Jean Galea

When searching for articles about investment and making money, you will surely come across many bloggers who publish their monthly income reports or also post net worth reports.

I would recommend that you don’t pay too much attention to those numbers. I personally don’t care much about them.

While I’m not saying that they’re lying or manipulating their numbers in order to persuade people to do what they are saying and obtain the same results, I think that business and investing involves a plethora of decisions that are extremely based on each individual’s character and aptitudes.

Consider a few things:

• They might not include the value of their homes in their net worth.
• You don’t know if they received large inheritances or have considerable family wealth to fall upon.
• They might be manipulating their figures.
• Many are posting anonymously, so we don’t know anything about them really.

There are many other considerations I could come up with, but this is a quick post that I want to get out there.

There are now a ton of blogs about investing and personal finance in Europe, and many of them shouldn’t be trusted as a source of advice for your investment journey. Most of them are just distractions from the real research you should be doing.

You want to learn about the type of investment you want to enter by getting to know the industry very very well and then trying things out bit by bit until you get a sense of whether it is a good fit for you.

As we’ve seen in previous decades with other related niches, much of personal finance and investment bloggers income comes from affiliate commissions from the platforms they recommend and not from the actual investments they make. That doesn’t make sense in my opinion.

There is no point listening to someone whose investments are making him a couple hundred euro a month at max, because he would definitely not have enough experience to be considered a reliable source of knowledge.

Be realistic; why would anybody go to such great lengths to share their financial journey just to help you make more money for yoursel? Most are trying to sell you something. Very few genuinely like to write about their journeys in different areas of life just because it makes them feel better or it helps them clear their minds. Try to find those kinds of people as they are a much better source of information.

Typically I try to look for the following traits in the bloggers I follow:

• They write about several topics coherently for many years.
• They don’t hide behind the veil of anonymity.
• They are verifiably successful in their careers.
• They speak about both the good and bad experiences.

That’s my little rant for today. I hope it helps you focus on the right information, as one of the biggest barriers separating you from genuine wealth and success is the overload of information you can find on social media and the web nowadays.

I’ll also say that if someone publishes their income or net worth reports it doesn’t mean I won’t follow their blog, but it won’t be my reason for doing so, and it certainly won’t be the reason why I decide to invest in something or not.

On the other hand, I consider journaling in a private or public fashion to be very helpful to keep track of your thoughts and decisions over time. I have also been thinking of starting to publicise my monthly thoughts on my portfolio’s performance, without focusing too much on the numbers. What is really important in these monthly reports is to observe the decision making criteria of the investors, and get some insider tips on how each platform is doing.

Be very choosy in what you read and whom you trust. Always try out things yourself in small doses before you go all in. Diversify and keep expanding your knowledge everyday.

Do you agree with my point of view? Let me know in the comments section.

In Spain, there are thousands of properties that have been seized by the bank due to the bankruptcy of the developers or other problems that have led to loan payments to the bank being jeopardized. Most of these repossessions happened during the crisis of 2008 when the housing bubble burst.

Most of the foreclosed properties can be found in these regions:

1. Andalucía
2. Valencia (Costa Blanca area)
3. Catalonia
4. Madrid

After some time passes, sometimes years, the properties are put on the market and sold via an auction. Every person or company can take part in these provided they have a NIE and a digital certificate.

Through these auctions, you can get your hands on a property, for example, an apartment or even a garage, at a significant discount over the market price. Many of these properties have no problems so they represent a potentially great deal.

I only got to know about these auctions when my neighbors told me that some apartments and parking spots in our building were being auctioned off due to the original developers of the apartment block having gone bankrupt several years before.

I decided to participate in the auction by bidding on a few parking spots, mostly to learn about how things work and see what kind of a discount one could obtain.

In the end, it was quite an exciting experience. When you make a bid, you need to send over a percentage of the total value of the item you’re bidding on via a bank transfer. Then you make your bid which must be higher than everyone else’s. You will then receive notifications whenever your bid is superseded.

Each auction has a set closing time, but that doesn’t mean things end there. Basically, whenever there is a new bid, the auction end time is extended by an hour, and in this particular case two of the items I bid on were dragged on for another 12 hours, and that included the night as the auction originally ended at 6pm. Clearly there were some motivated bidders who stayed up all night in order to get the parking spot.

When bidding, you also have the option of keeping your bid in queue once the auction closes. This means that if you’re the second-highest bidder and the highest bidder fails to pay within 20 days, you become the winner of the auction and it would be your turn to pay up. The process continues until a paying bidder is found. Note that the bidder who doesn’t pay loses his deposit.

Of course, what you all want to know is what discounts can be obtained when you make these bids. So here are the results from the parking spaces I bid on.

Parking spot 1

• Value: €20,334
• Winning bid: €16,967 (20% discount)

Parking spot 2

• Value: €21,103
• Winning bid: €14,751 (30% discount)

Parking spot 3

• Value: €17,649
• Winning bid: €17,424

So some pretty nice discounts to be had there, 20-30% is great. On the other hand the other parking was sold at its value, although having seen the spots beforehand I couldn’t understand why the value was lower in the first place, as it was just as good as the other two.

In terms of hard cash, there were some even better savings for those who bid on the apartments in our building.

Apartment 1

• Value: €621,615
• Winning bid: €468,807

Apartment 2

• Value: €652,315
• Winning bid: €490,517

So the apartments were sold at a 25% discount on their assessed value. Not bad at all.

There are some disadvantages to bidding in these auctions too that you should know about:

1. You need to put down a deposit in order to bid on any auction. If you want to bid on several parking spots, for example, you will need to put down a deposit for each of them.
2. If you win an auction, you need to pay up the remaining amount within 20 days. In the case of buying apartments, this can mean hundreds of thousands of euros, which not many people have casually lying around in their bank accounts ready to invest. It’s almost impossible to get a loan in such a short time too, so you really need to have the liquidity before going into such auctions. If you fail to pay up within the stipulated time, you lose your deposit.
3. Sometimes you might not be able to see the apartment being auctioned off, which makes it a very risky thing to bid. Some apartments might even be occupied.

Have you tried getting a great deal through a Spanish auction? Let me know what your experience was like.