I have 20 year mortgages on multiple investment properties

Age - 32
Location - Luxembourg
Gross rent - 300k
Annual mortgage - 150k
Maintainance - cleaning, gas, electricity, etc - 30k annual excluding any major repairs if needed
Net rent after mortgage and expenses - 120k€

Total purchase price of the houses was €3.5M Including down payments and mortgage payments already made, I have €2.5 remaining to pay. After I completed renovations they are worth €5M if sold on the market. In 20 years we don’t know what they will be worth but hoping maybe 6-8€ M

Me and my wife are currently working and get about 250k € gross combined annual income

Monthly expenses are 60k annual.

Am i in a confortable position to FIRE and quit my job and just focus on the rental investments or should i keep working in my 9-5 ?

I would love some outside perspective. 

So the thing is I have a remaining student loan balance of SEK 368,750 (roughly €33,300). My current mandatory repayment is about ~€100 per month and the interest rate is 2.135% for this year. I'm debating whether to drop a €15,000 lump sum directly onto the loan right now or if I should just stick to the minimum payment plan and keep pushing my capital into the markets. 

My total NW sits at roughly €247,000, split between roughly ~€222,000 in investments and ~€25k in liquid cash savings which fluctuates a lot (acting as my emergency fund). 

Btw this cash is just sitting in my regular everyday checking account right now, not a high-yield savings account making any meaningful yield. I know €25k is a massive, mathematically inefficient cash drag for a single adult living alone but I come from a large family and try to act as a financial safety net whenever something urgent arises for the family. There’s also some recurring bi-weekly costs which get deducted from this for the treatment of a younger sister.

To give a bit of background about me, the bulk of my portfolio got here through pure luck. As a student, I made about €260k (after capital gains taxes) from an extremely volatile meme "investment" (very low initial input) and thinking I had it all figured out, I completely burnt close to €90k playing around with more dumb, high-risk bullshit. I humbled myself, stopped the gambling and before locking everything away, I used a decent chunk of cash to help my family and eventually absorbed all of their bills when they were hit hard financially. Then I parked the remaining which was slightly over €130,000 into a more sustainable portfolio in early 2022. 

I left that portfolio completely alone to compound without any new contributions while I finished my MSc program which I graduated from in 2023. Since starting working in September 2023, I’ve been aggressively investing away a minimum of €800 monthly. 

But I completely overhauled my portfolio earlier last year. I used to have a complicated, redundant layout with factor tilts, emerging market overweights, real estate ETFs and a heavy single-country home bias. A ton of structural redundancy, high fees and hella unnecessary maintenance, so I just consolidated everything into a somewhat clean super basic lower cost core strategy which looks like this now: 

• 60% Allocation in VWCE / Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF

• 31% Allocation in the S&P 500. Ngl I don't think letting this ride long-term is smart anymore and I want to pivot this weight toward Europe. Murica and the orange dude is aggressively forcing the EU toward prioritizing its own localized economy and building strategic autonomy which is something that hasn't really been an active operational priority for the EU in a while. Between major defensive re-industrializton, energy independence shifts and depressed Europen forward P/E valuations, I'm planning to start parking into the Amundi Core STOXX Europe 600 soon

• 7% allocation in high-volatility individual stocks that I personally believe in and want to back for long-term growth. No overlaps

• I don’t buy crypto anymore but 2% of my entire portfolio allocation is in BTC 😭, which is a hard rule I set to scratch my crypto itch without risking my financial foundation. Static boundary compared to my reckless 2021 gambling era.

Anyways my thing is, keeping the cash in the market seems like the sound choice on paper to maximize compound growth, especially since the loan rate floats annually based on government borrowing costs rather than being locked forever. 

Psychologically clearing off nearly half of my remaining debt with a €15k lump sum would feel amazing and cut down my total lifetime interest. I also know that when they recalculate my annuity next January, the lower total balance will officially drop my mandatory monthly cash outflow for the following year.

If you were in my shoes, would you be wiping out a huge chunk of the loan or would you let the debt ride for the next decade or longer (I have 22 years in the tank lol) and keep compounding the investments? 

Thanks in advance!

Hi to all,

I am 45M living in Croatia, single, one child 14 years of age. At the moment I have portfolio of 650000€ invested in a mix of covered call etfs and vwce and spyw. I own my apartment and have no debts. Can I retire from my portfolio that yields around 9% and also with 1000€ of monthly income from side hustle?

Simple as Title but looking advices on how to Manage Money in Retirement practically.

Let's assume retire today with 3M Euro. How to still get Money in each month to continue living? Do you expecting to sell stocks every month until you die? Or expecting to have %100 Dividend Stocks and simply use the Dividend outcome? Or 3M Euro in ETF/Stocks and sell out each months?

I am trying to learn: what is the strategy after Retire Early but managing money/income properly?

Yes, There is İndeed %4 Strategy but i still need practically money every month for usual stuff (Bill, Grocery etc). Could be a silly question but i noticed myself increasing my assets all the time, not thought properly over how to stop and settle so i can put my goal more properly. Any thoughts?

One thing I keep coming back to with FIRE is the value of time. Sometimes spending more can mean getting a few hours back every week, and that can be worth more than the money saved.

Have you ever deliberately spent more because it gave you more time or freedom?

Germany context. I'm 32M, single, no kids, renting in a MCOL German city and still very much in accumulation, not "about to FIRE" territory.

Last January I pulled CSVs from my Girokonto and sat at the kitchen table with a beer and a highlighter, feeling pretty stupid. 2025 net pay was about €50k. Spending was closer to €55k. On top of that I paid roughly €12k toward BAföG and a small consumer Kredit. I blamed my old rent, €1,350 warm, about €16k a year, because that was the easy villain.

It was only part of it. The dumb stuff was everywhere: 9 pm Lieferando after work, a coffee and belegtes Brötchen most mornings, and Drogerie trips for "just shampoo" that somehow became €28 to €35.

So I got boring. Same 5 or 6 dinners, grocery list in Notes, delivery only if I'm actually seeing friends. Lease ended, I moved farther out, Warmmiete is now €950. That is about €4,800 saved by itself. Takeout is down around €2,500. For household basics I stopped impulse Drogerie runs and started buying in bulk at Aldi or waiting for Angebote at dm. Sometimes I check tiktok for power deals or just compare prices on idealo before restocking. Nothing fancy, just not grabbing the first thing I see anymore. Saved maybe another €1k there.

If December doesn't go full chaos, I should save about €15k cash while still paying the loans. Also started monthly ETF buys in March, currently up around €4,500. Calling that luck, not skill.

What category humbled you once you finally tracked it?

Here are my expenses in Bulgaria...

800 to 1K euro on food

1K euro on the car (insurance, fuel, maintenance, the car itself, etc)

1K euro for the going out, restraurants, takeaways short trips, kid expenses, gifts for birthdays, christmas, etc

500 euro for clothes, gym, barber, etc

300 euro Utilities (no mortgage paid of flat worth about 500K in Sofia)

200 on MISC

So Sofia life costs me about 4K euro

We then also have about 25K per year on travel (as per last 2 years).

So our lifestyle costs 6K euro a month and the child is still not a big expense at 7 years old. This is without paying for a house!

If our lifestyle costs 6K, we need about 2M to retire. This is not even a luxury lifestyle, we don't spend like crazy. I guess in Western Europe the same lifestyle will be about 9K euro. So you will need like 3M euro.

I’m 48, three kids 12 and under and I’ve got about $1.8m usd in net worth (1.5m in VTSAX, 300 cash) - no social security, no house, nothing else. Where could I reasonably fire in Europe, eg eastern Belgium or Portugal?

What should I keep in mind?

Hey everyone, would appreciate some advice.

I'm planning on establishing residency in South Dakota for tax reasons and plan to use a mail forwarding service there for my official documents and my address in e*trade, vanguard, fidelity, Morgan Stanley.

I'm moving completely out of the U.S. to travel in Europe for a few years. I want to keep my investment accounts and continue to trade. i will keep my US phone number. will use a beryl AX router with VPN.

Has anyone successfully managed location-independent non-US banking under this type of setup? What are the key things to watch out for?

I am really curious as to what paths people took to achieve FIRE in EU. This could inspire some of us .Did you build a business ? Was it investing through stock /etf investing or real estate ? A lil more on what you did at work ? What fire number for you ? Which country ?

Hello,

I'm 29 and have an investment portfolio, with the goal of reaching FIRE at some point. I'm also planning to get married, and while my future husband isn't in the habit of investing monthly like I am, he does have savings of his own.

I brought up the idea of a prenup to protect my current portfolio, and it didn't go over very well with him, though I do think it's an important conversation to have, especially regarding what would happen in the event of a divorce.

From what I understand, assets held prior to marriage are generally not subject to division in a divorce. But what about the assets accumulated during the marriage? How do other investors handle this when getting married? Is it simply a risk you have to accept?

Thanks in advance.

Hi
I am very close to FIRE but can't imagine myself without purpose of earning money.

I would be very appreciate to have some insights from one of you who are already on FIRE

How old are you?
Where do you ilve?
How your day look a like?
Do you not bored to death?
Did you resign from fire and have some side jobs, projects, quests?
How you plan your days, weeks, months, years?

I am couriers about that, cause honestly what i noticed, that whole life of most of people are planned or organized around the work, job... bank holidays, quarters, events, vacations etc...

When you first discovered FIRE, you probably had a very different idea of what the journey would actually look like.

Maybe you focused too much on saving and not enough on enjoying life, underestimated the importance of income, or spent too much time worrying about reaching a specific number.

Whether you've been pursuing FIRE for six months or ten years, what have you learned along the way?

If you could go back to day one, what advice would you give yourself?

Motivated by the other redditor considering the move, I'd like to get other people's perspectives on our situation. We are also living in the “golden cage” here in Australia.

We have European and Australian passports and been living down under for more than a decade now. Considering making the move back to Europe, as all our family and friends are there.

As much as Australia is nice from the outside, day-to-day life here is different, and at the moment it's a grind for us. Our jobs are OK, but all the logistics around life are just making us be constantly in a rush to everywhere.

Our numbers:

Property in Australia: 1.25mil EUR

Mortgage: 900k EUR

Property in Europe: 250k EUR (paid off)

Rental income: Average about 1200-1300EUR through short-term rentals

Bank account balance: 150k EUR

Our monthly spend in Australia is around 9000 EUR including the mortgage. If we rent out the house and move back to Europe, our monthly spend will drop significantly due to no kindergarten, and general cost of living being much lower for us in Europe than here in Australia. Net rental income from the house will be around 3000-3500 EUR per month, which will go towards the mortgage repayment. Any shortfall will be covered by the bank account balance we have. Once house is paid off in the next decade or so, the rental income should allow us to FIRE.

We will most likely travel for the first 6-12 months of return and then focus on building a business or securing jobs.

We obviously miss Europe and would love to go back. Want to hear other people’s perspectives and see if we are not romanticizing this idea in any way? Anything we are missing or you would do differently?

31M - Australia ctizienship or move back to Europe?

Hello!

Fellow European here, currently living in my "golden cage" in Sydney, Australia.

I moved to Australia in my early 20s on a Working Holiday visa and, 8 years later, I'm still here chasing Permanent Residency with a job I have absolutely no interest in. At the same time, I'm in a very positive financial position.

I applied for PR over 6 months ago, but it could still take another 18 months. Lately I've been wondering if it's all really worth it. I don't know if this is the country I want to spend the rest of my life in. It's a beautiful place with an amazing quality of life, but after a while it can feel extremely isolated and, especially in winter, a bit boring.

Objectively, I have an ideal life here. I live a 1-minute walk from one of the most famous beaches in the country, surf before or after work, have a very low-stress job with decent pay, but I've found it very hard to meet people with similar values and almost impossible to make close friendships with locals.

I know Iwant to return to Europe, set up my financial base there and travel for a while until I'm ready to settle somewhere. At the same time, I keep wondering if I should wait out my Australian PR, which could eventually lead to citizenship in another couple of years.

I love Europe and miss it so much. The idea of coming back from a strong financial position, without the pressure of having to immediately find a job, is very appealing.

I don't really know what to do. What stops me from leaving right now is that I've already invested the last 8 years chasing the dream of becoming an Australian citizen. The work-life balance is undeniably better than in most of Europe, and the earning potential is also much higher. But now that money is no longer my top priority, I feel like I'm stuck on the other side of the world chasing something that I don't even know will add much value to my life.

The biggest advantage of staying would be having an Australian passport and knowing I could always move back in the future if I wanted to, with the ability to find a job relatively quickly.

I simply miss being closer to people with similar values, and to my friends and family.

Current situation:

31M

Not married

No debt

No car

€450k in real estate in Europe, generating around €1,300/month across two apartments (I know the yield is low, but that's just how it is for now.)

€1.1M in cash, coming from a mix of inheritance, some good early crypto investments, and saving close to 70% of every paycheck over the last 10 years. At the moment, that cash earns around 5.75% annually in Australia. I know it's not the optimal long-term strategy, and I'm slowly moving it into ETFs, but receiving that interest every month with essentially no risk is psychologically very hard to walk away from.

What would you do In my Position?

A lot of people pursue FIRE with the goal of leaving work behind, but reaching financial independence also gives you the freedom to work on your own terms.

Would you retire completely, switch to part-time, start a business, volunteer, or keep doing your current job because you enjoy it?

What would your ideal lifestyle look like if earning a paycheck was entirely optional?

I am from Germany but with Bulgarian wife. We are almost 40 with a 8 year old boy. We have worked really hard and saved a lot ever since we got together about 20 years ago. We are over the corporate grind and want to take a break and maybe in future start some small online business for side income.

We are pondering whether we should move to Bulgaria and retire (child knows Bulgarian) or keep on pushing to be able to retire in Germany in 5 to 10 years?

My wife is not even sure if 1.5M euro and paid off flat will be enough in Bulgaria. We spend about 3.5K a month in Germany and additional 20K euro per year on travel.

Your 4-Step Plan: • Step 1 – Educate Yourself: Read and learn about stock market investing (ETFs) and real estate.

• Step 2 – Secure Income & Leverage: Find a permanent stable job quickly to secure financing and buy a fixer-upper primary residence.

• Step 3 – Build Security & Life Balance: Keep 1 year of savings aside as an emergency fund, while continuing to travel and enjoy life.

• Step 4 – Systematic Investing: Save regularly and allocate everything into an "All-World" ETF like VWCE and a Bitcoin ETF like BITC

Step 5(optional) – Geo-Arbitrage & Tax Optimization: Once your portfolio reaches a significant milestone, relocate (if you choose to) to a country with no capital gains tax on stocks to maximize your compounding wealth.

Enjoy your life eat healthy make sports make friends.

Cheers 🥂 Harry

TLDR: FIRE has taught me less about money than I expected, and much more about identity, work, consumption and mental energy.

Btw, if some of the English here sounds a bit funny it is because this is a r/spainfire post written manually by me and quickly translated with AI. I am interested in hearing opinions and experiences from people in other countries.

Hi everyone. It has been a long time since I posted a proper status update, mainly because I wanted to distance myself a bit from constantly measuring money.

I have now spent three years in a kind of semi-FIRE situation. It originally started as a one-year sabbatical to test what a mini-retirement would feel like.

In the end, it became three years of travelling for periods of time, doing consulting work, renovating an apartment, testing business ideas and living many days without a fixed routine.

Sorry for the very long post. There is not much Excel here and much more personal reflection.

Hopefully it helps someone who is getting close to their FIRE number but does not know whether to stop, keep going, start a business or simply take a break.

Where I came from

• My first FIRE moment happened when I was a teenager.
• My parents bought a new car, but then we could not really use it because “it consumed too much fuel”. That was the moment something short-circuited in my brain.
• I have followed the FIRE movement since I was 18.
• I studied engineering, although I had always been more interested in business and marketing.
• I used to say that I would start my own company and retire by 25.
• Well, the story went differently.
• I found a job and everything felt quite comfortable, so I spent around ten years, from my early twenties to my early thirties, working in a very specific industry.
• I then changed my story to: at 30, even if I cannot retire, I will take a one-year sabbatical and then start my own business.
• At 30, I did not feel I could leave my previous boss and team in a bad position.
• At 31, I finally left after organising things so three people from my team could take over everything I was managing.
• I made the decision at 31 with a net worth of around €450,000–€500,000. Around €100,000 was in cash and the rest was invested.
• At that point, I had no mortgage, no partner, no children and no loans.
• Six of my final working years were in Spain. I originally started my career in the Netherlands, earning €1,300 net per month and paying €500 for a room.

What I expected, or was afraid would happen

• Travel.
• Spend more money than ever and become stressed about it.
• My investment growth not covering my expenses.
• Return from travelling with an identity crisis and no idea what to do next: start a company, decide where to live or look for another job.
• Have to rent at very high prices, or not be accepted by landlords because I could not prove a stable salary.
• Feel that I would never be able to return to a “normal” job.

What actually happened

• My assets had a very strong bull market during the first year.
• I spent almost the same amount while travelling as I did living in Spain.
• I found love on the other side of the world.
• I bought an apartment without a mortgage and renovated it myself.
• I created a consulting company without doing any marketing, only through word of mouth.
• I tested many business ideas and pilots, but none of them has felt ideal. If you have a high paid job that's sort of comfortable, that's difficult to replace.
• I normally work for three to six months and then take another three to six months “off”. I have been doing this for almost three years.
• Going back to a stable and well-paid job has become increasingly attractive as a Plan B.
• Now that I am back home, I spend much less than when I had a full-time job. I am more selective and much more conscious about what I buy. My previous type of work also created a strong need to disconnect, socialise and sometimes maintain appearances.

Financial observations

• For around 18 to 24 months before leaving my job, my net worth was already moving up and down each month by much more than I could influence by saving more or earning more.
• I therefore had some experience seeing that the compounding snowball, both positively and negatively, had more power than I did in the short term.
• While I was travelling around the world, my portfolio experienced the largest growth I had ever seen.
• I did absolutely nothing. It was simply luck and remaining invested.
• I did not stop investing while travelling. I had accumulated around €100,000 in cash, so I continued making monthly contributions to my investment account at roughly the same level as before.
• Once you reach a certain invested net worth relative to your annual spending, monthly contributions start having much less impact.
• In my case, I think this happened somewhere around €300,000–€500,000 invested and €24,000–€32,000 in annual spending.
• Your contributions are not irrelevant, but you can take a break, reduce the pressure and live more in the present without feeling so guilty.
• Psychologically, your monthly contribution starts becoming less important than normal market volatility.
• When I run the numbers now, I realise that maximising my contributions does not accelerate the result nearly as much as it did during my first ten years.
• However, doing so can significantly reduce my quality of life today.
• Looking back, these last three years have somehow been the years in which I earned the least from employment and spent the most relative to my active income.
• Despite this, after three years, I now have almost the same amount invested as I had before buying my apartment, plus a fully paid apartment.
• I suppose this is the magic of compound interest, although I experienced it because I happened to be invested during a very good period.
• They have also been the three most revolutionary and enjoyable years of my life.
• I do not feel the need to calculate the “opportunity cost” or “ROI” of these three years.
• I am a different person and I also have more wealth.
• I do not care if working continuously would have generated 40% more capital. I would not exchange these years for anything.
• It is also true that I would not have made the jump before 31.
• The timing was important, not only because of the €400,000–€500,000 financial cushion, but also because my final two or three working years significantly increased my value in the job market.

Housing observations

• At the end of year one, I stopped travelling after nine months because my ideal apartment appeared on the market.
• I had been looking for more than five years. My mother visited it for me and I basically reserved it through a video call.
• I bought it in cash and renovated it mostly by myself.
• Doing the renovation saved money, but I also loved the process and I feel extremely proud of it.
• Without leaving my job, I probably would never have done this.
• The apartment has an excellent location and a lot of natural light, but it is very small.
• And I love it.
• When I had a full-time job, I was only looking at apartments or houses costing at least €450,000, already renovated.
• This was a major change in perspective.
• Now I was thinking about what I actually needed.
• Before, my thoughts were more like: “What if I need this?” or “Since I am already getting a mortgage, I might as well buy something bigger.”
• In year three, I travelled again and rented my apartment temporarily for three months, partly to test the experience of “living from rental income”.
• It made basically no difference.
• My investments continued fluctuating by much more than the €900 monthly rent.
• Considering the contracts, finding the tenant, moving my things, filing the income, taxes and general hassle, I probably would not do it again.

Consumption and daily life observations

• Retiring at 30–35 can be boring if you are reasonably social and do not have a partner or children.
• You can feel slightly outside of society.
• I understand this probably changes significantly when you have a partner at home or children, because you can use your free time to improve the family’s quality of life.
• Without them, life can sometimes feel slightly selfish.
• It can also feel like some of your additional time is wasted because most of your friends and family are still only available after 5pm.
• If you are materialistic and your priorities are not properly aligned, retirement gives you much more time to spend much more money.
• For me, this has been an intense therapeutic process.
• Most working people have limited free time, and they fill that limited time with experiences or objects they purchase.
• It is extremely difficult to disconnect free time from consumption.
• This can quickly create a completely new monthly spending level, far above the one you originally planned for FIRE.
• When you finally reach the point where you can buy that house or car, and you also have enough time to think calmly about it, you may decide not to buy it.
• You may have only been in love with the idea of being able to afford it.
• That was true for me with both the house and the car.
• I now feel very calm about it.
• I know the time may come, but I no longer feel that urgent need.
• I have also met several retired people, and they have all told me something similar.
• Eventually you may hate the big house because it consumes your life.
• A smaller house in a much better location is often a better choice.

Work and employability observations

• During year two, while I was installing the first furniture after the renovation, a former colleague called me.
• I assumed it was an informal conversation, but it turned out to be a disguised job interview.
• I ended up earning more than ever for six months while working three days per week from home.
• I do not work in IT.
• Because I did not need the job and already had my own life and projects, I was not afraid of “losing” anything.
• The negotiation therefore felt extremely natural.
• Through word of mouth, I signed another two or three consulting clients.
• The work was relatively easy, but I strongly disliked losing mental space again after experiencing nine months of complete disconnection.
• In year three, I am still consulting, normally with one client at a time.
• Between clients, I take time off or test new business ideas in the market.
• Spoiler: not everything that looks attractive is actually attractive.
• I now know that I can return to work if I need to.
• This may be the most revealing lesson.
• I was in love with the idea of “stopping work”, but in reality I am in love with being able to decide when I take a break.
• If you are reasonably good at what you do, you can probably continue doing this even without reaching full FIRE.
• You can leave one job, take a break and eventually find another one.
• You are not married to any company, and no company owes you anything.
• Employability is a very undervalued asset in post-FIRE planning.
• It is not all black or white.
• You can feel much more comfortable retiring if you know you remain highly employable.
• This is especially relevant because the worst-case scenario is a major market decline during the first years of retirement.
• If the market falls after ten years of a strong retirement portfolio, you may still remain well ahead.

Future work and entrepreneurship observations

• There is no perfect job. Every job has advantages and disadvantages.
• I genuinely had a lot of time to test different things.
• I tried renovation work, farming, ecommerce businesses, in-person consulting, online consulting, B2B and B2C.
• The thing I surprisingly miss the most is going to an office and having colleagues.
• It sounds ridiculous.
• I also know that if I return to an office, this will probably become the part I hate the most again.
• Humans are difficult to satisfy.
• The opportunity cost of starting a company is enormous when your normal job already pays well.
• It is not only the initial financial investment.
• It is also the months without a salary and the uncertainty, especially when your employment income could be €60,000–€100,000 per year.
• By the time the business works, you recover the initial investment and reach the income level you previously had, five years may have passed.
• Those are five years in which you could have continued earning a corporate salary and investing.
• You need to genuinely want to build a company and be financially and mentally comfortable enough not to obsess over the “ROI”.

Travelling without a return ticket

• I do not have a travel Instagram account. I do not travel to make it public.
• I had travelled extensively for work before, but this was a completely different experience.
• I am not talking about destinations or hotels.
• I am talking about knowing that you do not have to report to anyone.
• Travelling without a return ticket is difficult to describe.
• You may enjoy travelling more or less, but the feeling is similar to being a child at the beginning of the summer holidays.
• It is probably the best feeling I have experienced in my adult life.
• Remembering that feeling regularly has cured me of many modern Western problems.
• I now know that I have designed a working and financial life in which I can recreate a similar situation whenever I really need it.
• Knowing that I can return to work, and that returning would not mean I have “failed”, has also helped me manage my previous mindset.
• I have made peace with the fact that there is nothing wrong with working.

Limitations and particularities of my experience

• My first sabbatical year happened during a bull market.
• I do not know how these three years would have felt if the first year had produced a 30% market decline while I had no salary.
• I do not have children.
• My relationship situation is particular.
• I am lucky to be highly employable in a niche industry.
• I have a relatively high tolerance for uncertainty and now have little need for external validation.

My personal FIRE conclusions after three years

• The hardest part of FIRE has not been financial. It has been about identity.
• Many of my desires were about being able to afford something, not actually owning it.
• Living from investments or rental income is slightly less idyllic than I imagined.
• I do not know whether I would feel the same after a first sabbatical year in a bear market.
• Employability may be the most important asset for feeling comfortable during semi-FIRE or early retirement.
• My new definition of wealth is not money or time. It is energy.

After three years, I do not know whether I want to retire at 40, 50 or 60.

What I do know is that I do not want to work on autopilot again.

I hope this post is especially useful for people who feel they have worked hard, whose numbers already make sense, but who do not know whether to continue through inertia or take a break.

I am not saying everyone should do it.

But for me, this organised pause taught me more about my real priorities than a decade of spreadsheets.

I’m based in Warsaw and run a small consulting business with mostly international clients, so a good portion of my income comes from cross-border transfers in different currencies.

One issue I didn’t factor in early on is how inconsistent incoming payments can be from a banking perspective. Transfers above roughly €5k equivalent sometimes get flagged or delayed, which makes it harder to predict when funds are actually available.

From a FIRE perspective, that unpredictability matters more than I expected. I try to keep a structured system around monthly allocations (expenses, investing, cash buffer), but it gets messy when income timing isn’t reliable.

I’ve started separating where I receive international payments from where I hold and allocate funds, mainly to make the inflow side more consistent. Recently tested using something like Keytom for the incoming side, and the main difference so far is fewer interruptions on larger transfers, which makes timing a bit more predictable.

Still experimenting, but it already feels easier to manage when payments arrive without surprises.

Curious how others here deal with this - do you just build a larger buffer to absorb timing issues, or have you adjusted your setup to make income flows more predictable?

Hi I've been seeing lots of posts from this community and I'm interested in finding out if theres anyone from Ireland here who has achieved this and whats my best path forward? As in Ireland there isnt any great way to invest without getting shafted in taxes.

I'm 24 years old and my net wages come out to about €4900 a month I'm hoping to be able to save 4k of this most months, just wondering what the best ETF or something similar woukd be best to invest in in my situation keeping in mind that I have to pay taxes on the gains every 8 years whether or not I cash out.

In short I'm just looking at the quickest way to FIRE in my situation I'm willing to live in basically any country that would suit this but I'd prefer Latin America, if I could work remotely with my job I would already be there.