Can you tell us a bit about yourself & your story with investing?
My name is Marco Schwartz and I am an online entrepreneur, running a software company called SiteEngine, which helps other entrepreneurs build their own online businesses. About a year I started my journey as an entrepreneur, my business really took off and I was searching for ways to invest this money that was just ending up in my savings account. That’s the time where I decided I had to do something with it & I started to invest it.
What made you get interested in crowdlending?
A couple of years back, I invested most of my money in a small apartment that I planned to rent, as this was what most of the other entrepreneurs were doing when they wanted to start to invest the profits of their businesses. Even if it was working well at the start, the yield of this property was quite low (around 4%), and it required a lot of time investment on my side. After about 3 years, one tenant actually completely trashed the property and I had to invest a lot just to get it back to a good state. That completely disgusted me of investing in real estate like this, and I quickly sold the apartment.
That’s when I did some research and discovered crowdlending. I found out that you could actually invest in real estate projects (and actually all sorts of projects), along with other investors, and in a completely passive way. Moreover, most of the projects had yields above 10%, and you could invest small sums into each project, making it really easy to diversify. I was sold.
Why did you decide to start investing on Envestio?
While looking for crowdlending platforms to invest in, I quickly heard about Envestio from other investor friends. I decided to have a look, and I really liked the fact that there was a lot of projects in different fields, and with high yields, usually above 15%.
I then decided to open an account and started to invest. I really enjoyed reading the detailed descriptions of each project and split the sum that I wanted to invest in all the projects I was interested in so I could have a diversified portfolio.
What were your goals in terms of investments, and how is your portfolio doing at the moment?
My ultimate goal for my investment is to become completely financially independent – meaning having enough income coming from my investments to cover all our living expenses for me & my wife. I am still far from that, but the income from my investments already cover our basic living expenses, and that’s thanks to platforms like Envestio.
My portfolio on Envestio is doing great at the moment, and I am regularly receiving interests & repayments from the projects I invested in. I also wrote a review of Envestio where I regularly publish my results with the platform.
What features of the platform do you use the most?
I mostly use the projects page, as it allowed me to quickly see what new project I could invest in & learn more details about those projects. After that, I also spend time in the dashboard that easily allows me to see what are my returns on the platform.
If you could give one piece of advice to someone starting out with Envestio, what would it be?
I would definitely recommend diversifying your initial investment into many projects. This way, you will be able to have a portfolio composed of various projects in many fields, and also reduce the amount of risk in your portfolio.
