Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I can agree on many points!
1. from my point of view, this is always a good idea:
Stay out of the financial affairs of friends and family in particular. No offers and no advice.
Even if I am explicitly asked for a tip, my answer is usually that you should educate yourself in order to help yourself.
When it comes to investments, the best advice I give is to go to $IWDA and even then I say: read up before you do anything.
Everything else leads to arguments.
There are experts in every field and you either pay these experts for their expertise or you have to live with the consequences if you don't do it.
2. here I also agree.
Maybe 10 years ago, my sister wanted a new laptop for surfing, for her browser games, for planting a garden, etc.
Just normal, simple things for which you don't need a performance monster.
So I went to the nearest Mediamarkt and thought I'd get an employee to show me the devices.
I'm not an IT nerd, but at least I know something about it.
So I told him my budget, the intended use and that it was for my sister.
Completely ignored, he led me to the mobile gaming machines from €2k upwards. I said several times that the thing wouldn't be used for gaming and that the budget wasn't there either.
As the gentleman was apparently only after his commission, I left the store and went to the nearby Saturn. Same game again.
Then again at MediMax. And the same thing happened again at Conrad.
So I got back in the car and ended up ordering a device from Amazon. I also saved over 10% on the price of the stationary retailer.
In the years that followed, I tried stationary retail again and again. Be it for furniture, carpeting, wood for furniture construction, wallpaper, etc.
Each time, they either tried to pull the wool over my eyes or didn't care what I wanted.
The fact that I save money in the process is a nice side effect.
(Not to mention the cases where people in stores have told me that there is no USB-C to jack, for example, or that there are no connectors or window ducts for satellite cables).
3. sometimes things like your experience in the restaurant are simply human error.
But often, like the provider with the annoying Ralf Schumacher commercial, they are also part of the business model.
I wanted to sell my mother's "old" Kia Carens because she was buying a new car but still wanted money for her old one.
Of course, our neighborhood dealers (I live near the Polish border) all had very nice prices, but they were primarily focused on their profits.
So I went to the named dealer on the Internet and got a quote.
The price was of course very good, although we had deliberately given the car a lower price than necessary.
On site, they then deducted "accident damage" that we had honestly stated online. (So something like the classic scratch on the rear fender from the shopping cart in the supermarket parking lot, etc.)
Well, then we drove off again without any discussion and ended up selling the car to a Berlin dealer who refurbished the car and then sold it in Eastern Europe.
They quoted a price, didn't negotiate for long and we got the cash on the claw.
I always find the price differences particularly glaring when traveling.
Same period, same hotel and same flights, but still 10-20% difference for the same services.
4. here I am personally somewhat ambivalent.
I myself started with smaller sums when I was 18, but as a student and self-employed person I naturally had to scrape together a lot of money to invest.
Sometimes it might have been better to "live" more.
Today I'm still in a similar position and almost 30.
My savings rate is quite decent, but I'm still trying to find a balance and just live, because we all have to die at some point and my big deposit won't be of any use to my family or anyone else in the end. Well, my heirs might be happy, but that shouldn't be the goal.
Incidentally, I invested far too much in penny stocks when I was young because I thought I was smarter than others. (Well, the bottom line is that I made a profit, but I still burned a lot of money. And in the end, I still think I'm smarter than most people...)
What I now clearly think, however, is that I should have paid much more attention to education when I was younger, instead of trying to make a killing on the stock market.
I only had a rough understanding of the whole thing, invested heavily in shares, options and derivatives, but honestly didn't understand many of the market mechanisms at all. Sometimes it was just more luck than sense.
I can agree on many points!
1. from my point of view, this is always a good idea:
Stay out of the financial affairs of friends and family in particular. No offers and no advice.
Even if I am explicitly asked for a tip, my answer is usually that you should educate yourself in order to help yourself.
When it comes to investments, the best advice I give is to go to $IWDA and even then I say: read up before you do anything.
Everything else leads to arguments.
There are experts in every field and you either pay these experts for their expertise or you have to live with the consequences if you don't do it.
2. here I also agree.
Maybe 10 years ago, my sister wanted a new laptop for surfing, for her browser games, for planting a garden, etc.
Just normal, simple things for which you don't need a performance monster.
So I went to the nearest Mediamarkt and thought I'd get an employee to show me the devices.
I'm not an IT nerd, but at least I know something about it.
So I told him my budget, the intended use and that it was for my sister.
Completely ignored, he led me to the mobile gaming machines from €2k upwards. I said several times that the thing wouldn't be used for gaming and that the budget wasn't there either.
As the gentleman was apparently only after his commission, I left the store and went to the nearby Saturn. Same game again.
Then again at MediMax. And the same thing happened again at Conrad.
So I got back in the car and ended up ordering a device from Amazon. I also saved over 10% on the price of the stationary retailer.
In the years that followed, I tried stationary retail again and again. Be it for furniture, carpeting, wood for furniture construction, wallpaper, etc.
Each time, they either tried to pull the wool over my eyes or didn't care what I wanted.
The fact that I save money in the process is a nice side effect.
(Not to mention the cases where people in stores have told me that there is no USB-C to jack, for example, or that there are no connectors or window ducts for satellite cables).
3. sometimes things like your experience in the restaurant are simply human error.
But often, like the provider with the annoying Ralf Schumacher commercial, they are also part of the business model.
I wanted to sell my mother's "old" Kia Carens because she was buying a new car but still wanted money for her old one.
Of course, our neighborhood dealers (I live near the Polish border) all had very nice prices, but they were primarily focused on their profits.
So I went to the named dealer on the Internet and got a quote.
The price was of course very good, although we had deliberately given the car a lower price than necessary.
On site, they then deducted "accident damage" that we had honestly stated online. (So something like the classic scratch on the rear fender from the shopping cart in the supermarket parking lot, etc.)
Well, then we drove off again without any discussion and ended up selling the car to a Berlin dealer who refurbished the car and then sold it in Eastern Europe.
They quoted a price, didn't negotiate for long and we got the cash on the claw.
I always find the price differences particularly glaring when traveling.
Same period, same hotel and same flights, but still 10-20% difference for the same services.
4. here I am personally somewhat ambivalent.
I myself started with smaller sums when I was 18, but as a student and self-employed person I naturally had to scrape together a lot of money to invest.
Sometimes it might have been better to "live" more.
Today I'm still in a similar position and almost 30.
My savings rate is quite decent, but I'm still trying to find a balance and just live, because we all have to die at some point and my big deposit won't be of any use to my family or anyone else in the end. Well, my heirs might be happy, but that shouldn't be the goal.
Incidentally, I invested far too much in penny stocks when I was young because I thought I was smarter than others. (Well, the bottom line is that I made a profit, but I still burned a lot of money. And in the end, I still think I'm smarter than most people...)
What I now clearly think, however, is that I should have paid much more attention to education when I was younger, instead of trying to make a killing on the stock market.
I only had a rough understanding of the whole thing, invested heavily in shares, options and derivatives, but honestly didn't understand many of the market mechanisms at all. Sometimes it was just more luck than sense.
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@Staatsmann Thank you for taking the trouble to write so much. It was really interesting to read and of course also very remarkable that you had similar experiences in many respects.
I can't add too much more, as I think everything important has already been said. The only point open to discussion is actually when and how much you should start to enjoy.
In any case, I lived quite spartanly in my early and mid-twenties and of course had to do so to some extent. But that was never really a problem because student life is somehow designed so that hardly anyone really has a lot of money but you still have fun together and do things together.
For the first few years in my job, I was also quite stingy and didn't live very much and concentrated very one-sidedly on feeding the savings plan. In the meantime, however, I've become more relaxed now that I've crossed an important psychological threshold in my portfolio. I'm still often reluctant to spend money, but now and again I treat myself to unnecessary luxuries such as a nice vacation or the aforementioned smartwatch, which would have been unthinkable in the past. I certainly haven't found the perfect balance yet, but I'm evolving ^^
I can't add too much more, as I think everything important has already been said. The only point open to discussion is actually when and how much you should start to enjoy.
In any case, I lived quite spartanly in my early and mid-twenties and of course had to do so to some extent. But that was never really a problem because student life is somehow designed so that hardly anyone really has a lot of money but you still have fun together and do things together.
For the first few years in my job, I was also quite stingy and didn't live very much and concentrated very one-sidedly on feeding the savings plan. In the meantime, however, I've become more relaxed now that I've crossed an important psychological threshold in my portfolio. I'm still often reluctant to spend money, but now and again I treat myself to unnecessary luxuries such as a nice vacation or the aforementioned smartwatch, which would have been unthinkable in the past. I certainly haven't found the perfect balance yet, but I'm evolving ^^
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@Soprano It very much depends on the individual circumstances, but where is your "psychologically important depot limit", if you don't mind me asking?
50k? 100k? 500k? 1million?
All basically comfortable sums as a cushion. ☺️
50k? 100k? 500k? 1million?
All basically comfortable sums as a cushion. ☺️
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•@Sunrise-Mantis For me, it was the 100k that I cracked for the first time I think 1 year ago, and I've posted something about it before. From then on I realized that it's somehow much more relevant whether the President of the USA posts something funny that day than whether I buy the branded yoghurt or the discount product 😂👍🏼
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