Dear Readers! We are happy to launch our new Lendermarket Stars series here on the blog, where you can read about the Lendermarket investors’ experiences and different investment philosophies of financial bloggers and influencers.
Recently we interviewed Lars Wrobbel, a financial blogger and entrepreneur from Germany.
Tell us about yourself and your background.
I did an education as a programmer as a start into my career at that time. However, this job was far too boring for me, so I switched to IT project management a few years later. When that also became too boring, I realised that I had to set myself challenges and so in 2012 I started my own business in the field of self-publishing and online marketing. Since 2017, I have been doing both full-time and am financially independent.
What were your goals when you started?
My goal at the beginning was quite simple. I wanted to be financially independent by the time I reached 40. However, I achieved this much earlier (at 33).
Do you recommend others to invest?
I try to restrain myself with recommendations of any kind. You can rarely force people to be happy. Ultimately, however, I am of course of the opinion that everyone should invest. And as early as possible. You don’t have to make rocket science out of this, a simple automated investment plan at the beginning is perfectly sufficient.
Any advice on how to invest?
At the beginning, I would concentrate fully on the stock market with a simple and broad diversification. A savings plan on an MSCI World and one on the emerging markets with a distribution of 70/30. Later, you can think about investing in other things as well. For example, in P2P loans!
Do you think Germans invest differently to other Europeans? If so, how and why?
I think we Germans are much more cautious. Not necessarily in terms of risk, but in terms of taxes 🙂 When we invest, we usually want to know first how the whole thing will be taxed. That’s no joke! That’s why P2P platforms that withhold tax (e.g. from Lithuania) have a hard time in the German community.
You can check out Lars’ blog here.
Would you like to be featured in the Lendermarket Star series? Drop us an email to [email protected] today!