Starting the Journey

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Hello all!

Let's start this blog by talking some background information about why I started to write this blog. I am 27 year old male from Finland. Few years ago, when I was studying in University, me and few of my friends started to talk about investing. At first, I was skeptical about the possibility to buy stocks. I was just a poor student, taking benefits from the State. 

As I mentioned, I live in Finland, where we have a classic Scandinavian welfare state. Most likely that does not say anything to people, who are not from Northern Europe. In short, it means big government, huge taxes and large welfare sector. Anyway, I was enjoying my tuition free university education, getting monthly check from the State to fund my living and food expenses, when I realized that actually, even with the tax burden of Finland and very modest paychecks from State (~560 eur net), I was able to save money. On top of that, I could take state backed student loan with interest rate of 1.5%, which is tax deductible. 

So, I decided to take a small gamble and start saving as much money as I could, take student loans and start slow process of getting rich. At first, I had to form up a strategy. I will talk more about strategies on follow up posts, but to be short, I ended up with passive index investing strategy. I also had to set up a goal, which formed into having the possibility to retire 10 years earlier, debt free. In real life, it just means that my investing horizon is very long term (30+ years).

I ended up buying my first index funds 3 years ago, just before Euro crisis took my investments into hefty 30% downfall. At that time, I was close to graduation with Master's degree in Economics, with technical major studies. 

Things took an unexpected turn, when my dad passed away. That event just destroyed my motivation to finish my studies, and of course, I was afraid that if I would get into some kind of financial trouble, I wouldn't have both of my parents here to help me. I decided to look for a job market. In spring 2012, I started working full time as a programmer for a small company located in Central Finland. That deal didn't last too long, because after 5 months, company ran into financial hardship and they had to fire 20% of their developer staff. Luckily, I was able to bounce back fast: just after a month of unemployment, I managed to get a year contract working for the government.

I represent an average Finnish male worker, with net income (after taxes and other fees) about 2000 EUR. After that, I have to pay my living, food, gas, car, phone and other running costs, which leave me a margin of 200-400 EUR a month for investing. 

This gives some background to this blog, a journey to the unknown, a story about person trying to beat the odds and get rich slowly in a country, which has one of the heaviest tax policies in the world. With 30% tax on capital gains, odds are against me, but for last 3 years, I've proven myself that using my strategy, you might have a chance to get richer. And, even if you do not get rich, you will have more money saved, than what you would have by just spending it on unnecessary things.

So, this is about enjoying of not spending.