2020 started for me with a net worth a bit over €50 000, of which about 20k was relatively liquid. I thought I had been a rather good investor for some years already. Though, deep down I knew it wasn't true. I hadn't been properly tracking progress. In blogs, people often listed their passive income and its growth over time. I wanted that, too. To be able to say when you can support yourself through investing alone. I doubted I had any passive income. Yes, the 10k invested in Interactive Brokers did produce some dividends now and then but the $10 monthly account fee was taken more reliably. Account fee was not tax-deductible in my case, so, taxes ate up even more of the profit. I decided to close the account by end-of-year 2020 and only come back if I could do it from under a company and with larger sums. There was no rush and I ended up receiving the last of my money in November. I've had less than positive experiences with P2P lending in the past but was ready to get ba...
In August 2016, my father said he had started using Bondora after reading an article of how some guy's teenage daughter puts 5€ from every allowance she gets there. I had heard of Mintos, Bondora (no link as I wish you well) and maybe some more platforms but the whole field seemed a bit sketchy as P2P lending was and is not an old and respected way of investing. At the time, it was even more fresh, most platforms that existed were not even two years old yet. Most platforms we have today, had not been founded. As recommended by fatherly authority, I decided to try Bondora out. I also trusted it more than Mintos just because it is an Estonian company and Mintos is Latvian. No real research was involved but I remembered that Latvian economy did not do well in The Great Recession some years earlier. The thing about Bondora's interface was, and probably still is, that it shows you prominently how much exactly you could earn from a loan if the interest was truly paid fully an...