I want a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in Sweden

Even though Sweden already has far too many departments, currently there are 367, there is one I really want, namely DOGE. I can only imagine how much tax money, that is, my money, is being wasted.

I cannot for the life of me understand the people in America who oppose this department and its actions. Not wanting to ensure that the money the state takes in from you through various forms of taxes does not disappear into various forms of fraud and the like is beyond my comprehension. In my world, you are either one of those who commits fraud or otherwise appropriates tax money that you are not actually entitled to.

Because it can't be about jealousy, can it?  That some people have succeeded better than them and they can therefore only think about "taxing the rich" regardless of where the tax money ends up?! I believe there are several variables that underlie these people's aversion to DOGE. In addition to the above, I also believe there is a huge lack of knowledge about how it really works among these people.

As a resident of one of the world's highest taxed countries, I'm really tired of seeing my hard-earned money wasted on things like a camel park, a cloned Christmas tree, a pink boulder, the list goes on and on.

Just the knowledge that even Iraq's former Defense Minister Najah al-Shammari collected child and housing allowances and income support in Sweden while he received a salary from the Iraqi government shows how easily the Swedish state is deceived.

AI generated image with Grok

The Swedish krona is inexplicably strong given the current economic climate

A strong Swedish defense industry, together with increasingly high inflation, is slowing the prospects for future policy rate cuts. The less Sweden lowers its policy rate, the more the Swedish krona can strengthen against other currencies, says SVT's economic commentator Alexander Norén. The combination of Swedish inflation, together with the geopolitical situation and uncertainty about US tariffs, has caused the Swedish krona to move sharply.

For example, €1 cost 10.99 SEK on March 6, 2025. It was the first time in two years that the euro fell below 11 SEK. On the same day, $1 cost 10.19 SEK, which should be compared to 10.80 SEK the week before. The development can be partly explained by the fact that the chance of further policy rate cuts in the near future from Sweden's central bank AKA the Riksbank is now considered extremely unlikely.

In addition, the outside world believes that there will be more investments in Sweden and that more goods and services will be purchased from Sweden, not least because there will be major defense investments in Europe and Sweden has large defense companies that export. Sometimes a few signals that the Swedish krona is undervalued can be enough to start a positive spiral that Sweden seems to be in right now.

If you want to be a little conspiratorial, you can suspect that there is an underlying agenda between Sweden and the EU to strengthen the Swedish krona ahead of a rapid transition to the euro in Sweden. Who knows, maybe Sweden will replace the Swedish krona with the euro in the near future.😉

AI generated image with Grok

What am I going to do with all my free time?

March is one of the best dividend months of the year for us. Due to our extremely extraordinary workload, I haven't entered a single dividend for March into my Google Sheet yet, compiling it will be a huge task.

Thankfully, from now on we will only work Monday through Friday, and it will be a privilege to have weekends off. Sitting in my office for an hour or so on a Saturday and/or Sunday to handle occasional supplier invoices that come in over the weekend cannot be called work.

AI generated image with Grok

Future stalkers

Since we have worked fifteen days in a row between eleven and twelve hours a day, it was only on Friday evening that we had time to make two investments. The choice fell on Golub Capital BDC, Inc. Common Stock (GBDC) and Hercules Capital, Inc. Common Stock (HTGC).

Starting tomorrow, we plan to start investing the money we received from the sale of our condominium premises. We will minimize the risk with this money to begin with. Our plan is to start taking bigger risks in a year or so withwith the money we will receive from future dividends. The initial investment itself should be hedged as much as you can hedge money in the stock market.

In the best of worlds, I get a job within a couple of months and my husband does well with our investments so we can be financially independent in good time before the world's most perfect teenager finishes his future university education and heads out into the world to work.

The goal of everything is that in the future we will be able to follow him out into the world and live in the same city as him.

AI generated image with Grok

Uncharted territory

Today was the first Saturday in over twenty months that the world's most perfect husband and I had a Saturday off that wasn't a holiday or a vacation day. I thought I would have a more euphoric feeling when the sale of our condominium was completed, but instead I have a feeling of emptiness.

The last four weeks have been incredibly hectic, we sold significantly more inventory than we expected. Sales during March amounted to more than a quarter of last year's entire turnover. Apparently one of our customers had posted in a group on Facebook that we were having a 50% sale on the entire inventory, so people from all over Stockholm flocked to us.

Next week we will begin the work of sorting out and preparing the sale of remaining inventory. After that, I have to put together a CV and start looking for a job for the first time in my life. Since we will invest the entire proceeds from the sale of our premises, the company's equity portfolio will be almost exactly the same size as our private equity portfolio. This will mean that the time required for our equity holdings will double, so we have decided that my husband will devote all his time to our investments for the rest of 2025 to begin with.

AI generated image with Grok

We managed to make a couple of acquisitions anyway

Despite the enormous workload we have had and thanks to the fact that Nasdaq is open late in the Swedish evening due to the US being six hours behind in terms of time, we have been able to make a lot of acquisitions. All purchases were made in Hercules Capital, Inc. Common Stock (HTGC) in both our private and our corporate endowment insurances.

Due to lack of time, I haven't even been able to do one of my favorite tasks, namely entering the executed dividend into my Google Sheet during March. This is a task I will prioritize immediately after we have completely emptied the premises, which should be completed on Friday next week when the handover takes place.

The strengthening of the Swedish krona in recent weeks means that March 2025 will most likely not surpass March 2024, which has so far been our absolute next dividend month.

AI generated image with Grok

Free at last

The last two weeks have been incredibly busy work-related, including longer opening hours in the store since it has been full of customers at closing, but today is the last day we are officially open. After that, we will start packing up what's left of the inventory and later next week we will move it out to the industrial property that my parents own. The feeling of knowing that today is the last day I have to work in the store is liberating.

There are so many genuinely mean people that half would be enough. These people have no problem treating store staff like trash. I have lost count of the number of times customers have come into the store and treated both our staff and us extremely badly and derogatory. Not having to integrate these types of people will do wonders for our mental health.

At the same time, it's scary to think that in a week I'll be "unemployed" for the first time in my entire working life. Since we have only sold the premises and none of our companies, I will still be working with all the administration for our three companies and my dad's consulting firm. Which means in practice that I will still have work to do, albeit less.

Fortunately, apart from the purchase price for the premises, we have balanced profits in our companies that cover our salaries for the rest of 2025, so I have several months to look for a job.

AI generated image with Grok

Almost done

Yesterday I filled out my, my husband's, my mom's and my dad's income tax returns for 2024. I filed Junior's income tax return earlier this week, so now it's only my late uncle, who passed away on January 2nd of this year, whose income tax return I have left to do.

Of these five returns I have filed, four of us are getting money back on our taxes while my dad had to pay $11,450 in back taxes. The reason for this is that his company is a general partnership, unlike ours which are limited liability companies, which in practice means that he personally has to pay the tax for the established profit in the company, unlike a limited company where the company pays corporate tax. Because of this, my dad has to make an extra tax payment every year at this time of year.

The only thing left before I'm done with this year's income tax returns is for my dad, as the next of kin, to contact the Swedish Tax Agency to get login details for my late uncle's tax return information so I can complete and submit his tax return as well.

AI generated image with Grok

As many Swedes leave the American stock market, we hope to increase the pace

We have received some of the March dividends and hope for more tomorrow. The combination of last week's stock market crash and a stronger Swedish krona has significantly improved buying opportunities for us.

Hopefully tomorrow we will have enough energy and, above all, time to go gunning for some good acquisitions in the coming days in contrast to last week's failure. All last week, both my husband and I fell asleep on the couch and were woken up by the teenager when it was time to go to bed. This sale is killing us.

AI generated image with Grok

We are having a sale for the first and only time ever

We have now had a sale for exactly six days. Since we wanted to give something back to our regular customers who have shopped with us for seventeen years, we chose not to advertise that we would be having a sale. As a result of GDPR we are not allowed to keep records of existing customers without their consent. Due to this we have chosen not to have one and therefore could not notify them. Instead, we put up signs in the store windows with the word sale and 50%.

On the first day, sales tripled compared to a normal day. Day two was hysterical, apparently a couple of customers had tagged us in their Facebook groups and it went completely crazy. I've always laughed at how women are portrayed in comedies when there's a sale in a store with a firm belief that this is far from reality. I was wrong, the women literally took products out of each other's hands when they saw that the person holding the item was not going to buy it but was going to return it to its place on the shelf.

So far, the sale have been incredibly successful, we have about a third of the stock left. I hope tomorrow continues in the same way.

AI generated image with Grok

Mini vacation

The world's most perfect teenager is still set on becoming a chemical engineer and hopes to be accepted to Aalto University.

For this reason, we have booked plane tickets for a mini-vacation to Helsinki. One of the reasons for this trip is that we want Junior to have the opportunity to see Aalto Campus before he decides to apply there next year. The main reason, however, is that I and the world's most perfect husband want to ensure that the university is located in a safe part of Helsinki.

Fortunately, Finnair uses aircraft from the manufacturer Airbus for this route. After all the accidents with Boeing and their chosen DEI strategy, I prefer Airbus to Boeing nowadays. For the teenager who is a little afraid of flying, it was almost a dealbreaker that we flew Airbus.

AI generated image with Grok

I'm tired of our tax money being misappropriated

At Sweden's largest airport, Arlanda, the Swedish Customs and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency carried out two joint inspections last year, according to the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

These operations prevented incorrect payments of nearly $550,000 and resulted in refund claims of just over $420,000. The frauds discovered consisted of passengers who received sickness benefit, parental benefit and activity compensation on incorrect grounds. This has now resulted in both authorities deciding to expand their cooperation.

In addition, the Swedish Tax Agency has decided to carry out special inspection operations against sham separations in the spring of 2025, that is, people who have separated according to the population register but still live together and through this fraud are entitled to various compensations such as housing allowances, livelihood support, etc. Sham separations are another example of fraud that has been discovered through increased inspections in recent years.

Because these frauds are so widespread, I would like to see the above-mentioned control efforts become permanent and ongoing. I would also see it as positive if these crimes were subject to harsher punishments compared to what they have today.

AI generated image with Grok

Looking good

It is incredibly satisfying to see how the dividends develop. As early as next month, this year's dividends will have exceeded the entire 2017 dividends.

Assuming none of our holdings cut their dividends this year, it is already set in stone that 2025 will surpass 2024 and then we still have nine months of dividends left to invest.

Click to enlarge

Future concerns

2025 continues to outperform its predecessors, but the forecast points to March 2025 dividends coming in at $200 lower than March 2024. The only thing that can save us is that I missed noting a possible extra dividend from one of our holdings or that the Swedish krona immediately loses more than ¢10 in value against the US dollar.

This really bothers the competitive person in me. It's always a competition.

Click to enlarge

Nothing exciting

Not a single one of our holdings paid any special and/or supplemental dividends during February, so the values ​​in the chart below are exactly the same as the charts where I do not take extra dividends into account.

Click to enlarge

Still on track

Due to the enormous workload over the past ten days, it took me significantly longer to finalize the results for February's dividends. The marginal strengthening of the Swedish krona against other currencies, including the US dollar, at the end of February was within the tolerance for my forecast to be correct.

As the Swedish krona has strengthened further this month against the US dollar, there is an imminent risk that we will not meet the forecast for March.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Has the carnage ended?

The value of our portfolios has fallen more sharply and faster than a ski jumper during the Olympics who misses the landing. As we have started selling our inventory in the store, we have had neither the energy nor the time to follow the stock market meticulously during this period of time. Since we are dividend investors and not growth investors, the daily stock market trend is not entirely decisive for us. The most important thing for us is that our holdings do not cut their dividends.

Yesterday I started an endowment insurance with our latest digital investment platform, Montrose by Carnegie, and today I made my first acquisition. Since we are not registered as a professional investor with Montrose and therefore do not have access to all instruments such as EFTs and BDCs, we chose to acquire Stellus Capital Investment Corporation Common Stock (SCM).

The reason we choose to open an endowment insurance with Montrose is that they are the first in Sweden to offer direct refund of foreign withholding tax. According to the newspaper DI Montrose's partner is Movestic. Initially, we will only make smaller acquisitions on this platform until we see how user-friendly the app is, how well the foreign withholding tax refunds will work, and how high the brokerage fee is.

AI generated image with Grok

This is going to be too exciting

The US dollar has lost a little in value compared to the Swedish krona during February 2025. This means that our dividends for January will be marginally higher compared to the dividends for February after they have been converted to Swedish kronor.

The reason for this is because I set a fixed "exchange rate" in my Google Sheets during January for the entire year that I will not change, assuming no major change occurs, which means that it will be a bit "tight" to reach the forecast for February this time.

So far, the numbers show that I will miss the target by just under $30, which may be considered negligible by many but certainly not by me. How close I get to my goal depends entirely on the exchange rate applied by our respective banks when they pay out February's final dividends.

AI generated image with Grok

An apology in advance to Junior's future wife

The fact that the world's most perfect husband and I were a little older when we became parents for the first and only time has most likely contributed to us spoiling the world's most perfect offspring. My husband had just turned 40 and I turned 38 almost to the day exactly 5 months after Junior was born. Our son has never lacked attention, on the contrary, sometimes I think we almost suffocate him with all our love and support.

My husband and I have always worked a lot, the only luxury we have consistently allowed ourselves is that we eat out a lot. Everything from McDonalds to Operakallaren in Stockholm. Junior was always with us until he reached his mid-teens and had long since grown tired of eating out. At that point I gave up and let him stay home instead, my husband always cooks for him either before or after we get back.

Nowadays Junior has taken the whole situation a step further and with our tacit consent has sometimes written notes with specific requests about what he would have for dinner. Which we fulfill most of the time.

For this reason, I would like to apologize in advance to Junior's future wife for any diva behavior he may have, it's all our fault.

AI generated image with Grok

They're just not wired like the rest of us

For transparency and my own agenda, both my husband and I belong to Gen X while our son is Gen Z. I don't know if the behavior described below is only practiced by the Swedish Millennials or if it is an approach by the Millennials all over the world.

According to the Workplace Health Report 2024, people under 30 have twice as much short-term absence compared to their older colleagues, reports SVT Nyheter. Short-term absence means that you are away from work for periods shorter than fourteen consecutive days on at least six occasions during a year.

What we hear from employers is that they perceive that employees are taking sick leave for reasons other than illness. It could be that you have been up all night gambling or have broken up with your partner, something that the older generation would never be home from work for, says Charlotte Valleskog, chief psychologist at Feelgood, one of Sweden's leading health companies.

Thankfully, Gen Z seems to have adopted a completely different attitude than their predecessors, the Millennials.

AI generated image with Grok

Uh oh

In the Swedish pension system, the individual controls part of his pension money by being given the opportunity to choose a fund in which this specific part of his pension money should be invested. The world's most perfect husband, who usually has 100% control over his investments, has missed that the specific fund he chose many years ago changes during the year he turns 56. 

The equity fund he chose, AP7, is transitioning from initially being a 100% equity fund to gradually transitioning to being a mixed fund consisting of 67% fixed income funds and 33% equity funds. My husband discovered this yesterday when he received the annual information sheet from the pension authority. He demonstrably missed this information last year because he turns 58 in August this year. His disappointment with himself was noticeably palpable.

He immediately logged into his retirement account and sold off his entire holdings in favor of another fund manager who is not making this change. When I chose to invest my part of the pension money, I did not choose any of the AP funds, which means that I am not affected by this.

AI generated image with Grok