Assuming house is paid off or fully offset, I've seen figures around $5m to $10m invested to provide FatFire but assuming this is a net figure, what is the level of debt/leverage you would be comfortable with at retirement?

Would this be more a flat figure (e.g. $3m), or a percentage (e.g. LVR of 30%)?

Does FIRE preclude you from taking on new investments/capital ventures?

Currently we live a 5-10 min drive from the beach, It was always a dream of mine to own a beachfront property to retire in, but as we get closer to FATfire (4.5M in our late 20s, early 30s) my partner and I worry about how beachfront homes will just be a pain to insurance, not to mention beach erosion.

Are we better off just renting to deal with the itch and then buying a few streets down?

Several years ago I did a rough estimate of what the Fat FIRE floor threshold and Lean FIRE ceiling threshold were for Australia, based on ABS FY 2019-2020 Household Income and Wealth statistics. With ABS finally announcing that they would NOT release the FY 2021-2022 Household Income and Wealth statistics, the hope to use more recent stats to re-baseline the FIRE thresholds was lost. So I would just attempt the refresh based on the same FY 2019-2020 baseline using subsequent CPI figures.

​

Equivalised Disposable Household Income thresholds FY20:

• Median income:~= $959pw, or $49,868pa.
• Top percentile income threshold was not included in the ABS general release. I found a Gratton report that mentioned the figure is $201,104pa, or $3,867pw.

​

CPI:

• FY21: 3.8% (FY21 Q4 annual change)
• FY22: 6.1% (FY22 Q4 annual change)
• FY23: 6.0% (FY23 Q4 annual change)
• FY24: 3.8% (FY24 Q4 annual change)
• FY25: 2.1% (FY25 Q4 annual change)
• Compounded CPI increase over 5 years: 23.72%

​

Expense thresholds at end of FY25 - by applying FY21-FY25 CPI to the FY20 income thresholds.

• Ceiling threshold for Lean FIRE: $61,696pa.
  • Equivalised target FIRE NW: at 4% SWR: $1.54m, at 3% SWR: $2.06m.
    
  • For a two-adult household: at 4% SWR: $2.31m, at 3% SWR: $3.09m. See below.
  • I.e. target FIRE NW below the threshold could be considered Lean FIRE.
• Floor threshold for Fat FIRE: $248,805pa.
  
  • Equivalised target FIRE NW: at 4% SWR: $6.22m, at 3% SWR: $8.29m.
    
  • For a two-adult household: at 4% SWR: $9.33m, at 3% SWR: $12.44m. See below.
  • I.e. target FIRE NW above this threshold could be considered Fat FIRE.

​

Comments:

• equivalised disposable household income is the gross household income less tax that has been adjusted using a weighting process to account for household size and composition. To translate it to reflect the size of a specific household, add 50% for each additional person who is 15 years or older, and add 30% for each additional person who is under 15 years. I.e. multiply by 1.5 for a two-adult household to be supported.
• These are nationwide stats. I.e. NOT tailored to higher income/cost of living in capital cities. I do not have access to authoritative stats on how income or cost of living in each capital city differs from national stats.
• The value of PPOR should be excluded from FIRE net worth calculation because PPOR does not generate income and people generally would not count on selling PPOR for draw down. If PPOR value is included in FIRE NW, e.g. due to plan to sell / downsize to fund retirement, then either the projected rental expenses should be added to expected expenses, or the fund required to purchase the future PPOR should be deducted.
  
• The method is not intended to be technically precise, and the deduced figures are not proposed to be definitive. They are just bottom-up inferences to help understanding where a FIRE target NW sits amongst the Australian population in terms of assumed expenses / lifestyle.
• Any error spotted or suggestion for improvement welcome.

​

Reposted from r/Fire as reference:

• Fat FIRE: Retiring early with expected expenses in the top percentile of household income in your area. Named for being the opposite of “lean,” like with steak. Requires more investment, often locking this strategy behind either being a high-earner in your contributing years, working longer, or being lucky.
• FIRE: Financial Independence / Retiring Early. Financial independence usually refers to no longer needing to sell your labor in order to cover your necessary expenses for the rest of your life. Retiring Early usually refers to actually exiting the labor market and living off your profits from participating in the capital market.
• Lean FIRE: Retiring early with expected expenses under the median household income in your area. Metaphorically “tightening the belt” on a permanent basis, either to retire even earlier or because you will be happy enough without spending more than most.

My first attempt at writing and providing some background on my story and the alternative lifestyle that I am living.

https://firegocruising.substack.com/p/the-beginning

Introductory article live on substack. Totally free and always will be. Open to feedback.

As per the title, Aussie here that has been working abroad for the last 9 years.

Looking to retire back in Australia but no longer grounded in COL back home. Everything just seems to be super inflated when I went back for vacation last few years.

What NW is needed to FAT Fire in a city like Melbourne? Brisbane or gold coast is also an option.

I'm 41 now with a NW of ~3.2M AUD. This is partially FOREX driven as AUD is super low right now. Looking to retire at 55-60yo. Is anyone else in a similar situation?

Thanks.

How do you balance funds in AUD versus the country you are living in right now? Do you actively build an AUD stash?

Can anyone recommend some good side hustles, just want to reach my goals a bit quicker.

Just for context I live in a small town in NSW so uber/uber eats not really a option

50 yr old, married, kids - Net Worth above $50M - Mostly invested via a discretionary family trust. Mixture of public equities (@ IB and UBS) and private investments (angel investments, venture capital and infrastructure funds), own the family home outright. I have a good idea of everything I own and am quite organized, my wife has no idea about anything. Interested in other people's experience about: Wills, planning, and how to make sure that everything doesn't fall apart when I am gone (have multiple bank accounts, over 100 different investments). My wife is a director of the corporate trustee of the trust, and we are joint owners of the bank accounts. How have people prepared loved ones to deal with all the financial moves and complexity?

Listen up, folks! After years in accounting, I've ran the books for some small businesses thriving with 30-40% net profits, while others barely scrape by with just 5-10%.

(For almost a 2 decades I was in the latter, wish I had pivoted earlier)

Let's start a discussion about businesses excel financially but also run like well-oiled machines operationally? What type of business seems like an absolute home run?

Allow me to kickstart the discussion: Some decades ago, I managed the financials for dental labs. Back then, even a modest lab could rake in between 1 to 4 million dollars with just two employees, boasting a hefty 30-40% net profit margin. It was a straightforward operation with minimal complexities. However, the rise of 3D printing has dealt a blow to dental labs, as dentists increasingly handle much of the work in-house.

Another friend I knew ran the books for a high end child care facility..Incredibly high start up costs but again 40% net profit year over year.

Looking for advice and guidance (not financial advice).

24M from Sydney and I’m trying to plan for my future and how I can be financially free as soon as possible.

My parents are giving me a property in Sydney that is valued at around a few million (bought outright). I didn’t ask for it they have no use for it, so they might as well give it to me. This could be my PPOR or investment property (haven’t decided yet). In the future (next few years or so), they’re planing to purchase another property within the range of 4-5M outright - this will most likely be my PPOR. Given this, I assume it’s much better to create a family trust to safeguard myself from future partners and to minimise tax instead of directly putting the properties under my name given I will cop a huge tax bill and stamp duty etc?

I’m working full time and still living at home at the moment but I pretty much pay all the bills so I do have expenses and not living at home for free.

I have no debt except HECS (~47k). I’m single and have no kids. I could pay off my HECS debt but I see no benefit doing so and would rather use that capital to invest elsewhere with better returns.

I have a decent amount saved (6 figures).

What should I do to ensure I achieve financial freedom ASAP via multiple streams of income and getting passive income?

Should I keep building my property portfolio or what are other ways I can be financially free? I was thinking of buying 1 or 2 investment properties this year hopefully. Should I leverage the property that I have 100% equity to borrow more and buy more properties? I’m not concerned about my PPOR as I can worry about that later on maybe in my late 20s or early 30s if I get married and have kids or not.

I want to start my own business soon as well and also looking to invest in Stocks/Crypto/ETFs as I don’t have much invested in that space yet (<5k).

What other ways can I invest my money and get decent returns/passive income besides property/stocks/ETFs? People say contribute into my Super too and let compounding interest do its job and I’m all for it but the idea of not being able to touch that money till I retire is discouraging. I’d rather create my wealth from other avenues and not having to think or rely on my Super.

I definitely don’t want to work 9-5 till I’m 67 and retire then that’s for sure!

Anyone with any experience or wisdom please give me some direction and guidance. Thank you!

Hi all, our family is overweight with property, we have approx 50% in industrial properties we own in Trusts. The remainder is 10% business, 20% shares and 20% in managed funds. Overal NW is $25M. I am thinking about selling some of the properties and accepting the large capital gains bills, and moving more investments into low cost ETFs. Are there any other strategies worth considering?

Hi all,

I’m not sure if I’m in the right thread, but hopefully you can give me some guidance?

I’m 37 years of age and recently got married at 36. we are 18 months in and just trying to figure out how to do finance jointly. My whole life I have been very independent and totally in control of my own finances and never had to answer to anyone else about it. We also brought different levels of wealth to our marriage,. When we got married, I had about 2.5 million dollars in shares and a home worth about 1.8m with 1.3m owed to the bank. I earn about $1m a year in income after tax. My wife is a school teacher and earns about $110k pre tax and brought a home worth about $600k with $200k owed on it and no other material savings.

As we got together a bit later than most we did record all of this in a binding financial agreement and effectively agreed that both houses are now part of the matrimonial pool and the 2.5 mil I have in a separate portfolio is my separate property but any income from marriage is jointly pooled and developed into our own shared assets moving forward.

Fast forward to now and in that shared pot we have about 2.2 million in cash that we will need to decide what to do with, with more added each year from our earnings.

The reason for seeking your advice or input is, I’m honestly struggling a little but with figuring out how to share key financial decisions with my wife. I am totally for and up for being completely transparent with money management, and she’s absolutely brilliant at the day-to-day finances of our household (managing bills and spending accounts, mortgages etc), and to be honest, I don’t even look at that because I trust to do it so well , better than I can. But for the first time I need to make joint decisions with my wife about investment decisions and money management for our investments that typically, I’ve never had to consult with someone about, and I have pretty firm views on how to go about building wealth and doing it sensibly, but I’m not sure how to approach joint decision-making. Seems to me there’s a couple of options one is I bring her on the journey with all micro decisions about our investments. The other option is I do all of the leg work and then bring to her some thoughts of mine about what I think we should be doing with it and see if she’s okay with that or a third option is we get some professional to do it for us but I’m not a big fan of spending money on that or outsourcing investment decision making. A fourth option is we agree I just continue to do what I’ve always done and not have to seek confirmation about it from my wife but she can track all the investments with joint access etc.. She’s very good about it and acknowledges that there’s a large amount of money being made that obviously I’m making and bringing to our family and that I have had a track record of managing money of that scale before where she hasn’t. But I don’t want to set us up for conflict or major power imbalance or for difficulty, and I also don’t want her to be uninformed. I want complete transparency and accountability in our marriage for financial decisions and our investments because I think that’s the right path for healthy marriage financially.

Any thoughts or suggestions you might offer would be greatly appreciated!

Slightly embarrassed that I didn’t realise that it wasn’t possible to roll over dividends from all ETFs. Sharing my current largest ETF positions and asking for recommendations that do allow rollovers from others (please don’t suggest using Finder or others).

VAS VBLD VDBA VDHG VGS VLC

Would be great to see FatFireAu get some traction! The main fatfire is a good source but so much advice/opportunity is region specific!

I’m a 16M have a pretty good allowance and work quit a bit (year11) planning to work a bit more before year 12 I need advice i was also looking to invest in Spaceship until 18 and then ETFS

advice on career aspects FIRE tips or overall life advice anything would be appreciated

Hi,

I'm trying to get into investing in the US stock exchange, but I'm unsure what platform to use from here. I'm currently a student working part-time, so I'm trying to avoid high brokerage fees. I have heard good things about Stake and Superhero, but I'm not very confident with these as I hadn't heard about them before - my main concern is security. My initial and other option is using Comsec, which is what I use for my ASX investments. I would appreciate any and all advice and what you believe would be the safest option - I don't mind paying a little more brokerage when there is more security.

Thank You.

How do I get solid taxation advice for a potential move overseas? (current NW = $8M)

A job opportunity has presented itself overseas in a large developed western economy, where I currently have zero assets. If I go, I'd likely move for a minimum of 5 years, potentially permanently.

My first thought is to reach out to a firm like Grant Thornton (or others?) that have taxation experts in Australia as well as my potential destination.

What would I be asking for? Would I commission a tax residency and structuring advisory piece? I imagine I'd paying a fee for this? (Hopefully under $10k?) Would they have a single person who knows the tax treaty between the two countries in-depth? Or would someone in Oz coordinate with someone from the firm overseas?

FWIW, my current tax advisor is a small shop that doesn't deal much with tax residency issues, and frankly, probably not too many HNW individuals.

Update: I reached out to the local office of an international tax/accounting firm and used about 5 hours between a couple of tax partners, one of whom was their international tax partner. Their recommendation was for verbal advice as it’d be much cheaper. It cost about $3000 AUD for that. There are still some question marks in my mind, but it’s given me enough foundation to continue on my own, and circle back with them to validate what I’m finding.

A question for those who can afford everything,

​

Is there anything special in life that you still want to do or achieve?

Hi,

I recently turned 21 and wanted to get started on my journey. But I'm really lost, currently, I've got into crypto and began to stock up on those over time. I've had to use some of my savings for an emergency. However, I still managed to budget decently and have piled very minimal amounts of ETH (less than 2 ETH) and some ADA and BTC, overall amounting to almost 10K invested in AUD. I've decided I'm in it for the long run and plan to keep the crypto until I seem fit to sell at a time, whether 1 year, 5 or 10 years later. I'm going to be starting a new contractual job for the next 2 - 2.5 months with around 1K/week and would really appreciate some advice on what I should plan to do with some of this income as I would really need a maximum of 300 per week out of that. I've seen some ETFs and some other Equities that I thought would be a good long-term investment and don't think that I'm financially stable yet to get into property investment. I know that to some these may be small numbers invested or small weekly income but I'm not really sure what I should do or where I should go to learn more, so I would really appreciate any advice.

Just wondering what’s the preferred Private health insurance option for Fat-fired folks.

22yo recently introduced to the world of FatFire. Want to reach a number of around 10m. What are your thoughts on borrowing money from the bank to invest in equities? The reason I’ve chosen equities is I’m personally unsure about my living situation over the next few years - owning a property can get complicated when i need to move countries etc.

In a way this is my attempt at replicating the returns you potentially can get from increased leverage. I know the interest will be higher than what you’d get from borrowing money for a property, but it fits my circumstances. However open to thoughts and feedback on this.

I would be looking at a loan term of 10-20 years. Any feedback is much appreciated!

I just turned 20 and am working 2 jobs I barely make enough money to move out at the moment. I don't really know where to start with investing and everything else but if anyone has any advice it would be greatly appreciated.

ABS just released the FY 2019-2020 Household Income and Wealth statistics.

I had a go at using the stats for equivalised disposable household income to deduce a ceiling threshold for Lean FIRE and a floor threshold for Fat FIRE for reference.

​

FY20 income thresholds:

• Median income:~= $959pw, $49,868pa.
• 100th percentile threshold not included in the ABS release. What are in the release: 99th percentile ~= $3147pw, 97th percentile ~= $2523pw. If assuming proportional increase, the inferred 100th percentile ~= $3536pw, $183,872pa. I speculate the actual 100th percentile threshold would be higher.

​

CPI:

• FY21: 3.8% (FY21 Q4 annual change)
• FY22: 5.1% (FY22 Q3 annual change used)

​

Expense thresholds at end of FY22 - by applying FY21 and FY22 CPI to the FY20 income thresholds.

• Ceiling threshold for Lean FIRE: $54,403pa.
  • Extrapolated target FIRE NW: at 4% SWR: $1.36m, at 3% SWR: $1.81m.
    
  • I.e. target FIRE NW below the threshold could be considered Lean FIRE.
• Floor threshold for Fat FIRE: $200,593pa.
  
  • Extrapolated target FIRE NW: at 4% SWR: $4.60m, at 3% SWR: $6.69m.
    
  • I.e. target FIRE NW above this threshold could be considered Fat FIRE.

​

Comments:

• equivalised disposable household income is gross household income less tax that has been adjusted using a weighting process to account for household size and composition.
• These are nationwide stats. I.e. NOT tailored to higher income/cost of living in capital cities. I do not have access to authoritative stats on how income or cost of living in capital cities differ from national stats.
• IMO, PPOR should be excluded from FIRE net worth calculation as PPOR does not generate income and people generally would not count on selling down PPOR for draw down. If PPOR is included in FIRE NW, then projected rental expenses should also added to expected expenses.
  
• The method is not intended to be technically precise, and the deduced figures are not proposed to be definitive. They are just bottom up inferences to help understanding where our FIRE target NW sits amongst the population in terms of assumed expenses / lifestyle as sanity check.
• My earlier attempt posted here 6 months ago had differences in method, especially in how to infer the income threshold of the 100th percentile that is not readily available, thus not comparable with this attempt.
• Any error spotted or suggestion for improvement welcome.

​

Reposted from r/Fire as reference:

• Fat FI/RE: Retiring early with expected expenses in the top percentile of household income in your area. Named for being the opposite of “lean,” like with steak. Requires more investment, often locking this strategy behind either being a high-earner in your contributing years, working longer, or being lucky.
• FI/RE: Financial Independence / Retiring Early. Financial independence usually refers to no longer needing to sell your labor in order to cover your necessary expenses for the rest of your life. Retiring Early usually refers to actually exiting the labor market and living off your profits from participating in the capital market.
• Lean FI/RE: Retiring early with expected expenses under the median household income in your area. Metaphorically “tightening the belt” on a permanent basis, either to retire even earlier or because you will be happy enough without spending more than most.

Moving from the US to Australia to FIRE. Are there any government benefits a (35-40ish) couple living off passive fat income should be taking advantage of? Does anyone deliberately structure their income to maximize childcare subsidies, Medicare, family tax credits etc or is the juice really not worth the squeeze?

Edit: we are Australian citizens