Indoor rowing - painful, but great exercise

Long time and no blog entries! I have been busy... Unfortunately not with investing into myself, although I have recently picked up training on/with a dear old friend again: My Concept 2 rowing machine! 

Yesterday I had a really tough half marathon session on the rowing machine, resulting in over 1'700 kcal burnt, a new personal record (this was only second time ever I rowed for so long, so perhaps not such an achievement) and a record 52 hour recovery time.

A significant investment into myself!

The cost of work

How much does it cost you to work?

Perhaps a somewhat strange question, but please allow me a few lines to explain. If the aim is to become financially "free", i.e. being able to live out of a passive income and retire* before the official retirement age, we have to factor in the cost of actually working. Sure, net effect is positive, but in my case there are a few cost items I have due to working which I would otherwise not have of would be significantly different; a few examples:

• Car - we would will not need two cars if when I retire*
• Work day lunch
• Work clothes
• Etc.

In addition to the above we have some softer and harder to quantify financially factors to consider as a consequence of having a "normal" job:

• Time away from family
• Stress level affecting health
• Less time/energy to exercise, causing a medium/long term health risk
• Etc.

When retiring* there would of course be other activities also generating costs, but I would be in much better position to control these and ensure that e.g. food is healthy, that I get enough exercise etc.

*) I keep adding a start after each time I mention the word "retire". This should probably be described in a separate post in some length, but what I mean is that 

• I have enough financial assets so that I with a 4% withdrawal can finance our cost of living
• I quit my full time job
• I might do some part time work on a contract basis every now and then (because I want to, not because I have to)

So, with this said: One action coming out of this is for me to calculate the cost of work (at least the parts which I can determine financially) and see what that does to my financial freedom calculation.

Shares to buy end of Q1

I do not have any money "available" for investing at the moment and also try to limit my selling and buying to a quarterly rhytm.

Assuming I have money to invest I am looking at these shares for purhcase at end of quarter 1:

TeliaSonera 
I will buy if < 40 SEK / share (at the time of writing 37.79).

In short this is a Nordic telcom company with high dividend (> 7% with current share price and forecasted dividend). Yes, a number of scandals last few years due to dodgy deals in eastern countries, but current management is cleaning up.

SSAB B
I will buy if < 20 SEK / share (at the time of writing 18.70).

In short this is a Swedish quality steel maker, which has suffered termendously as most (all?) other commodity companies. After today's 2015-Q4/annual report the share went up with almost 17%(!), however from a very low basis when looking at the share price over last few years.

Volvo B
I will buy if < 80 SEK / share (at the time of writing 80.05).

This is the truck and industrial equipment Volvo, not the personal vehicle one (which was sold to Ford many years ago and then to Geely a few years back).
I can't really put my finger on what exactly it is that I like with this company, but I have for a long time felt like owning a few shares in this company and the share rice has with a few exception been going between 80 - 100 SEK / share...

Perhaps the reason behind my love for this company is one on the coolest commercial films ever.

Target: 60% monthly savings rate

While living a life with an interesting (but sometimes frustrating) job, great food, family and a few friends I am able to save from my take home pay each month.

For the year of 2016 the target is to save away more than 60% of my net salary (i.e. after tax). This should enable me to reach my ambition of financial freedom (simple life based on a 4% withdrawal rate from saved/invested money) well before the day I turn 65.

There are of course tables defining how fast you would be able to reach financial freedom with such a savings rate. My ambition is to be able to quit work latest 9 years from now. Let's see if the wife agrees and supports...

So, another ego-target to my list of targets:

Area	Starting point	Target	When
Monthly savings rate	50%(?)	60%	Average monthly savings rate during 2016.

I'll come back on how it's going and how far is left until the moment of financial freedom.

Tennis elbow - hurtful for the Ego(n)!

Yours truly, the strong Egon(n) has a weakness. It seems that after multiple sessions of tennis (after a life in quiet fat accumulation) the elbow has decided to not play along fully anymore.

I have always thought that tennis elbow is something untrained and unfit people get. Now I know that is true! :-)

The fight to get fit again has now received more fuel in form of motivation.

103.5 kg on the scale this morning. Down around 2.5 kg:s since the start of a more healthy life almost  a month ago, but I have somehow lost the discipline, which will from now be implemented again.

Index investing, boring but effective and efficient

There will always be a number of people who claim success in picking stocks successfully. One of these are Warren Buffet, but apart from that I am not aware of too many others who can successfully do this over time - not even with my ego!

As my name implies (EGOn) I thought I was a real stock picking guru, but when I one day sat down and critically analyzed all the effort going into this stock picking, buying and selling I realized that I would have been batter off putting my money into a fund which simply followed index (in my case the index of 30 largest companies on Stockholm exchange, i.e. OMXS30). It is possible to track this index using very low cost (free!) funds from two at least providers in Sweden, Avanza and Nordnet.

Admittedly this is a bit boring compared to the thrill of picking stocks and following their ups and downs, getting a dividend etc. I have actually come to the conclusion that investing should actually be boring - as opposed to speculation which can be very exciting (but disastrous).

What I do now if that I have a base portfolio in which I purchase different (low cost) funds on a monthly basis. My idea is to keep doing this as long as I have a paid job and re-balance once per year. Any additional money is put into a separate portfolio in which I have carefully picked a few stocks into which I intend to keep "forever" unless I really need the money somewhere else.

How do you invest?

Gym session

Today the ego body is a bit stiff. I made a small investment into my own health by going to the gym where I did a quite effective 48 min session in the gym, ending with a 1 min 5 second plank (quite a way to go to the 3 min target).

The picture above shows data captured via my Suunto Ambit3 Peak HR watch, As a comparison, the average heart rate was higher than in most tennis games I play and burning off over 500 kcal was of course good.

Health and training targets

As a middle aged man (sad - how did is happen so quickly?!) with an office job I have gained some non-productive weight which I would like to get rid of for multiple reasons.

While I do spend quite some time working on my financial freedom, I would like to also feel physically and mentally well and based on past experience this has a lot to do with amount of sports done as well as amount of fat accumulated.

So, with this in mind and to keep thing simple I am putting down five targets in this area:

Area	Starting point (2015-12-24)	Target	When
Weight	105.9 kg	< 95 kg	2016-05-31 and 2016-12-31
Plank	1 min	> 3 mins	2016-05-31
Run 10 km	63 mins	< 50 mins	2016-12-24
5 km indoor rowing	19:59 mins	< 19:00 mins	2016-06-31
Waist circumference	109 cm	< 100 cm	2016-05-31

I think these are all related and provides a good balance between strength and general fitness. Key thing will be to control my appetite...

My investing principles - part 1

Hopefully my disciplined approach will make my
investments into a large forest over time.

In a future post I will go through the only proven method of successful investing over time, but in short:

1) Set an original assett allocation you believe you can stay with even if the share portion should go down significantly

2) Spread out your purchases (timewise as well as from investment vehicles point of view)

3) Keep costs low

4) Rebalance to original assett allocation level once per year

5) Stay the course

So, with this in mind I have one portfolio into which I save significant part of my monthly income evenly spread out on ten different funds:

Fund	Expense ratio	Norman-fee*
AVANZA ZERO	0,00%	0 kr
Spiltan Räntefond Sverige	0,10%	785 kr
SPP Aktiefond USA	0,20%	1 845 kr
Spiltan Aktiefond Investmentbolag	0,20%	2 028 kr
Swedbank Robur Indexfond Asien	0,20%	3 452 kr
SPP aktiefond global	0,30%	2 695 kr
Nordea European Corporate bond	0,60%	6 258 kr
Handelsbanken Råvarufond	0,70%	6 647 kr
Carnegie Corporate bond	0,95%	8 211 kr
Didner & Gerge Aktiefond Sverige	1,22%	10 564 kr

*) Norman-fee is a forecast of the total cost for the fund if one saves 1000 SEK/month for 10 years. It is named after Peter Norman, formerly Financial Markets secretary in the Swedish government. I have been doing this for almost three years now and while the growth has not been as high as the OMXS30 index, the volatility has been significatly lower and I am overall happy with having managed to keep the discipline to stay the course.

Suunto Ambit3 Peak HR

I recently purchased a fantastic device to keep track of my personal training - the Suunto Ambit3 Peak HR.

I am still exporing the possibilities, but with this device I am able to keep very good track of calories consumed, intensity of training, recovery time, heart rate, how far I moved during the exercise etc.

On the Suunto movescount.com page I am able to keep track of my trainings over time and the Movescount app gives me an overview over amount of training over last 30 days. Here I try to keep the calories consumed over 10'000 during the last 30 days.

Based on not yet two weeks usage I can highly recommend purchasing this device as a motivational tool for the typical middle aged office worker who needs a "kick in the butt" in order to get moving.

For myself I have done a few training sessions just because I am able to track them properly using this watch. Any investment within reasonable economical limits which makes me move more is worth it, so I am very happy so far.

A fresh start for the Ego(n) - welcome!

In this blog I will be writing about what come to my mind, which in the beginning will focus on two ego things:

1) Investing for my financial future

2) Investing in my own body and physical wellbeing

Perhaps there will also be some entries around technical and political developments I either find interesting or upsetting.

I hope that some of the entries will inspire you to improve on your own ego.

/Egon