my P2P Portfolio in September.
- The subpoena for the wisefund.eu case was rather boring, 2 hours of basic questions regarding the platform. The state attorney also didn’t pay me for these 2 hours yet…
Blog statistics
Views: 1360 (-160 vs. August) people on vacation I assume.
Visitors: 450 (-65 vs. August ) sad 🙁
Followers: 42 (+0 vs. August ) could be worse.
I posted 1 blog post in September. the monthly update. If you have ideas or are interested in more details let me know in the comments.
That’s it for this month. Like last month let me know if you like the style and the ordering of topics.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave a message below or contact me by email. I try to answer all comments and emails.
(I am not related to whatever mega Corp you are talking about).
I am still confused by the lack of responsibility as an individual you are justifying now and back then in the mentioned blog post I had read carefully and (already) reacted to.
A company’s role is not to provide you with happiness, your are the only person responsible for that. If your previous employer gave you an unprecedented opportunity, a high income, along with some rules including a type of management and some highly dense corporate BS, or tells you not thrashing your employer publicly (it’s not your private garden, it’s the public Internet) it’s up to YOU and YOU only to deal with it / or not. If not, just quit and move forward. If you feel the necessity to infringe the rules to free your frustration, assume responsibility. Blaming your company for not being happy at your job, criticizing an organization which makes billions every day in a world where money rules the world, which offered you the opportunity to be where you are and even to think of FIRE is immature and hypocrite. This trend launched by many “FIRE” candidates, incl. Mr. RIP who’s certainly be an inspiration for you on this one, is just childish. (And then trying to make a business coaching people to get into these companies, what the….). Really, what did you expect ? A promotion to be CEO and run the business your way ? A compensation from HR for warning potential talents to advise them “never ever work there, your illusion will fade out and you’ll end up frustrated just like me” ?
Would it be my company, you would be banned the same way.
Just to be clear, I have no experience in megacorp and I cannot relate how high your frustration or the other’s may have been. I am just telling that if you are not happy anymore, say thank you for the good stuff, quit, and move on. The rest is not only useless but irrelevant and reckless. I suppose your megacorp is one of the GAFAM who get criticized a lot but not by people whose own goals are making the largest amount of money.
If you want money, play the game of those making money. Or beat them on their ground. They is no other way.
My 2 cents and inspiration for any other readers and FIRE heroes…
Thanks for your feedback. I take full responsibility over my actions but still can be disappointed about the huge imbalance of productivity vs. destruction, no?
You’re right I ultimately didn’t know what I wanted to achieve with the original post, probably to just give some unfiltered feedback to my former bosses or readers.
Since you’re seemingly the most attentive reader (or related to mega corp) I’d love to know more about you. Feel free to reach out by mail if you’re willing to step out of your anonymity.
I didn´t know that there are so many G. Engineers who sharing their story, or even selling their story.
I also worked in a mega corp, but not such a fancy one. Nevertheless if any of our employees would sell application trainings, like MR. RIP does, he would be gone within days…
I´m have no clue about swiss law, but don´t you have to inform your employer about
self-employed activities ?
Correct, employers have to be informed about all self-employment activities.
I tried to contact you once, I was kindly told you would not connect. Also lesson learned, when you want it anonymous keep it anonymous.
Any company I took part in hardly met 200 employees so quite far from megacorp. I am not your executioner and would I be, I wouldn’t risk my own seat taking part to this debate… except… except if I am megacorp CEO ! Oh wait there are shareholders… except I own 50%+ of voting right at megacorp !
So guess what, I don’t.
Dear Mr Cheese,
great update and happy for your new job! I appreciate your blog style, you are transparent and unfiltered, and this has a price.
Yeah you had a setback with big Corp, perhaps too impulsive but in any case you got experience in the crypto world and in the future you will be able to get back in some other faang.
At the end what is FIRE if not being able to give a f*uck and do what you want;)
Thanks for your comment. I have to say that I like those smaller companies a lot as the perceived value of ones work is much more impactful than in a big corp.