ivan ottinger Sometime around 2015/2016 I started thinking about securing my retirement. Since I was self-employed, the responsibility to save for the future was entirely on me.
The black hole
I realised that contributing only to the state social insurance system was almost like throwing money into a black hole — with no certainty that anything would ever come back out.
So I opened a second-pillar pension account. At least part of my contributions started flowing into an index fund, with some chance of growth …although, with hefty management fees.
Investing
As I studied more about investing and explored what was and wasn’t possible, I came across several websites and articles about the possibility of “retiring” early.
I’m putting “retiring” in quotes deliberately, since this isn’t about the traditional retirement at sixty-something — it’s more about financial independence, which you can achieve in your thirties or forties (or even sooner).
In other words, you have passive income from investments and don’t necessarily have to work (if you don’t want to).
Here are some websites, articles, and books that inspired me. I believe they’ll interest you too.
- Mr. Money Mustache
- The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement
- JL Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth
- Mad FIentist [podcast, web]
- Money Master the Game [book]
- Choose FI [podcast, web]
Once I had a reasonable grasp of the topic from English sources, I started looking for information in Slovak. There wasn’t much at the time, but I found an older Slovak site IndexFunds.sk and then Papučový Investor (a Slovak investing community).
I still remember one of the first offline meetups of Papučový Investor. We met at Sajado in Eurovea on the riverbank, sometime in the early evening. We discussed investments around a round table while stuffing ourselves with sushi.
I’ll admit that I mostly listened to what the experienced investors were talking about and tried to understand the basic terms and absorb as much information as possible. :) I had studied quite a bit of theory, but it took a while before I really got into the picture.
The first investment
Once I had a decent overview of what and how, in October 2016 I finally opened an account with broker DeGiro and sent my first €10 to the investment account¹.
If my notes are correct, the first investment was at the beginning of November 2016 and went into the VTI index ETF fund².
Over time my investment portfolio evolved, I added other funds, and I started investing regularly and passively — right up to today.
¹ Yes, that’s not a typo. I wanted to test whether I was sending money correctly. Hence the €10. :) By the way, Slovaks can no longer open a DeGiro account. If you’re also planning to invest, check out other brokers (e.g. Lynx Broker) or robo-advisors like Finax.eu.
² If you’re not into investing, this sentence probably doesn’t make much sense. That’s fine though — in this article I’m more interested in a general description of how I got into investing.
Translated from the Slovak original.