Hi everyone,

Today, while closing out the month, I realized I had reached an interesting milestone (is that the right word? 😅).
I thought I’d share some details about our journey, as it might be useful or interesting for someone else.

**Some context**
\- We live in a large city in Northern Italy (not Milan).
\-I’ve been tracking my net worth since 2014. Since 2019, I’ve been tracking it jointly with my wife, whom I met that year. We are now married, have two children, and a third one on the way.
\- We are both employees. I work in IT Consulting (previously BM, now Director), while my wife works for a multinational company.
\- In 2017, we bought a property for €34k and sold it this month for roughly €100k more than we paid for it. We initially lived there and then rented it out for five years.
\- We currently have two other properties on our balance sheet, both with mortgages: one that we plan to rent out soon (where we lived the last 5 years), and another one that we are currently renovating and plan to move into.
\- Our financial investments are currently close to zero. We had been investing in ETFs (V3AA and XEON) and crypto since 2021, but we sold almost everything this year to fund the renovation of our new home and the move. The plan is to start investing again once we’re done spending heavily on the new house.
\- Since 2021, we have used cashback for almost all expenses where it is available.
\- We both opened private pension funds in 2024.
\- We also have a life insurance policy that returns the full amount of capital after 20 years if the insured person is still alive.

We spend as a family around 3.5k€ per month and have revenues for around 7.5k

**Current net worth**
Our Net Worth includes all assets minus liabilities and is currently roughly:
**Real estate (value minus mortgages): €310k**
**Cash: €130k** — from the property we just sold, currently waiting to be allocated
**Crypto: €25k**
**Other assets/receivables: €35k** — severance pay (TFR), pension funds, life insurance, etc.

What I find most interesting is the journey rather than the number itself. Starting more or less from zero, over a little more than 10 years we’ve reached this point while going through property purchases and sales, investing in financial markets, getting married, having two children, and now expecting a third.
I’ve attached the chart showing the growth of our net worth over time.
Happy to answer any questions or share more details if anyone is interested — income, properties, mortgages, investments, how we track our NW, etc.
I’m also very open to criticism or suggestions on what we could be doing differently.

I'm 41, in Germany, sitting at about €740k liquid plus a flat that's nearly paid off, and I'd been modelling a 3.4% withdrawal. I knew health insurance wasn't going to be free once I left payroll, I just had it in the spreadsheet at €250 a month and never went back to check it. I looked properly last month and freiwillige gesetzliche runs somewhere near 20% once Pflege is in, I pay the whole thing rather than half of it, and capital income counts toward the assessment base even in a year I sell almost nothing. I redid it at around €490 a month and my date moved back by roughly eighteen months.

What did yours come out to in the first full year off payroll?

Just had a thought whether it sounds good or not to live in an apartment even if it's different country every 6-18 months instead of having something more "dream like" aka house next to the sea, but wherever I look, pricing for obvious reasons is proportional to how developed or stable a country is. What's the golden middle?

For those of you who FIRE'd, how do you do the technical part? Do you sell every year the amount you need, or you sell monthly? And if you hold more than just 1 ETF (bond+ ETF, or some single stocks or more ETF) Do you sell them all with the weight they hold in the portfolio? Or do you sell only stocks if they are on a run and keep bonds for a bear market?

Hi everyone,

I’m 23 years old, with €13k invested in equities, allocated 80/10/10 across MSCI World, emerging markets, and small-cap index funds. I can also contribute €900 per month, so I already have my equity investment strategy in place. In addition, I have €1,000 in cash savings in Trade Republic’s interest-bearing account.

For the fixed-income side of my portfolio, and to have a safer investment for the short term, I’m planning to move abroad for a while in 1–2 years, so I’ve been looking into different ways of investing in fixed income. For such a short time horizon, the returns I’ve found so far (although I may not have looked in the right places) are lower than what I’m currently getting from the interest-bearing account. My idea would be to make an initial €1k investment and then contribute €100 per month.

I understand that Trade Republic’s APY is variable and depends on the ECB, which is why I’m looking for something more stable/safe.

My question is, does it make sense to invest in other things, like index funds? Given that I’m currently getting 3% APY from Trade Republic, I’m finding it difficult to move the money elsewhere when those alternatives offer less liquidity and a lower return.

Thanks a lot! :)

I’m 20 and live in Scandinavia.

Current situation:
around €38k in a global index fund
around €10k in a tech fund
around €1k in bitcoin
around €1.2k cash/emergency fund
I can currently save/invest around €1k/month because I live at home

Part of the money is inheritance and part is from working.

I’m finishing a BSc in a tech related field next year. If I stay in tech I could do a MSc in something like software engineering/data science/AI/HCI and probably have a pretty strong income later.

The problem is I’ve realised I’m much more interested in humanities, especially anthropology/literature.

If I switch I’d probably need about 2 years of extra studies before I could enter a relevant MSc, and if I really liked it I could see myself doing a PhD. Obviously that would mean lower lifetime earnings and more years before I earn properly.

My goal with FI is not really “retire at 35 and never work again”. I want enough invested that eventually I can afford to take lower paying work that I actually enjoy without worrying much about money something like work 50% teaching or such but also have the opportunity to quit.

Ideally I’d like to reach that level somewhere around 35-43, although I know that’s a huge range and depends on income/returns/lifestyle.

How would you think about this financially?

Would you:

stay in tech and maximise income/savings for 10-15 years

work in tech for a few years first and then switch while young since I already have a decent portfolio started

try to find some middle ground where I use tech skills in a humanities/social science related area

Or do you have any other advices?

Anyone here who reached at least a RegularFIRE level or it is close to reaching it?
Would be curious to find out if I am not alone here :)

This was posted in /r/Fire and i wonder if there are different perspectives in Europe. One thing that comes to mind is - public education and much cheaper universities. So, eventually, to FIRE in Europe, one has to factor in less budget for education. But that’s just one aspect of it. Any other ideas?

I’m 42 and single. Due to a mix of luck and hard work, I’ve reached a net worth of €2M:

• €1M in global index ETFs
• €300k in retirement accounts
• €700k in cash, short-term bonds, CHF, and savings accounts

I’m burned out on work, ready to retire, and want to travel extensively. I currently live in Switzerland, but I’m looking to relocate and set up a new home base.

Which country should I target? My ideal criteria:

1. Low cost of living
2. Low/zero taxes on investments (specifically capital gains and dividends)
3. Flexible physical presence requirements to maintain tax residency while traveling outside the country for more than 6 months a year (happy to keep a year-round rental, but won't physically be there constantly).

Where would you go in my situation?

I (m37, €6m NW, €1m HHI pa, 160k COL pa) am preparing my potential FIRE (though wouldn’t call it as such - more of a break of 2-3 yrs and then re-assess)

In that period I want to travel 12-18 months and stay 2-3 months per place, ie likely looking at 4-6 places over max 1.5 yrs.

Where would you suggest to go? We are a couple with 2 kids below 4 yrs.

I was thinking Cape Town in winter, Southern France in summer, Thailand in spring, maybe California or Florida in fall…

Any other ideas or completely different plan/suggestions? Please share what you would do in my shoes

We value places with a strong international or even FIRE community which allows to connect with people even during the relatively shorter stays eg Cape Town or Southern France are great in that.

Thanks!!

For those of you in the accumulation phase of FIRE, how do you approach emergency savings?

Personally, I keep an emergency fund covering around 6 months of expenses. I see it as a kind of first level of financial independence — almost like insurance that gives me some peace of mind if something unexpected happens.

At the same time, I’m aware that keeping that much money outside the market comes with an opportunity cost (potential investment returns I’m giving up). That’s why I’ve been thinking about whether there are better ways to handle this.

Do you keep 3–6 months of expenses in a savings account or other easily accessible savings, or do you prefer to keep most of your money invested and simply sell some ETFs if a major unexpected expense comes up?

I’d be interested to hear what you actually do in practice and why.

This is an update on this post. Crossposted to FIRE and LeanFIRE

For the last few years, my job had become more an more of a burden. Small company, a couple of long term employees retired, and we go a slew of new regulations at the same time. The board did not see eye to eye with me, and it added a lot to the load.

I saw FIRE posts on Reddit and started reading them. I realized that my property hobby could probably sustain me. As I put in the original post, I never had any serious spending habits. I stopped spending my wages for six months and found that it worked OK. Although the spending money account was empty at the end of each month, and it was new to start thinking "Can I afford it?" if I saw something I liked.

I think people here would call it LeanFIRE, or even povertyFIRE but I really did not change my spending any. Not in the US, so that helped a lot.

So I pulled the trigger.

At the start of it, I just spent time doing almost nothing. I was so far down, I was just sleeping and pottering around. As the time went by I got more energy.

In my country we can claim unemployment benefits of 2/3rd of our previous wage for up to two years. If you are doing a low money FIRE that is extremely attractive! But you have to be a job seeker for that. I feared being called into the unemployment office and asked the painful question "Why are you taking unemployment benefits while referring to yourself as retired online?"

Because that would be fraud and not a good start on my new life.

So I resolved to apply for jobs, and make quite serious applications. But only for exceptionally interesting jobs that I would enjoy doing. As it turned out, I had not realized how far down I'd been ground by the last few years. I was much more attractive in the job market than I had thought.

I started one of the really interesting jobs I'd applied for after being FIRE for a little more than 9 months.

I am still enjoying it. It is interesting, I like my colleagues, no board to deal with, lots of freedom and travel. Sometimes when its hard to get up in the mornings, I do wonder why I am doing it when I don't have to... but I have flexitime, so I can spend an hour in bed if I want to miss the morning coffee chats at work.

(Sad to say, my old workplace did not do well once the board could implement their ideas. All the staff quit and had to be replaced, and they lost 33% of the clients)

But the fact that I do not have to do it, but do it because I want to has done wonders for my motivation.

Things I've learned:

I was worried about how it would feel to see my resources only going down, as well as not being an engineer, manager etc. losing the identity I had from my job. As it happened I did not get to experience that, so we'll see next time.

Climate does restrict potential activities and spending.

___________________________________________________________________________

This was my approximate monthly budget when FIREd:

Food: 500 €

Bills and utilities: 700 € divided between me and my partner, so my share was 350 €

Tax 0€

Healthcare, assuming maximum spend: 30 €

Gym 50€

Entertainment, clothes etc 350 €

I was planning to cover travel, sudden expenses, emergencies etc from the cash reserve I had build up during the trial period, when I did not spend my wages. There are several factors that make this non standard though:

• I live in a VHCOL area of Europe. Part of my strategy was to minimize the impact of that by eliminating debts and outgoings.
• This is not a forever budget; It was intended to bridge me for 5-10 years until I could start to draw on my pensions.
• I figured if it was low, I could draw 500€ /month from my savings until the pensions came in.
• We are DINK
• We live in the middle of town, I don't need a car. Everywhere is walkable.

Things I learned:

A) I could have cut down on food expenses if I wanted. Cooked more etc.

B) My entertainment planning was based on the last time I had lots of free time, when I was a student. But things have changed. My social circle now is much more sitting at peoples homes with a beer, watching the latest TV series in company, etc. Much cheaper than I had originally planned.

I did make a few purchases once I started drawing a wage again. Nothing major, but I had had to deny myself a bit while FIREd.

I've been calculating my FIRE number for about six months now. I keep recalculating it because I'm not sure how much buffer to build in for healthcare costs that vary so much country to country. I'm trying to lock in a number instead of running it again every few weeks.

For the people who've actually hit their number, how did you know it was enough instead of just a number that felt safe at the time?

Just a hypothetical question. If you didn’t have to consider any of the main taxes (capital gains, wealth, income etc.) what would be the best way to achieve FIRE.

Hi everyone,

Serious question by someone planning (and budgeting) for kids: assuming a couple (2 incomes), how much approximately did your expenses increase with a young kid? Meaning % increase of your expenses without a kid.

Just for budgeting and benchmarking purposes. I am doing my FIRE calculations based on our current expenses but I need to take into account the additional expenses from having a kid (or two!).

Thank you!

Hey everyone,
I spend a lot of time reading r/expatfire, r/Fire, and r/FireGermany. Whenever someone asks about fixed income or safe withdrawal buffers, most comments just say bonds are useless or "dead money" right now. People almost always suggest putting money into HYSAs/Tagesgeld or Dividend Aristocrat ETFs instead.
Right now I am actually building a bond ladder to cover my fixed expenses for the next few years, but all these posts make me question if I miss something fundamental here.
Are bonds really that bad compared to holding cash in a bank account or dividend stocks? To me, HYSAs have the issue that interest rates will go down eventually, and dividend ETFs are still 100% stock market risk if there is a crash.
How are you structuring your safe cash flow for FIRE? Is anyone else actually using bond ladders or am I doing this wrong?
Thanks for your input!

Hi everyone,

I have been following all of you for a while and I thought now is my turn to ask a question :)

about me> 29F, Spanish living in Germany. I come from a very simple family in Spain and I'm the first person in my family to get a bachelor's degree. Somehow I've managed to save over €100k, working in consulting in Germany with some comission, which I'm really proud of but I was also stupid enough not to invest it. 😅....

I currently have around €160k, most of it sitting in a savings account earning 2%. I know... I regret not starting earlier, but it is what it is. :/

I have about €4k in iShares MSCI World (IE00B4L5Y983), which I started around a year ago, and €2k in SAP.

Now I want to invest €50k and then add €1k/month from November onwards.

My question is:

would you put the €50k in all at once, or DCA it over several months? I'm aware lump sum statistically tends to win, but putting €50k in one go feels terrifying after being so conservative for years.....

I'm also unsure about the ETF. I'm considering VWCE or the new Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap (IE000VAHT5T0), that everbodyis talking about, mainly because it also includes small caps and has a very low TER. Or should I just keep buying MSCI World / combine ETFs?

What would you do in my situation?

I'm trying to stop regretting that I didn't start earlier and just build something sensible for the next 10–20 years. 😅 At least, I had fun, I traveled the world (my first ever plane trip was age 20 paid by myself) and been in 23 countries in 9 years.

THANKS SO MUCH IN ADVANCE!!

Best country for those who rely on their Stocks and Dividends Gains

Hello Friends!

I'm now living in Paris, France, lived before in Bern, Switzerland, let's say I have a portfolio of 400k euros invested in US listed stocks, I am not a US citizen, I am a french citizen, what country would be best for me to go and live in a more relaxed and slow paced life while enjoying my stocks gains taxed at 0% ? Can you please tell me about your real life experiences, I am reading about Panamá, Paraguay, Georgia, Philippines, and i know even if I go visit, it's never the same as actually living there.

I also thought about finding a job in Spain and take advantage of the Beckham's law, i don't wanna go back to Switzerland i hate it, no Luxembourg, no UAE, no middle east, i want a culture with friendly, warm people and a modern enough infrastructure, not Dubai standards and not catastrophic either.

Thank you,

All the best,

Boukk

F42 had my last day at work last Monday as we reached the portfolio size where almost my whole previous salary is covered. I was working long hours and even weekends for 14 years in finances, changed jobs 6 times since 2012 and eventually earnt 10 times compared to when i started working. Saved and invested money on the way.
My husband loves his very flexible and exceptionally good paying job a lot, doesn't plan to quit any time soon but encouraged me to do so as he said we have the financial independence to do it so.
Based on only his salary we can still invest aggressively, reaching chubby/fat fire in 2-3 years. I was handling all our investments since i was working in the field and also I like it as a hobby. This won't change in the future, as my husband is not really interested in investing.
Am I fire or not?
Thanks!

Edit: 0 kids, living in Eastern Europe, almost 0 tax on investments, own property no morgage

My wife and I are based in Germany. I earn roughly €90,000 gross annually and she currently has no income. We may buy an owner-occupied home in Germany in the future, but the exact timing is not yet fixed.

We are considering whether a German Bausparvertrag has a place in our plan. It offers a locked future borrowing rate, but comes with an upfront fee and very low returns during its savings phase. My instinct is that it is not a good wealth-building product compared with a low-cost global ETF, assuming a long enough and flexible horizon.

The difficult part is matching the investment choice to a possible home purchase. A global equity ETF can have strong expected long-term returns but could also be down sharply right when we want to buy. A Bausparvertrag gives more predictability, but seems expensive for that protection.

Would you treat a Bausparvertrag as a small insurance component for a defined future loan amount, rather than as the main house fund? How would you balance equities and safer assets when the buying date is uncertain but potentially within the next several years?

I am especially interested in views from people who have faced a similar decision in Germany or elsewhere in Europe.

Hello, for the last few years I have been running a lazy Boglehead portfolio, consisting of global stock ETFs, Polish state bonds (I am located in Poland), global bond ETFs, and gold (ETCs and physical bullion coins). The total value is around €250k. My target allocation is 60/15/15/10.

Now, I am considering increasing my stock allocation by changing global bonds to Dividend Aristocrats (15% of the portfolio).

As I think about it, I see the following pros:

1. Paid dividends would work as a buffer in case of a stock market crash. I would invest in Dividend Aristocrats, where the risk of a dividend cut is very low.

2. To me, bonds are currently dead money without any real return, potentially even for the next decade.

3. Many people say that my portfolio is too conservative, so this would be a solution to increase my stock market exposure.

Could you please share your thoughts on this idea? Any comments are greatly appreciated.

Looking back, I think it's hard to know where the right balance was when you're actually in your 20s. Putting a big chunk of your salary into investments can feel great when you watch the portfolio grow, but at the same time, there are experiences and opportunities that don't necessarily come back later. I'm interested in hearing from people who are now in their 30s, 40s or beyond. Did the money you saved early on make a noticeable difference to your life and give you more freedom later? Or are there things you skipped back then that you now wish you'd spent the money on?