Howdy! Welcome to the FIRST EVER EPISODE of the Financial Independence Europe Podcast. We’re all very excited. In this episode we introduce the hosts of the podcast, talk about what a market crash is and what the FI Europe podcast is all about. 

The hosts

Our podcast is mainly hosted by Mathias and Alvar, although Niels will pop in from time to time. Araminta (that’s me) is the blogger behind the posts.

So we start with a nice little introduction of our main talking hosts and what it’s all about – kinda important for a podcast.

Niels: Danish 29 year old and owner of the blog worldsworstemployee.com. Recently graduated from university with a law degree with quite a lot of student debt and therefore a negative net worth. The challenge: applying investment techniques to the Danish concept. Denmark has a different taxation system and so investing in ETFs and passive index funds isn’t as easy as other places. He hopes with the FI Europe podcast he can explore more ways to hack the investing world.

Mathias: German 30 something who currently works in IT and Business Consulting. Always been into stock investing (doing it for his parents), owns an ETF portfolio and into P2P investing. He now lives in Cologne and organises meetups to play board games like the Cashflow Kiyosaki game and to nerd out about FI. He hopes this podcast will bring the European FI community together and discover more finance hacks.

Alvar: Dutch guy who lived in Switzerland but now is in Edinburgh, Scotland. He’s all about looking for a higher quality of life; no more 40 hour work weeks, obeying a boss or hating your job. He started trading at the age of 15 and hasn’t stopped since. He now covers things such as value investing, P2P lending, dividend growth investing, crypto and even IPO flipping (wtf is that?)

 

The podcast

So we have two main hosts, a Danish guy who appears from time to time and me, the blogger. What do we hope to achieve with the podcast?

To put it simply: interview people who are on their path to FI or have reached FI by life-hacking Europe

The best countries to live, study, invest and retire or reach FI. We want to hear peoples’ finance and life hacks. We want to find the best ways for every person to live their life in the best possible way. And the more people we interview, the more hacks and opinions we can hear. And maybe one of them can apply to you…

For a detailed explanation on FI and the podcast, check out our **detailed first post.

 

The market crash

In order to make this first episode a little bit more useful, our 3 hosts discuss the small market crash that happened in February and how to prepare for future ones.

In February there was a slight dip in the market. The media went crazy, foreseeing that the bull market of the past few years was finally over and that this would be a huge crash. As we all know now; it wasn’t. What does this teach us? Don’t panic.

Mathias , a seasoned investor, and Niels tell us that that’s how markets are: they are volatile and they fluctuate. There will be dips and there will be hills. Have a good portfolio and this should not affect you.

Alvar says have a good ETF portfolio and you’ll be fine for the next 10 years. It’s automated, it’s flexible and recovers from the crashes. How do we create a good portfolio? This will be covered in future episodes with actual experts, but a good place to start in the meantime would be JustETF.

And if you have some time and are curious, try out new investment strategies. That’s how you find what works best for you.

Overal takeaways

In this first, short podcast episode we introduce the podcast hosts, talk about the why of the podcast and how to deal with market crashes

The important stuff:

• This podcast is about interviewing people who are on their path to FI or have reached FI by life-hacking Europe
• Market crashes happen, don’t panic
• A balanced ETF portfolio will keep you going for 10 years
• Be down to trying new investment strategies

 

Cool links

Mr Money Mustache

Jim Collins

Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow game

Financial Independence Meetup Cologne

 

Have a question? Want to be interviewed? Send over an email at: financialindependenceeurope at gmail dot com and we’ll be happy to respond.

Also, any ounce of support is very helpful and encouraging (especially as a new podcast)!

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