Jean Galea

My Hardware Setup – 2019 Edition

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This is the hardware that makes up my office. These items are all I need to run my business from wherever I am around the world. Since I’ve given up the digital nomad days and am now firmly based in Barcelona, I’ve had the opportunity to make a few additions to my setup. While some items are not very portable, most of my hardware can easily be packed and moved around to new locations.

The main change in last year’s setup was the addition of an Apple iMac 27″ computer, and my selling of the MacBook Pro 15″. I now use just one monitor for working, so it’s either the iMac or the small MacBook when I’m working from cafes or traveling. I sold off the Dell external monitor since I was not using it. I tried to set it up as a second monitor on my desk but realized it was more of a distraction than a help. The iMac has a gorgeous screen and more than enough real estate to work on. I can have two windows side by side comfortably. I still felt the need for some type of third screen, so I got myself the latest iPad Pro 11 inch.

I also got the new Apple Pencil to go along with the new iPad. I think there is a significant improvement over the writing experience of the previous generation of the pencil, so I’m happy with the purchase. I’ve been using my iPad as a reading device, 2nd screen, and note taking device (straight to Evernote) when I’m at meetings or seminars.
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Buying Train Tickets in Spain

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Spain has a very good train service, especially the high-speed one called Renfe Ave.

I’ve had to travel between Barcelona and Madrid several times, and here’s how I found the best prices.

First of all you should know that there are three seat types:

  • Turista – Basic seats
  • Turista Plus – First class seats without newspaper and meal
  • Preferente – First class with newspaper and meal

I try to avoid Turista as they are not that comfortable and it’s a more crowded cabin. However, sometimes the only way to travel in the silent cabin is to choose the Turista seats. The silent cabin is meant for those who don’t want any noise during their trip. You have to use headphones for any music and can’t chat and be boisterous. In the other cabins especially the Turista class ones, things can get noisy, so yet more reason to avoid them.

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Investing in Buy-to-Sell Spanish Property Through Housers – A Case Study

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One of my favorite ways to invest in Spanish real estate is through Housers. In this post, I will give you an example of a success story from my portfolio.

We’ll be considering the project named Pez; a buy-to-sell opportunity in Madrid. In this case the legal form of the investment was a loan to the developer.

Here’s how the project timeline went:

  • I invested on 22/06/17, the day the funding period started.
  • The project was fully financed on 11/07/17.
  • The property was acquired on 02/10/17.
  • Refurbishment works started on 20/10/17 and completed 20/02/18.
  • The project was finally sold on 05/07/18.
  • Project fully finalized on 25/07/18 and money sent to investors.

The visual information provided for the project was actually quite scant. As investors, we only got a few standard photos of the area where the apartment is located, the floor plans and two renders of how the refurbished apartment would look like.

We did, however, get some PDFs about the project which gave us more insight into the strategy:

Based on that information I decided to invest in the project, although I would have liked some more photos and plans for the project.

A bit more than a year later, the project was sold.

Once the project was sold, there was some more information available about the internals of the project.

  • Average investment per investor: 213.65€
  • Number of investors: 412

Pez was a buy-to-sell opportunity with an expected return of 6,59% in 12 months, that ended with an annualized IRR of 4,42%. The yield is the same 4,42% since the project took 12 months from start to finish. 

Net Yield from the Sale: Represents the dividends that the investor will receive derived from the sale. (12 months)

IRR: Internal rate of annualized return of the investor. It’s the interest rate or yield offered by this investment. It serves to evaluate the profitability of the project and compare it with other types of investment in the market.

A few days after the project was sold, I received capital and interest in my Housers account, closing off a successful investment.

From the interest paid by the developer, a 10% Housers commission was deducted along with 19% for IRPF (Spanish tax). The net interest was then sent to my account.

Have you invested with Housers yet? What has your experience been like?

Avoiding Smartphone and Social Media addiction

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Smartphone usage and social media have become very detrimental to our attention spans and the ability to engage in deep work. We are constantly tempted to pick up our phones to get our next dopamine hit by checking Instagram or Facebook likes, or engaging in pointless chatter on apps such as Whatsapp.

It’s been a while since I abandoned Facebook, and even longer since I stopped reading newspapers and online news sites. Over the past year, however, I’ve noticed that my phone had become a really serious distraction for me.

On several occasions, I have asked my wife to put away the phone so we could have a more engaging conversation, and she’s done the same to me, probably even more frequently. Since having our first child, it seems that we can’t take the phone out of our hands, and somehow it seems justified. We want to immortalize the memories of every little thing he does and then share it with our family on Whatsapp. Things recently got to a head and I decided I need to take serious action about this.

The thing is, our modern-day smartphones keep us addicted in a similar way to slot machines (see video below). We’re fighting a lost battle if we think it’s just a question of having more discipline.

Here’s how I solved this problem.

I love my iPhone 6S Plus (an older model of the iPhone that still works perfectly) and I use it a lot when I’m out and about with my bicycle or car and listen to podcasts or music while also using maps to get to my destination. I also use Calm for meditation and Spotify for music. So getting rid of the smartphone was out of the question. I needed to find a better solution than that.

What I did was resurrect an older Nexus 5 which runs Android OS, which I have since become quite unfamiliar with, plus it’s a slower phone that is moderately annoying to use.

I then moved all the apps that I qualify as addictive onto this older phone:

  • Whatsapp (the biggest culprit)
  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Wallapop
  • Facebook Messenger

I then informed my family that I would still remain accessible via another messaging app, where they could contact me when needed. I work at home so communication with my wife is not an issue, we’re always within meters of each other in our apartment. I check the family group on Whatsapp once a day and that’s enough for catching up with any events of the day and commenting when needed. For more in-depth conversations I have a Skype call with them.

I also set up Freedom.to on all my devices and made sure that social media and other distracting websites are blocked during the majority of the day, so even if I wanted to I would not be able to access them. Again, the idea is not to rely on my weak self-discipline, but to put in hard blocks that will eventually remove that trigger to check updates from my brain.

So far so good, I’ve noticed a huge improvement in productivity and mental well-being after having gone through this process and tested it for a few weeks.

The one remaining issue for me comes from an old friend who I thought would be quite benign: email. With the other stuff out of the way, my email still remained a constantly open window on my computer and something I check frequently on my phone. But while I was on retreat earlier this month and trying to keep off the internet, it immediately became apparent to me how dependent my mood and task list was on email. I kept getting triggered by my brain to check email, and even felt the dread of receiving an email from a problematic person, knowing that if I opened my mail and found his email with the imagined content, it would really ruin my day. I then realized that I actually check the email app on my phone several times and even have the habit of hitting refresh in Gmail even though the app itself refreshes every few minutes itself. That’s how bad my addiction to email is.

That is, therefore, my next target: to become less reliant on email. I plan to check email around twice a day and also make sure that I don’t take immediate action on email requests unless it takes 2 minutes or less. I plan to allocate half an hour in the morning and another half an hour in the evening or afternoon for email. I’ll report on that later after concluding my experimentation.

Related books about this topic

All great books, but Digital Minimalism really hit the nail on the head and spurred me to try the two phones idea. There are also other ideas that are worth exploring, such as putting your phone in greyscale mode.

Useful Apps

Let me know what’s your experience with smartphone and social media usage, have you felt addicted and how have you dealt with it?

Currency Conversions: Your Bank VS Currencyfair VS Transferwise

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High street banks are being threatened by leaner fintech companies with better technology that provide a better service at a lower cost. At least we’ve heard that statement many times over the past few years.

Let’s see how that translates into a real life example.

Let’s say we need to convert $100,000 into euros. We’ll pitch a typical high street bank against two well-known currency conversion services: Currencyfair and Transferwise.

I picked two Maltese banks, HSBC and BOV. Here are their advertised rates:

BOV exchange rates

HSBC exchange rates

Currencyfair

Transferwise

Having checked all the rates, let’s have a look at the final results.

Here’s what each Maltese bank will give us in return for our USD:

  • BOV: €87,734
  • HSBC: €87,039

Amazingly, between the two leading banks in Malta, we see a difference of €700 for the same simple service. Pretty bewildering if you ask me. I believe that both banks also charge a fee, although I was unable to locate the pricing for currency conversions on their website.

Let’s move on to the fintechs:

  • Currencyfair: €88,837
  • Transferwise: €88,925

Note that Currencyfair improves on the BOV’s rate by €1,100, and Transferwise by €1,200. You must also keep in mind that I’ve seen banks that provide much worse conversion rates and extra fees for conversion. Even so, the differences between the fintechs and the Maltese banks are pretty impressive, and I, therefore, see it as a no-brainer to go for either Transferwise or Currencyfair for currency conversions.

Bonus: A Clever Hack using the Mintos platform

If I were to suggest an even better move, I would skip all the banks and currency conversion services and use Mintos for my currency conversion needs. Mintos is currently the best European P2P lending platform and I’ve been obtaining upwards of 10% returns per year on my investments there.

You might be wondering what all this has to do with our currency conversion case study.

The thing is, Mintos launched a foreign exchange service on their own platform. You can, therefore, deposit those $100,000 and convert them to euros there. At the time of writing, the rate employed by Mintos for USD to EUR conversions was 0.892818. They also charge a 0.7% fee.

  • Mintos: €88,581

That’s by far better than the banks’ rates, and slightly worse than Transferwise and Currencyfair. However, once your money is on Mintos, why not invest it there? If you don’t want to park your money there as an investment for a long time, just let your money work for you for just one month, then use the secondary market to sell your loans. The secondary market on Mintos is highly liquid, just as an example I know an investor who sold $1m on the Mintos secondary market in just one day recently.

Keeping an average return rate of 10%, which is easily achieved at the moment on Mintos, after parking our newly converted USD to EUR on the platform for a month, we would be able to withdraw the following:

  • Converted currency €88,581 + Returns of 1 month circa €885 = €89,466

That’s the best result of this currency conversion experiment. You could also keep some money invested if you like Mintos and withdraw the rest, or keep the whole amount invested and gain around €8-10,000 per year at the current interest rates.

What’s your take? Let me know in the comments section.

Jean Galea

Online Entrepreneur. Global Citizen. Padel Player.
Founder of WP Mayor & WP RSS Aggregator.

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