Andreas Stricker would like to be able to cover his fixed costs with his passive income at some point. Getty Images / Sean Gladwell / Andreas Stricker
Andreas Stricker is a self-employed web developer and has been building passive income sources for six years.
Last year, Stricker generated around 250 to 400 euros per month from his passive income.
“My goal is to eventually be able to cover my fixed costs, such as rent, with my passive income and have more money left over for travel,” says Andreas Stricker. The 35-year-old is a self-employed web developer and designer. At the same time, Stricker has been building up sources of passive income for around six years. “I got involved in investments for the first time in 2018.” At that time, his circle of friends made him aware of the topic of cryptocurrency.
“In 2020, my building savings contract was paid out and I was rather disappointed by the low interest rates.” That’s why he looked for ways to increase his money in other ways. That’s why Stricker started investing his money in ETFs and Bitcoin. However, these were long-term investments. In order to generate short-term income, Stricker began to build up additional sources of passive income.
From Stricker’s perspective, there are two ways to get passive income:
“Invest time to generate income later. These are, for example, advertising income via blogs, YouTube and affiliate investing money, which gradually increases. This is about investments that generate ongoing income. These can be investments in ETFs, cryptocurrencies, real estate or P2P loans.”
Last year, Stricker received 250 to 400 euros a month from his passive income sources.
The web developer relies on these passive sources of income
On the one hand, Stricker relies on so-called crowdlending platforms: “In 2021, I started investing in different P2P loans.” Loans are granted by private individuals to other private individuals. For this purpose, Stricker uses the Bondora Go & Grow and Estateguru portals, among others. Last year, Stricker was able to generate around 130 euros per month in passive income via both portals.
However, the platforms differ: “With Bondora Go & Grow you don’t know exactly what the borrower is using the money for. However, the provider invests in less risky personal loans and always pays attention to security. The invested capital is secured by the Swedish SEB Bank up to 100,000 euros and can be reclaimed even if Bondora goes bankrupt,” says Stricker.
Estateguru, on the other hand, is a platform for real estate loans. It is immediately clear which property an investment is being made for. “Most of the properties for which you can grant loans are in Estonia, Latvia, Spain, but also many other countries and also in Germany and France. The interest rate here is usually 10 to 12 percent, which I think is quite high, especially compared to ETFs.”