My interest in the economics and to make money, I have had for as long as I can remember. As for most it is a tug-of-war between fear and desire or attraction. The fear stems from economic uncertainty I experienced when my father suddenly passed away when I was 13 years old. Mom was worried about whether we could live there, and it was generally a hassle. In conversations with the coaches I have come to the conclusion that I then decided to never end up in a financial insecurity. I didn’t want to have to worry about money. Ever again. In parallel with this, I also have a desire and an attraction to freedom, opportunities and to be creative and get creating. I have a strong desire to get to decide for yourself, not to be dependent and choose do fun things with people I like.
These driving forces and a desire to help others, has done for the past 20 years to an exciting journey of personal finance. 2007 I started documenting it in the blog, and then also in 2017 RikaTillsammans-podcast with my wife Caroline. The interest to make money and save money doing that I today have opportunities that I didn’t have before. But on the way here, I’ve probably done basically all the mistakes you can make. I have lost most of my money twice — once during the dot-com bubble of 2000 and once during the financial crisis of 2008. I remember that my mentor told me then:
Jan, it’s no wonder. When a person with money hits a person with experience is always the same thing. The person with the money, the experience and the person with the experience gets the money. My then mentor Claes-Erik N.
Rather than decide that the stock exchange was a shithole and that shares and funds was not something for me, I read every economics book I got hold of. First was surprised, since I was a little shocked and eventually I became angry. I suddenly realized that much of what I had learned, hold for true or what banks and financial industry tells us that making money and saving money, there were simply not.
It wasn’t even about having different opinions, it was in many cases on concrete facts and probabilities. There was simply no scientific or statistical evidence for many of the statements you tossed out with. I realized that there are many who make money on you and I spend more time on brushing your teeth than to think about and manage our personal finances. Actually it is nothing strange, a bank’s task is to make money for themselves and their shareholders, not to us customers. No matter how good the Advisor to a bank is, teach hen does not recommend a competitor’s products or services.