With the first job I started my first investment with some classical German fonds like Arideka and Dekafonds from my local bank both stocks and bonds. And I got stock options from my first employer (Hewlett-Packard). So the classical start, total home bias and buying stock from the employer. Summary, bad idea and it as, the stock options couldn’t be exercised anyway and the fonds didn’t perform. With this experience the phase of interest in finance was finished with the typical feeling, that it doesn’t work anyway. And yet investing in single stocks, I thought at that time, anyhow too risky for the little budget I had.
The next 10 year I sold my time for money, first at HP and then in my own „startup“ together with some ex-HP colleagues. Now you could think, own company yeah. But in the end I always kept away from all the financial aspects of owning a company and cared exclusively on doing the technical suff as head of research and development and contributing to technical sales and support. That had been my biggest fault, regarded from the future. I would never ever again not care about money but make that my most important duty. Learning the hard way.
Then next major „error“, not having saved a lot of money in a focused way over the years, I bought my own house for living in it. Instead what I should have done is invest in a investment object, such as buying a flat for lease and with the cashflow then afterwards buy a flat or house for living in it. But there is some value, emotionally but also financially in having own real estate, as I later found out. A house, when payed back to a substantial share, is a great source of yield power. And also I did some things right in financing it, as I know now. Such as having a fast repayment, again lucky me without being knowledgable at that time.
Since then happly selling my time in a new job, that is actually quite great but still being in the rat-race with the outlook of living like this for the rest of my life. End. End?
No, not quite yet. It was summer 2019, when I my darling gave me a book as a gift. It was Robert Kiyosaki’s master piece „rich dad, poor dad“. This book looks like the typical American content, where a single main thesis is reformulated and restated over and over again with minimal modification. Yeah, well so some extend but nevertheless, this book struck me like a lightening bolt!
For the fist time, I thought about finances, about the rat-race, that one is living in. About the difference between owning a self-inhabited house and an investment. About the difference between being freelancer, an employee versus having a business or being investor. A lot of facts that are totally logical but one doesn’t reflect on it. I mean I had business as a side topic in my computer science studies, so I could read a balance sheet. But the way that Robert Kiyosaki applies it to practical life is just eye opening.
That was the start of an intensive time until today, that I heavily learned about the word of finance and investing. First I investigated the passive investment strategy, ETFs, then more in the stock market. Again I ran over the books of Luis Pazos „Bargeld statt Buchgewinn“ and his blog „Nur Bares ist Wahres“ that brought me to the income investment strategy and many very interesting investment instruments such as REITs, BDCs, MLPs, CEFs etc.
In that time I got also aware of a local group in Stuttgart that plays the Cashflow game from Robert Kiyosaki (Cashflow Stuttgart – entflieh dem Hamsterrad). So I went there and met Matthias Bauer, who organises this group.
From Matthias I got more motivation on the next topic, that I was looking into, which was real estate. So I started to look into investing in a flat for lease. That took quite some time until one had the courage to start setting up a search agent and learning all that it takes to make such a big step. An advantage was certainly, that I previously bought my own home and had some personal experience.
From the real estate in the Stuttgart area I was very much demotivated, because prices are so high and yields to low that I was almost giving up before starting. But finally beginning of 2020, things were starting to proceed very quickly which resulted in the acquisition of even two flats at the same time, one in Stuttgart and one in Ludwigshafen am Rhein. Both totally different concepts, but that will be topics for the videos. Even when Corona hit me in the middle of the purchasing process, I kept going and both are not in my portfolio.
The next topic was the interest in investing in bonds and stock and the Russian financial market. So finally, more than 20 years after my last investment into fonds, I started again a small depot. At that time, I also continued to watch more and more Youtube videos in addition to reading books about financial topics and noticed that there are so many Youtube authors that have very detailed stock analyses. Others cover all the same topics about growth stock and current topics in the financial sector. But there was something missing and I got the impression, that I could contribute something to the community.
After having done some videos at work, I decided to start my own Youtube channel. And here we are! This story will certainly continue and I hope that I can make a contribution that is worth watching with the Youtube channel and this blog.
Welcome to Outside-Invest!