Most personal finance stories follow a predictable arc: brilliant student, prestigious university, six-figure salary, diversified portfolio. This isn’t that story. This is about a 28-year-old who failed his way through Germany’s education system, Hauptschule at 15, repeated electrician exams, a failed GbR, a crashed e-commerce venture, and a €10,000 stock market loss, before building a clearing business that now generates €47,000 monthly revenue. The twist? He did it by knocking on doors in senior homes with handmade flyers while €2,500 in debt.
The German Education System: Where Dead Ends Begins
In Germany, your educational track at age ten often dictates your economic future. For those routed into Hauptschule (secondary general school), the path typically leads to vocational training, not university lecture halls. Our protagonist followed this script: finished Hauptschule at 15, started an electrician apprenticeship, then failed both intermediate and final exams. The system allows retakes, and he squeezed through both within two weeks, but the pattern was set.
After completing a Fachabi (technical college entrance qualification) with a retake in math, he aimed higher, studying abroad. The admission test failure in 2020 landed him not in a lecture hall, but on the assembly line at a major German automaker. Two years of monotonous factory work followed. The German employment system had done what it does efficiently: placed a square peg in its designated square hole.
The Side Hustle Graveyard: When “On the Side” Means “In the Ground”
Like many factory workers, he dreamed of escape. A GbR (partnership company) with a friend attempted e-commerce. The venture failed, not from lack of effort, but from divergent financial philosophies. He wanted growth on credit (“auf Pump kaufen wir die 1. Einle-0wn/finanz0-06. The journey to financial literacy. I have a personal finance success story from a personal finance/s/200]
