Due to the high level of interest in my project, I have thought about a competition.

Anyone can take part here once. All you have to do is estimate the TTWROR performance of my portfolio for this year as at 31.12.

As a reminder again the performances from 2023 and 2024

In 2023 it was 73% not TTWROR

2024 it was 107%

2025 it is ???

I'll give you a little tip. If the last week doesn't go completely wrong, I will clearly exceed my self-imposed target of 45% this year too.

You can win a total of 1000 coins.

1st place 500 coins

2nd place 300 coins

3rd place 200 coins

If several winners have the same value, the coins will be divided.

The evaluation day is 31.12.

I wish you good luck. As I don't know the final result, of course, it remains exciting for me too. 😎😉

Dear community, followers, those who want to become followers and even those who think I'm a weirdo.

As yesterday was my last working day of the year, I decided to start with a deep dive today. As Christmas is traditionally a multi-part event, I've decided to split the whole thing into 3 parts. As always, anyone who is interested is welcome to read, react, ask, whatever. If you're not interested, just keep scrolling.

In this first part it will be more personal. I'll tell you a few things about my life, why I have a different attitude to money and investing than most people here and why I chose this profile picture and why the slogan in it reflects quite a lot of my attitude to life.

First of all, my interest in money and the stock market goes back to the mid-80s when I completed my banking apprenticeship.

At the tender age of 27, I bought my first investment property in 1992 at an interest rate of 9.8%, followed by a second in 1994 and a third in 2001. In between, in 1999, I bought some property together with my wife, which we lived in ourselves. These properties had a total value of around 1.2 million at the time. In 2005, despite having a good white-collar job, I became self-employed in the insurance sector, specializing in private health insurance.

In 2007, I founded an AG with 2 friends and set up a large brokerage agency with 10 permanent employees and 75 freelancers at its peak. My wife didn't have to work and was able to look after our newborn son full time. There wasn't an abundance of money and we weren't living the high life, but the fixed costs of €8-9,000, including paying off the property, are manageable if you regularly earn between €10 and €15k on average and sometimes have months with €30k.

Then came the big shock in 2010. We were defrauded of a 7-digit sum in our company through fraudulent machinations by 2 external business partners. As a result, the company had to file for insolvency and we were left with nothing, as we, as board members of a newly founded public limited company, were of course privately liable for all liabilities. Let me cut a long story short: after everything was sold within the next 2.5 years, we were living in a rented apartment, no adequate income was coming in, and I still had almost 1.5 million in debt. Yellow letters arrived every day with MB,VB etc. The oil tank was empty in winter and we couldn't afford heating oil and sat on the couch with 2 electric radiators and a small 3-year-old child snuggled up in blankets.

Then came the evening that really changed my attitude to life and money. I came home and my wife stood in the kitchen, opened the fridge and said: We have nothing left in the fridge and I replied: But light! At that moment I realized that no matter how bad it is, there is always a light somewhere that lets us carry on. The next day, I finally got round to filing for bankruptcy privately and from then on, things started to look up. I had a fixed sum that I had to pay every month and after 5 years I was able to end the insolvency early in 2019. But my originally planned retirement provision was gone and I started from scratch again at the age of 54. As a result, I decided to stop planning for the future in financial matters and start living. Money and assets are not everything. And I can only give advice to the very young among you. I think it's great if you start at a young age, but don't stress too much about which assets will give you the best return in 40 years. So many things happen in 30 or 40 years that you can't plan for. And it doesn't matter whether your return is +50%, 30%, 3% or 10% down. It won't make you poorer or richer at the end of your life. Take it from someone with a lot of life experience.

At the beginning of 2023, I thought I'd do a bit of stock market investing again and, while looking for interesting opportunities, I came across Michael Proffe's website. He had already taken a portfolio from €30,000 to €1 million. After extensive research and checking, I thought to myself, why don't you book the subscription and be there the next time he starts again. Only with 10% of the sum. So €3,000 and a target of 100,000. His project was based on 2 areas. Half of the capital is divided into 5 shares and the other half into 5 OS.

So I started on 01.04.2023. After 6 months my portfolio was at around €3,300. I was bored to death and thought it was ridiculous to have a portfolio with 0.8 meta shares etc.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands. I ended the first year with around €4,500.

And you will find out what happened next in Part 2 and Part 3 over the next few days.

So you can either be curious or say I'm not going to read any more. Such boring shit!

Have a successful rest of the day.

Hello everyone,

At the end of the year I will receive some additional capital which I had not expected and I will divide it up - a large part will go to my son's portfolio and I have an experiment planned with part of it which I would like to document here if there is any interest.

The idea is simple: I take €1,000 of real money (in a separate gambling account) and leave the decisions entirely to an AI, in this case the new Gemini Pro version.

Important in advanceI have already mentally written off the €1,000. It is pure 'play money' for me. A total loss is therefore fully factored in and won't hurt me financially at all. That's exactly why I want to see what's possible when you replace emotions with algorithms.

The framework conditions:

Starting capital: €1,000

Start: 01.01.2026

Broker: Finanzen.net Zero

AI: Gemini 3 Pro

Target: Maximum return by the end of 2026 (high risk / high reward).

Strategy: Everything is allowed - active trades, crypto, turnaround bets.

The rule: I don't argue. If the AI says "Buy XY", then I press the button. (Unless it's not technically possible).

I have my normal portfolio for retirement provision, but here I want to know: Can the AI beat the market through active management or am I burning the €1,000?

Would you be interested in following this? I would post regular updates on the trades and performance (including screenshots). I was thinking of a 4 week cycle.

What do you think: Will this be a total loss or the way to the moon?

Disclaimer: The whole thing is purely for entertainment and as an experiment. This is expressly not investment advice and not an invitation to imitate. Please do not blindly burn your money.

As I usually just comment diligently, I thought I'd write a little introduction post at the end of the year.

Briefly about me as a person: I'm 31, female and have been living with my girlfriend and our dog in Hamburg for a few years now.

Like some people here, I come from a rather financially illiterate background and have acquired all my knowledge about finance over the last few years via YouTube and through you here.

We never had much money as a family, my mother overdrafted several accounts really badly without contributing much of her own income to the family, and in the end my father paid everything off. So I also had to learn how to handle money after my studies (where I never had any money either) with my first salaries (~€1,700 net) and that was... not very successful. So I managed, but I didn't manage to save.

But thank God I never got into debt because of my mother. No consumer credit, my account had no overdraft facility, I didn't buy anything in installments. I only financed my studies over the last few semesters with a small education loan (approx. €7,000).

I'm probably one of the people here with one of the lowest incomes, excluding trainees and students. After 7 years in a very well-known concert hall, my income has risen to around €2,250, fluctuating due to shift allowances. And since I can now share the housing costs after the first flatmate didn't pay reliably, the burden of fixed costs has also become quite bearable.

I started saving around 2020, it took me a while to find a strategy that worked for me and I've managed to do this quite well in the meantime thanks to a multi-account system. At the beginning of 2023, I finally dared to venture into the capital market after soaking up knowledge for ages and observing a lot.

But I've now reached a point where I'm really proud of myself. I've gone from living paycheck to paycheck to having a small financial cushion that allows me to buy more expensive things without too many problems or having to think about it, without it blowing a huge hole in my wallet. And it's an incredibly good feeling not to have to worry about the next utility bill or when the fridge or washing machine need replacing.

I currently have a sweet €22,000 in total savings (I don't want to call it a fortune yet. 🤣) of which around €13,500 is already in securities.

That's ten times (10x!) my net income. 🤯

I've now made it to the end of 2025.

I can now reliably invest €450 and put another €400, sometimes more, sometimes less reliably, into other cash savings pots. And the fact that this is possible with such a low salary is somehow still pretty surreal for me.

So I can put away around 40% of my salary without feeling deprived or having the feeling that I can't afford anything.

I've also opened up the possibility of having €15,000 overdraft and credit line together in my back pocket. Not for consumption, but for calculated, more expensive purchases or possibly a move, which are more expensive than a monthly income, where my savings may not be enough. Saves me 12% installment credit via Paypal, for example, because the interest rates for overdraft and credit lines are significantly lower at 7 and 8%. 😅 I hope I never really have to use it, but it feels good to have it up my sleeve as a plan B.

All in all, I'm extremely proud of myself and think I've found a concept that works well for me.

Happy holidays to you all! 🎄

Yesterday I caught my 23-year-old nephew staring nervously at his cell phone.

He was using one of those dubious "neobroker" apps.

I asked sternly what he was up to.

"I'm saving an ETF on the S&P 500," he said quietly.

My wholemeal spelt roll almost fell out of my hand.

I had to sit down.

The boy is investing his hard-earned money in American companies with no physical presence in Castrop-Rauxel?

That's literally gambling.

I asked him: "What do you do when the stock market is closed for two days? Or when Elon Musk tweets?"

He had no answer.

Pure recklessness.

I immediately took the phone away from him and deleted the app.

We then drove to the savings bank together.

We had a 2-hour consultation about a solid building society savings contract.

Closing fee only 1.6% of the building society sum.

Guaranteed interest rate of 0.25% until allotment in 18 years.

He started crying and babbled something about "inflation" and "opportunity costs".

I put a fatherly hand on his shoulder.

"Listen to me," I said gently.

"Wealth doesn't come from having more money."

"True wealth is the warm feeling that your money is safe from American turbo-capitalism in a German current account and slowly losing value."

"But it can be planned."

He finally understood.

I've never been prouder of the financial education in this country.