Vor der Landtagswahl: Kennen Sie Sachsen-Anhalt? Zehn Dinge, die man wissen sollte

When I first started investing my pocket money, my financial strategy primarily involved spending as little as possible. While my brother placed most of his money in mixed packets, I kept mine for myself. Later, all of my earnings, with a few fixed-interest exceptions, ended up in my current account. It may not come as a surprise that I grew up as a classic left-green humanities student, more interested in US political affairs than my financial affairs.

This changed when I had to reorganize my private pension last year. After all, that was the reason I had been diligently working towards in 2008, holding a degree in hand. Back then, I had taken out a pension insurance policy based on share funds, through a friend, which of course was never a good idea. Everything was supposedly very safe.

I didn't think twice and signed the papers. I dutifully filed the annual overview newsletter without scrutinizing it closely. Even a savings book would have given me more insight. The fact that I started looking at my finances more closely last year was probably due to my change of job. It is impossible to ignore one's own finances after a while.

I was 42 years old, and it turned out that after more than 15 years and over 20,000 euros in contributions, I had only made 1,000 euros' profit. Despite the share markets doing quite well during this period.