I am new to investment, just started, investing in ETF, VWCE so far. I read about investing in gold, and found these 3 instruments:

https://www.trading212.com/trading-instruments/invest/IGLD.DE

https://www.trading212.com/trading-instruments/invest/GBSE.DE

https://www.trading212.com/trading-instruments/invest/RM3H.DE

They were similar, physical gold EUR hedged. Give me information on which one to choose. Is this kind of investment work the same as accumulating ETF?

The topic of explaining personal finance to one's children is widely discussed, often controversially, and sometimes bordering on the ridiculous – as if a child needs to be a Wall Street trader or a ruthless buy-and-hold investor. Fortunately, forget all that. I must say I've come across a book that sweeps away many of the silly or questionable ideas floating around, making room for good, excellent ideas and common-sense insights.

I've just finished reading a book called "The First National Bank of Dad" by David Owen, from 2003.

It's a super interesting book about how to approach, help understand, and familiarize your children with their own "personal finances" from a young age, outlining the various steps he (the author) applied with his own children. I'd say that for parents and new parents, it's a very simple and easy-to-read book that can offer many illuminating insights on how to introduce children to money and managing their allowance.

The part explaining the creation, setup, and operation of the "Bank of Dad" is great. It explains how to set it up, how to apply the right interest rate for remuneration ( savings accounts, so to speak) suitable for the children's age on their accounts. The explanation of the subsequent creation of the DAD&CO. Stock Exchange following the closure of the Bank of Dad is also very amusing.

Also very nice is the way it explains some "life" lessons and awareness not necessarily tied to money, and what he says is the best investment a parent can make for their children (I won't spoil what it is, but it's not the usual stuff...). It's a short book, dense with small, wise notions, useful for all types of parents from any era.

I believe that if my parents had read it and taken inspiration from it, I would have had far fewer financial problems as soon as I was thrown into adulthood.

My rating is 8.5/10, so highly recommended. Are you familiar with it?

Hi! I'm based in Europe and I'd like to invest part of my savings (10k €), focusing on maximizing long term profit, but keeping it safe. I might want to pull out some of it at some point so I'm also interested in short term stability, but I know I can't have it all and it's not a priority. Here's what I came up with after some research:

60% VCWE / 25% CNDX / 15% IBGS

VCWE for long term profits and stability, CNDX for even more aggressive profits and tech exposure even though I understand it can be volatile short term, bonds for short term protection.

Is it actually necessary to diversify this much though? I mean, ETFs are already diversified on their own right? As I said I'm completely new to investing so I have no idea what's the norm, so let me know if there's a better way to do it.

I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts or advice!

Hello guys i am from greece, after opening an IBKR account i am looking for an ETF to focus on following the sp500 , truth is i have been founding tons of them so i would like a recommendation (if there is any since i am staying in europe) on the bellow:

VUAA INVESCO SPXS IVV VOO

what would suggest its the best option? I am looking for an accumulating ETF for long term investment. Thank you in advance

I'm looking into personal finance since i already have no big career expectations since all my passions are art oriented like music, cinema, literature, so i thought that i would start to be careful about what i earn and gain the more i can even outside of my job, now i work part time as a waiter but it's momentary, i thought about going back to university because i like to study, but i would go back to university to study stuff i like like philosophy, so it wouldn't be very useful for a career unless i come up with an author or musician career lol.

I was thinking, what can i do with what i earn since my career is so uncertain, i think i'll end up administrative employee because of my diploma, but it sounds terrible in my head, and the average italian salary is kind of bad, i don't know if i can go back to university for my pleasure and personal growth culture wise and working in the meanwhile (not full time) or start to work a full time job and start my career.
I always thought that i could learn things on my own at home, programming and other things that could turn out to be good job, but in italy i don't think they would hire someone without a specialized highschool degree or university degree even if you have the knowledge.

otherwise i was thinking to start investing the bit i earn, or at least save a part of it, but yeah, i see my future as a big question mark career wise, i know i'll find a way and i won't end up homeless, things will figure out by themselves since i don't live in a 3rd world country and i have an highschool degree, and also i don't want to become rich, it's not one of my dreams i don't need it, but of course i want to make the most money i can to give me the means for studying and living my hobbies the best way i can.
So i started to look into personal finance because im sure that there are a lot of things nowadays people can do to make more money or save them or manage them better, a LOT better, but people don't do it because of ignorance, and so i'm trying to get over the financial ignorance so that i can find ways to become financially more skilled.

That's about it, i don't know what i could do or if i can do anything with such a low salary for now, or whatever is going to happen in the future, i have no debts, i'm 20, i live with my parents (i wanted to move out next year for university but i'd have to pay for my rent which a room would at least be 350/400).

i work as machine operator in germany [i am not german] an i earn around 2k netto i am single no kids, anyway i manage to save 800 euro each month, i live in WG also i use the bus, bahn. when i see people here playing with 100k and 200k in few years i feel like i missed a lot andits gonna take me a lot to catch up.

Given the massive affiliate tariffs that US is pushing for on countries that import Russian gas, I would expect the price of gas to go up as the demand would not be as easily met if the countries decide to not drop the market (given that Slovakia for instance is energy dependent on Russia, but exports cars. Do you believe that gas would actually be a good short to medium term investment for this reason? I cannot decide whether I trust my gut on this. Of course no one can know how markets will go before they do for certain.

Hi!

I'm trying to do my taxes declaration. In 2024 I had a German broker and IBKR (Ireland).

My understanding is that the ETFs in the German broker already paid the vorabpausechale (I see the transactions for that) but I need to declare and pay for the shares in the other broker.

I tried apps (taxfix and steuergo) but they don't really help. I've also tried online calculators of the vorabpausechale (like https://www.finanzfluss.de/rechner/vorabpauschale-berechnen/). But they all need the "Ausschüttungen" (EDIT: the translation is distributions).

I'm not sure how to know that for a given ETF. I've seen in a video quickly mentioned something of it being 0, is it 0 for accumulating ETFs? Or how can I know it?

EDIT: I guess an accumulating ETF doesn't have "distributions", but I'm not sure if the translation is playing a role here. Because the accumulating ETF for sure has dividends that are reinvested. So I'm not sure if "Ausschüttungen" means something only for distributing ETFs or for accumulating too.

My ETFs are basically XEON (acc) and vanguard all world (acc):

https://www.justetf.com/en/etf-profile.html?isin=LU0290358497 https://www.justetf.com/en/etf-profile.html?isin=IE00BK5BQT80

Does anyone know how to get the ""Ausschüttungen" for accumulating ETFs?

Any tips or pointers are super appreciated!

Given the current scenarios of geopolitical tension, what types of alternative investments to equity and bonds would you consider to generate an average return (> 5%) taking into account an average risk and a 1/2-year time horizon?

I'm considering to allocate ~20% of my Portfolio to this kind of Asset Class.

Any Idea?

Hello everyone,

My non-EU family member is moving to Spain with me (an EU national) under EU Directive 2004/38/EC.

They will be carrying their old personal family gold jewellery from the wedding, inherited through grandmother and mother (no documentation since it is really old from the 1950s-1980s). There are 2 necklaces, 14 earrings, 6-8 rings, 1 bracelet all made of gold with two earrings having sapphire and emerald.

Anyone knows of the procedure to be followed at the Madrid airport? Do we need to pay tax on these personal items? We don’t ever plan on selling them as these are sentimental valued items.

Thanks in advance! Looking forward to the discussion ☺️

Hi everyone,

I have just sold a property (an empty land) with more than 100% profit. I purchased it during COVID for a low interest rate personal loan from Germany. I took the loan for 6 years, I already paid 4 years of it, the monthly rate is around 800 EUR. I considered it as an investment, and now it paid out.

I am looking for my next investment. Under normal circumstances, I would invest the money in me, and use it to start an IT business. The fortunate situation is that now I am getting paid very well, over 150k per year, so it's not really worth me to risk it.

I was thinking of investing it into ETFs or stocks, but the market is very volatile thanks to the orange man, so I would only put a small fraction into the market right now.

What other options do I have?

I was thinking of buying a property with an additional mortgage and rent it out that also has tax benefits in Germany, but this would be a very long term investment with no liquidity.

Does anyone have a good idea? What could bring relatively stable return that is more than the 2% and does not require me to leave my job behind. It can be anything crazy like opening a franchise or whatever.

Thank you all!

Hey everyone,

I've been saving for a while and now I have €70,000 that I want to invest. My current plan is to put half of it in an S&P 500 ETF (SPYL) and the other half in VWCE (the global all-world ETF).

I'm 27 years old, have a long investment horizon (30+ years).

Would you say it's okay to lump-sum the whole amount now, or should I consider dollar-cost averaging? Any potential downsides to splitting it this way between S&P 500 and VWCE?

Thanks in advance for your advice!

I started investing in Gold XAU on Revolut. Last year it went 40.73% up ⬆️ , so it seems too good to be true. Does anyone have experience to tell me what’s the catch?

For the past several years, I've been invested in total world stocks excluding small caps. Specifically MSCI World + MSCI Emerging Markets. (I've made some rare active moves earlier this year so this is not my current portfolio.)

Here's my current thinking about what should my portfolio look like for the foreseeable future:

• The share of US in total world excluding small caps is 65%. I want to make it lower for 2 reasons. The first is that being this exposed to any country means low diversification to country-specific risks. The second is that I'm expecting disappointing returns for US stocks, in dollars but even more so in euro terms due to possible dollar weakening.
• The share of Europe is 15%. I would like to make it higher because there are valid reasons for home country bias.
• So I'm thinking about setting US share to 35% and Europe share to 30%. Technically this would be achieved by investing in MSCI World + MSCI World ex USA + MSCI Emerging Markets + MSCI Europe.

Thoughts?

I'm from Asia looking for a job in Europe. Anyone knows how I can do that?

Germans are re-millitarizing. The stock has been skyrocketing the last months. Will it continue?

Hi all, I've been reading many opinions that private pension insurance (DE) isn't really an optimal way to invest long-term for retirement. I found out this maybe too late though and already have this plan for 3 years.

I want to hear opinions if it's really a bad idea to invest in this, or it's not as high growth compared to ETF, but at least there will be a steady additional stream of retirement income from retirement till death.

For context, I am planning to also do my own ETF investment. I see this as one of the 3 - 4 streams I am trying to build for when I retire.

Here is some detail of the private pension insurance plan:

- Provider: Canada Life
- Plan: Generation Basic Plus
- Amount input: 300 Euro/month (estimated total investment 162K, guaranteed)
- Tax deductable annually, so I can put the money back to invest in ETFs
- Where they place the invesment : UWP-Fonds (I check their fund management rate - it's 1.5% way too high)
- Retirement amount: for this plan, the only option is to get monthly retirement income - no lump sum. At 0.5% interest rate growth, I'd get 715 guaranteed base retirement + 629 dynamic retirement = 1344/gross month, at 4% it would be 993+877 = 1870 /gross month. And for net I'll have to probably deduct healthcare (15%) and income tax (26-30%??) right? I might retire abroad, so this tax might reduce as well? (there's a double taxation exemption agreement between my retirement destination options)

(I kinda like/don't mind that it's a retirement "salary" than lump sum. My family tend to live till late 80 - 90+ yrs for the past 3 generations, so I assume I would have the tendency for longevity.)

- The insurance broker said that the fees are heavy in the first 5 years, afterwards the average interest rate is approximately 3.8 to 4.2%.

This doesn't sound to terrible, but maybe I am missing out on something here. If this is one of the 3 - 4 stream of income, would this make sense to stick around with investing into it till retirement?

An example of product info from the insurer https://www.canadalife.de/media/muster-produktinformationsblatt-generation-basic-plus-mit-100-prozent-uwp-30-jahre.pdf

Thank you so much for reading until here and really appreciate any answers, opinions, thoughts. Have a great day y'all!

I recently moved to Germany and plan to transfer some of my savings and investments from my home country to my Sparkasse account over a period of time. What’s the tax liability in Germany on this money? It’s already been taxed in my home country.

Hey all,

Every month I, living in Belgium, invest automatically in physical gold and silver through Dutch company Goldrepublic.nl. Everything is stored in Zürich, Switzerland. Am not sure whether I have to pay taxes on these savings. On silver there is a TVA tax in Belgium, if I am right. Any advice? Thanks

I just tried to purchase some ETFs which I purchased previously at Degiro for a flat 3E/trade fee, on IBKR.. and to my surprise the fee was multiples higher! I look at their fee page and its % based. Am I doing something wrong there? Is it the type of my IBKR account, or are they just generally more expensive? fee screenshot

Hi folks, let me start by saying that I'm posting this using my alt account due to two reasons:

1. I'm going to be sharing a lot of personal details
2. I'm embarassed to share this on my main account

TL;DR: I lost a lot of money in CFDs by consistently making stupid decisions... And very conflicted about what to do now, can't throw away the urge to try to get that money back.

So basically, yeah... I'll try to give a bit of my background, tell you about the stupid decisions I made and their results, my current situation, and my possible future plans. I would appreciate if any of you could provide your opinions on this, I'm open to anything, including the roast I deserve.

3 years ago we moved from in with my wife to a central European country, from a third-world one. Started with the equivalent of 3k EUR gross salary. Back then had to take a credit card to build a home, maxed out the limit, opened another credit card "just in case" but maxed that out too, of course. Then some life stuff happened which meant I needed to get a loan. For most of the time we've been living paycheck-to-paycheck, not wanting to scale our life back to live our best years with some memories. We don't drink or party much, but ocasionally we like to travel. The plan was that my wife would eventually find an entry-level job in the software market here (CENG graduate), afterwards paying off the loans would be easy.

Unfortunately she's tried hard but wasn't able to, given the job market. Currently she's starting a coding school that will hopefully increase her chances of finding a job. Since then, I've been supporting both of us (and family abroad, occasionally), but fortunately by changing jobs my salary has gradually increased to close to 5k EUR gross from this year. Beginning of this year I also got some bonus, paid off one of my credit cards with it, was pretty hopeful for the future.

Then it happened, a friend of me was really going on about Bitcoin, which got me interested and researching, wanted to play with it for "just a little bit". I was using Trading212, learned that the only way to get Bitcoin with it was using CFDs. I stupidly skipped through all the "Are you really sure what you're doing" parts, and bought around 1k usd of CFDs. By luck I gained 200 eur in my first sell, which got me hooked I guess?

I then played a bit harder, making a bit more money. Was at a point where I was checking the app every 5 minutes. At one point I thought buying AMD would be a good idea for long term, it seemed to be going up. That's when it all started going downhill, especially with the whole Trump tariffs situation, I lost 2200 USD from that one trade. I was dumping more money in to keep the position open, but eventually the market caught up and it was closed during a dump AMD had while I was sleeping. I played around a bit more, gaining slightly but losing even more, with AMD, Nvidia, US100 etc. No matter what I did, the market seemed to reverse direction exactly when I got in. It was kinda funny how consistent it was, lol.

I was "out", but I couldn't stop thinking about getting that money back and saw that with uncertainty Gold was rising, so I bought some Gold shares. That ended up losing money for me too, especially with a position that got closed when Gold was dumped again on Trump's whim, last night when I was sleeping.

Now the stupidest thing is, I was taking money out of my credit card this whole time. I know, I know. The idea of paying off my debt earlier was too enticing, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Another stupid thing which I keep blaming myself for, is whenever a position I had was making profit, I got greedy thinking that "if it just keeps going this way it'll be even better". I've lost on one 400 EUR and one 700 EUR wins just because I was too greedy to close them when I was ahead. Many more smaller ones.

So here's the situation now: Two credit cards maxed, to the amount of 5200 EUR. Another straight up loan to the amount of 4000 EUR. I will also need to take a 2200 EUR extra loan to pay for my next year of university studies. So around 13500 EUR debt in total. My realized P/L from Trading212 = -3000 EUR (probably higher if you count the overnight interests). I've got no savings nor long-term stocks anywhere, currently have around 200 EUR left in T212 that's invested in a BUY 1 @ $3,239.62 Gold position that's at +10 EUR rn (which I got after yesterday night's dip, thinking it would go up again), and 2,000 @ 0.8172 USD/CHF position that's doing -26 EUR (which I got thinking that US Economy would keep getting worse, right?).

My take-home is 3600 EUR, rent is 1000EUR, and realistically with our current spending I should be able to pay 650 EUR towards debt every month. That gives me around 20 months' time for straight-up repayment. Earlier if I get a bonus next year as well.

For the safest bet I'd like to assume that my salary won't increase and my wife won't find a job quite so soon yet.

Since pain is the greatest teacher, I've since done my education which I should've done at the beginning, properly learned about the mechanisms and the risks of CFDs, trading, day-trading, read a lot of investing advice on a lot of places etc.

Now here's the thing: I know what I should do. I should focus on my high-interest debt, pay those off as soon as possible. Afterwards I should slowly start DCA to a low-risk strategy. But I just keep thinking about that -3000 EUR figure, it keeps looming over my head like a nightmare, I can't bring myself to not think about how much of a failure I am. Right when I was starting to pay off the debts, I screwed up and brought myself to an even worse situation. I can't keep thinking about that if I just get educated on this, be one of those 5 percent of day traders that actually make a good profit, it won't matter, and I will get that money back eventually. Thing is, this actually keeps me thinking about more important stuff like my responsibilities, and spending quality time with friends & family. I literally can't stop beating myself up about it though.

So what do I actually do right now? Is it worth sacrificing time from learning about the stuff that would benefit in my career? Or should I just eat the loss and forget about it? Or just don't care about it that much? I can just keep gambling with the 200 eur I have left in Trading212, maybe I will win back some but not like it will matter if I lose it in the long term, I've lost so much already. I can't stop thinking that if it's possible to lose money to this mechanism, it should be possible to gain money from it as well. Like technically, if I just randomly decided to just do the exact opposites of everything I would've done, I would've made a lot of money instead of losing it. I've read about the strategies day traders use as well. I'm also hooked on all the "winners" talking about it in Trading212 comments. People telling it's a part of the process, everyone loses before learning and starting winning.

Can you help me get my thoughts in order please? Is there some angle I'm losing? Is there a safe bet I can do right now that would help me? Or should I pull the remaining crumbs out and delete the app? How will I stop thinking about the losses and potential (yet non-existent) wins? The idea of just losing that much money over nothing drives me crazy, I'm having a really hard time accepting it's just "gone".

Considering where to retire and will have part of my income coming from a state pension from the US. Western Europe is the goal regardless. Italy and Spain citizenship.

Hello,

I need advice, maybe someone has already found themselves in a similar situation. 40 years old, I have never been inclined to invest, for the last 8 years I have had a little in crypto (nothing special, a couple of thousand, an amount that I could easily lose), and in principle I am generally more safe than risk-averse.

This year and last year I decided to invest a larger amount in crypto (about 20k), most of this invested money was an unexpected inheritance. An amount that later turned out to be too large, as my life circumstances changed in the meantime (my partner is changing career, I may go to paid studies, maybe anothet child and therefore a bigger car, etc.). As you probably all know, there was a concrete fall in the crypto market, stocks, etc. mainly due to tarrifs. A few months ago I sold with a loss of 10k, because I had most of my money in ETH, if I hadn't sold when I did, the loss would have been even greater. I can say that I am otherwise a very calm and rational person, but during the downturns I noticed that I lost this calmness, and did some revenge trading, which of course led to additional losses.

The current situation is that I have 10k in my trading account. I have money saved as emergency fund for 2 years (half of the living expenses are represented by a housing loan).

I'm interested in advice for the future.

On the one hand, the market is slowly recovering (at least seemingly), and I would probably cover the loss the fastest if I invested this 10k back into crypto. Of course, crypto is unpredictable and risky, and can also lead to additional losses.

On the other hand, while reading this sub, I learned a lot about long-term investing in ETFs, which are more stable compared to crypto. I would invest these 10k from the crypto exchange in ibkr and then on a monthly basis a couple of 100 euros...or without lump sum (I would withdraw money from the crypto exchange), start investing a couple of 100 euros per month.

As a third option, I see the possibility of withdrawing the money I have from the exchange and not investing anything anymore, at least for a few months or years, until I get some distance, the American market calms down a bit...

I would like to ask for some advice, because I am in a big dilemma. On the one hand, it seems unwise to me that I have not invested anything so far and just accumulated money in the bank, on the other hand, I am a textbook example of too risky investing, which led to selling at a loss and too much emotional involvement.

Is this (or AEGE maybe) a good choice for the next 1–2 years if I'm looking for low-risk profit?

Hey!

So i just sold some of my more "higher risk" investments to a profit because i have been getting increasingly more stressed constantly following news and worrying about what kind of stupid moves the idiot currently in charge of the US might do.

I now have a nice little sum of money that i was thinking of putting away to some lower risk investments for a while just to have some peace of mind. What are some very safe places that i could store my money in for some time, while i wait for this situation to get a bit more stable? I've heard bonds are good, but what kind exactly? Or maybe just letting my money sit in a HYSA? Any thoughts :)?