Our first Friday episode!! Finally! 

We’re very excited to be bringing you these ‘Community’ Friday episodes, where we take in questions from the community and discuss them on the podcast. In this one we discuss how to bring your partner on board with FI, and the huge benefits of being an individual investor.

What we talk about:

• Alvar and Mathias’ experiences bringing their partners on board
• How you can too
• The three benefits of being an individual investor
• Send us questions!

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How to bring your ❤️partner on board of the FIRE train 

Lucasz sent us an awesome question (you can too here). Here it is:

What if your significant one is not too interested in pursuing the path of FIRE and plans on professional career and self-run company?

With this question I ask Alvar and Mathias about their personal experience bringing their girlfriend’s on the path to FI.

Alvar has been with his girlfriend for 5 years, and says that although the FIRE concept isn’t so native to her, she is interested and willing to keep an open ear. As Alvar spams her with FI articles and shows her real life situations of how it works, she understands its importance and let’s Alvar do most of the work. He says she’ll never be crazy into it as he is, but that’s fine with both of them.

Mathias has two children (one is very cute – the baby) and has been pursuing FI since 2011. He organises FI meetups in Cologne and is very into the community. It started in a similar way as Alvar; he sent his girlfriend tons of articles and has been digging deeper. Now, she’s the one who sends him articles! They are very much aligned now, and are working on reaching FI together.

 

But what if my partner is not interested at all?

 

The real question. This is what my two co hosts say:

• Send him/her articles (maybe not too spammy)
• Show them the huge benefits of FI
• Explain how they can reach FI and still keep their job – there’s nothing risky going on here
• Show the value through real life examples
• Make them part of the financial planning process

Hopefully with those tips you can help your partner get on board. Alvar has a great example of how he did it; after saving up a lot of money in New Zealand, sending the money back to Europe would have cost a lot of money between fees and a bad exchange rate. Alvar showed his girlfriend that if they waited a bit and used a certain system, they could get a better exchange rate and save up on a lot of money.

That’s what we mean when we say make them part of the process.

 

The amazing benefits you have as an individual investor

Individual investor means you and I, in comparison to a company or fund. As one person, we have really great advantages compared to a company. Here are a few reasons why:

Alvar:

• You are flexible and get to make choices in your best interest
• There are limited personalisation options with mutual funds
• I get to make the choice to take more risks or not

Example: Turkish bonds. No mutual fund would invest in these, however Alvar says that they are returning a yield of 19.4% – yes it’s more risky, but it’s up to you if you want to take that risk on.

Disclaimer: We are not responsible for any investment losses (sorry guys)

Mathias:

• You have less pressure to be correct
• You have less pressure to return a high yield every year
• Mutual funds do what other mutual funds do – so won’t go too risky
• As an individual you have no competition – it doesn’t matter if one year you only get 1%, because you are investing in the long term

Araminta

• You are investing with your own money
• Since you are so very involved, you get to learn a lot about money, economics and business
• It’s a great way to financially educate yourself
• You are in control, and only you will have your best interest at heart

 

So in summary, 3 benefits of being an individual investor are:

1. You get to choose whether you want to take on risk or not; you have more choices
2. You have less pressure to perform well
3. You financially educate yourself

 

We would love to hear if you found this episode helpful, and if you want to send us a question, check out the big button that says ‘Send a voicemail’, or send us an email at financialindependenceeuropeÄTgmail.com. You can also sign up to our newsletter and responses to our emails will get priority over others 😉

Although I did say we want to deliver them every Friday, we’re going to start with every second week, and then hopefully every week! Your support will help us achieve this 🙂

Links

• Send us an email!
• Your Money or Your Life

 

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