Portfolio update: new savings account & stock purchases
We are only the second week of January and I can already give a major update on my portfolio and milestones progress. This is in part due to the decline we saw at the end of 2018 and the opportunity it offered me to enter at a lower price for quite a few stocks.
One of the biggest changes is the execution of the planned changes I wrote in my 2019 look ahead:
- The closing of my savings account at Moneyou and moving all its funds to Medirect’s Fidelity plus account.
- Purchasing dividend stocks
New savings account
The main reason for changing savings accounts was the much higher interest rate I would get at Medirect.
There is a huge disparity between these two savings accounts:
- Moneyou Plus Saving[NL] – 0.36%: 0.01% base rate & 0.35% fidelity premium.
- Medirect Fidelity Saving – 0.85%: 0.05% base rate & 0.80% fidelity premium.
That’s a difference of 136.11%! The 0.85% Medirect offers is not nearly enough to compensate for the (Belgian) inflation of 2.05% (2018), but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try to minimize the loss at least.
New portfolio purchases: seizing the opportunity
Thanks to the December bearish sentiment and my move to a new savings account, I seized the opportunity to purchase new stocks and add some shares to stocks I already own by depositing 5,500 EUR:
- Added
- 15 KINEPOLIS (KIN)
- New
- 12 ISHARES S&P SMALL CAP 600 (IUS3)
- 3 INVESCO US HEALTH CARE S&P (XLVS)
- 7 ISHARES CORE S&P 500 (SXR8)
- 20 AEDIFICA (AED)
Because of this new deposit the total deposit amount of my portfolio has reached 18,000 EUR. This also means that I have already reached 44% of my target deposit amount.
While I now made a large deposit, as a result of a snowboard trip in March, and before that, new snowboard + bindings, I won’t transfer 1K to my trading account in the next three months.
I don’t foresee any other big expenses after this so I should be able to stay on track to reach my milestone of 12,500 EUR by the end of the year. Of course, you never know but for now, I’m off to a great start!
I’ll refrain from updating my portfolio page till we reach the end of Q1, but you can already look forward to a big difference compared to my 2018Q4 report.
Are these savings accounts special accounts or anything? Here in NL the best you can get is about 0.35% I believe…
The Medirect one shouldn’t be anymore special than what you have in NL.
Well, except that it’s a (Belgian) regulated savings account meaning it needs to adhere to a few basic laws such as a min. 0.01% base rate and 0.10% fidelity. The other rules are:
The fidelity premium amounts to a minimum of 25% of the base rate offered and a maximum of 50% of the base rate permitted by law.
You can find more details about my chosen account here: https://www.medirect.be/save
A recent article from “De Tijd” clarifies what they plan to do with the money from the accounts:
This makes sense. However here in The Netherlands we don’t have these “high” yielding accounts. Or well, high, higher I should say :-).
Although I guess it’s possible under the EU to park my money in a Belgium bank account right?
You are allowed to open an account in any EU country as a European citizen but some banks require you to have an address in the country of the bank you wish to open an account with. I know they are required to allow you for a regular debit account. I’m not sure if the same applies to savings accounts.
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