meinefinanziellefreiheit.com will appear in English from now on: myfinancialfreedom.blog

Switching my blog from Germany to English? Really? While this may come as a surprise to many of you, I had pondered about it move for a while. Ultimately, I want to reach an audience as broad and large as possible with my blog. I believe there is a tremendous need for fact-based, unbiased information on personal finance issues. Simply put, I want to better cater to this need in English going forward. Let me thank all of my German-speaking readers for their support to date. While I hope you will continue reading my blog also in English, I look forward to having many new readers join the community.

Today’s article will lay out my reasons for switching the language of my blog from German to English—even adding an additional, English URL to reach this blog: myfinancialfreedom.blog

So, why did I make the switch from German to English?

The primary reason to do so, is simple math. Depending on the count, there are is a maximum of 200 million German speakers in the world. By, contrast, there are somewhat over 2 billion English speakers. The potential audience of my blog is thus 10 times as big if I write in English!

Myfinancialfreedom.blog covers topics of personal finance which are of universal relevance for readers around the world, esp.:

• Gaining and maintaining control of your personal finances
• Watching out for savings opportunities
• Building and nurturing passive income streams
• Investing successfully to become financially independent or financially free

Looking at these topics, I cannot see why an Australian, Dutch or Chilean reader would have different questions. Certainly, readers from countries with less developed financial markets and banking systems might be challenged to benefit from the solutions provided in more mature markets. But than again, I would not put out the Austrian or German market out there as poster children of innovation in personal finance…Already when still writing in German I used to aim at sufficiently general articles which are relevant for readers around the world. While some articles might have catered to financial questions of German/Austrian residents (e.g., regarding the tax situation of p2p investments or regarding the change of my brokerage relationship to Flatex*, I will try to focus on the generally applicable principles in the future.

Moreover, the switch in language will also help me weave in perspectives from my professional career as a strategy consultant working for financial institutions. I had previously mentioned that banks are bad at satisfying customer needs with state of the art financial instruments. Even worse, banks have historically failed a providing top notch and unbiased advice to their customers. This situation gives ample space for disruption and will lead to significant changes in the landscape of financial institutions over the next couple of years. It remains to be seen whether this disruption will bring along improved personal finance solutions and ultimately better decisions for individuals. But as this story unfolds, I want to share my view on these exciting developments in the financial institutions market place!

Reasons why I am not making the switch from German to English

To preempt curious questions from my German speaking readers, I also want to enumerate a couple of potential reasons why I am not making the switch:

• • No, I don’t want to practice my written English – this might be a welcome side effect though 😉
  • No, I don’t plan on leaving my home country for an English speaking country any time soon – at least I don’t know of such a plan. Nevertheless, I still fondly remember the ~3 years I spent in the United States!
  • No, I don’t want to quit my current job as a strategy consultant to focus on a blog with global reach – rather, I hope to provide insightful perspectives to my readers around the world. This should be highly synergetic with my profession as it will unveil tremendous opportunities for financial institutions to better serve their customers.

What to expect from myfinancialfreedom.blog going forward?

I hope to keep some features of this blog going forward, esp. the regular publication of quality content on a regular basis. And yes, I will stick to the weekly publication of a post every week. I strongly believe that the regular publication of relevant content will continue to be the driving force behind an increasing readership. From the feedback of some of my readers I know that this regularity is highly appreciated.

Meinefinanziellefreiheit.com has featured 118 articles over the last three years. I will certainly keep these German articles online and maintain them as references also in the future. At the same time, I do not intend to translate this valuable content and just bluntly repost it in English. New articles might naturally build on previously published content. I will still aim at making new articles “stand alone” pieces of content. Gradually, I will also convert the topic pages on myfinancialfreedom.blog to English to make the blog easier to navigate for all English speakers.

Let me close this article by thanking my German readers for their support! It gave me lots of inspiration and motivation to continue with this blogging experiment as it proved that the content is appreciated and welcome. Thank you! I hope you will continue reading my blog in the future and engage in discussions (via comments or direct e-mails) just as lively as in German!

Stay tuned for new articles (in English) – some are actually already in the making!