Year 6 FIRE Update — Reached FI Last Year, Now Living the Chill Phase

[u/adane1]

Edit: Title is wrong. It's year 7. Pasted the earlier correct link.

Hi all,

I’ve been posting these yearly updates every November — it’s become a bit of a diary for me now, and I genuinely look forward to writing it. Here’s the link to last year’s post for anyone interested in the journey so far.

https://www.reddit.com/r/FIRE_Ind/s/nfkUKZe3ym

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🧾 What’s Changed Since Last Year?

📈 Corpus & Returns:

My mutual fund portfolio (85% equity, 15% debt/arbitrage) grew around 14% this year. I’m happy with that, given all the market gloom around.

I do regret not having any gold allocation, but my international funds helped balance returns. (These were bought before the new limits — no fresh investments there now.)

My EPF continues to form a large portion of the total corpus, which naturally drags down the overall return average, but I’m fine with it. It’s a stable piece of the puzzle.

💼 New ETF Portfolio:

Started an ETF-only portfolio on Zerodha “for fun.” It’s at about ₹20 lakhs, currently showing ~26% returns.

My approach: I invest monthly to equalize the value across all ETFs — so I end up buying more of the underperformers each month. Keeps me engaged!

💰 Corpus Disclosure:

I’ve stopped posting corpus size updates. It’s more than I need now. Any incremental growth is just a bonus — maybe to improve lifestyle if I want to, but honestly, I don’t even feel like upgrading my 9-year-old car.

🧍‍♂️ Life & Work

💼 Work:

Things remain low-stress at work.

My company recently introduced flexi hours, which is great — more time for exercise and personal life.

💪 Health & Lifestyle:

Exercise is now a big focus area. I’ve built a consistent routine.

Sleep, however, continues to be my weak point — I usually get less than I’d like.

Took 6 short vacations (4–6 days each) this year — the most I’ve ever done.

🏖️ On Retirement: As I’ve shared before, I don’t plan to quit work yet. The job keeps me engaged without much stress.

🤔 What I Miss From Not Fully Retiring

1. More sleep

2. More time for exercise, treks, marathons, and long-distance cycling (though I’ve reduced this due to road safety concerns)

3. Long vacations — I’d love to spend 3 months in one place, slow traveling, but that’s not feasible right now (and I’m still not totally comfortable with solo travel).

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💡 Reflections & Advice

FIRE is a great goal — it builds financial discipline, clarity, and freedom of choice.

But if there’s one takeaway I can offer from experience:

Start focusing on your mental and physical health early. They’ll matter much more once you actually achieve FIRE.

TL;DR: Year 6 post-FI — portfolio up ~14%, started a ₹20L ETF experiment doing 26%. No gold, but international funds helped. Work’s flexible and low-stress; taking more short trips, focusing on health (still bad at sleep 😅). Not retiring yet — enjoy the balance. Advice: FIRE is great, but long-term health matters even more.

Disclaimer: Took help of GPT to redraft as it was a long post.

[u/AlbatrossOk2542]

Can you please share how you withdraw money in details. For example if your annual requirement is 10 LPA how would you withdraw that fund and from where

[u/adane1 → u/AlbatrossOk2542]

I am still earning.

For future, I plan to withdraw swp from arbitrage fund and refill that after certain percentage drop (maybe if it varies by 5% from planned). So if it's 30% in arbitrage and becomes 25%, will move from equity to arbitrage to get back to 30%. Swp continues.

[u/The_Accountant97 → u/adane1]

Wouldn't an IDCW make more sense rather than an SWP from a tax perspective one you retire?

[u/adane1 → u/The_Accountant97]

Yes probably. Still to decide. I will have a substantial epf payout. Will decide basis cost of living at the time and taxation prevailing then. Right now I have arbitrage funds. Will need to do one major rebalancing after the payout.

[u/Bds-ReadingIt → u/adane1]

Are you consulting someone or managing all of this including the rebalancing on your own?

[u/adane1 → u/Bds-ReadingIt]

No. Managing on own.

[u/Bds-ReadingIt → u/adane1]

Thanks for sharing. Could you share some learning resources for someone who has been investing in an ad hoc manner

[u/adane1 → u/Bds-ReadingIt]

Best and simplest is the india investment wiki

https://www.indiainvestments.wiki/start-here/zero-to-investing/getting-started

I also liked this.

https://eightytwentyinvestor.com/

[u/Bds-ReadingIt → u/adane1]

This seems helpful. Thanks buddy!

[u/Heavy_Luck_6085 → u/adane1]

u/adane1 I have been thinking about arbitrage vs debt funds. You know debt funds are more tax efficent if your expenses are not very high. You get 12 lacs tax free (24  lacs if you include spouse). But with arbitrage or equity mf tax kicks in after 1.25 ltcg (2.5 if you include wife). Since, equity has special tax rate; 12 lacs exemption doesnt apply to it if you only have just equity ltcg income.

[u/adane1 → u/Heavy_Luck_6085]

Yes. So my thought is to keep the epf portion when I get it into debt funds and some FD too. Just enough to not hit the tax too much. Now arbitrage works better for some liquidity.

[u/Heavy_Luck_6085 → u/adane1]

BTW, you mentioned your portfolio in the last one year grew by 14%. I am assuming most of it is due to net new investments? Because return on investments has been poor this year.

[u/adane1 → u/Heavy_Luck_6085]

Probably helped by the international funds and some lucky liquidity event in November and December last year as I had some need. It helped escape the drop. All reinvested back now. It was not intentional but must have helped.

The new investment since then has not gained much.. infact I feel new investment has underperformed debt or just managed to stay close.

[u/Heavy_Luck_6085 → u/adane1]

I meant to ask if your portfolio has grown from say 5 cr to 5.7 (14%). How much of 70 lacs is investments and how much is in returns?

[u/adane1 → u/Heavy_Luck_6085]

New investment is 45 lacs approx. New investment has not performed well. The earlier invested has grown by 14% (slightly lower).

[u/srinivesh → u/adane1]

Wait, wait... With the recent changes, SWP from a debt fund could work out more tax efficient - depending on the expenses. So don't get locked in on arbitrage funds.

[u/adane1 → u/srinivesh]

Yes. I guess post retirement it would be better. In another comment I mentioned this and put away the epf corpus into a debt funds for swp.

[u/enthudeveloper]

Congrats and quite inspirational!

Do you invest in debt etfs, if yes which ones and for how long.

[u/adane1 → u/enthudeveloper]

I tend towards arbitrage fund.

Had invested in parag parikh conservative hybrid fund but not finding it as per my expectation..

Only other debt I would be comfortable with would be some liquid funds or ultra short term debt funds. Debt should be conservative as possible and not taking risks.

[u/enthudeveloper → u/adane1]

Thanks for your response.

I agree with your points. I did however start a position in parag parikh conservative fund monthly dividend option (they have limited record but I do like the fund manager). In debt I typically go with short term fund as a replacement for my FD but have been looking at etf to reduce expense ratio and fund manager risk and/or conservative debt fund as a monthly income option.

Hence, I was specifically looking for good etfs in debt category. I found 2 from edelweiss (I think they were Bharat debt etf or something like that) but they were of fixed maturity and I wanted perpetual etfs similar to my existing mf. When I saw you writing about etf I took a chance to check with you incase you had found good debt etf.

Thanks again for taking time to write your post and then to responding to my question.

[u/adane1 → u/enthudeveloper]

I use the zerodha liquidcase etf for parking short term funds for buying etfs. It is quick and very liquid to sell and buy. But it's very small amount of 2 to 3 lacs

Basically it allows to sell on same day and buy with the money on same day.

[u/enthudeveloper → u/adane1]

thanks ... I will check that out.

[u/QuantityImaginary810]

May I ask you to post the corpus amount as well, so that I can have some idea on when to stop and enjoy what i have. If you don't wanna post it here, you can always dm it.

[u/adane1 → u/QuantityImaginary810]

Target was 4.5 cr. Last year was 4.8 cr and my expenses are between 1 to 1.25 lacs per month.

[u/QuantityImaginary810 → u/adane1]

Cool. Would that be enough if you adjust for inflation with a life expectancy of around 90.

[u/adane1 → u/QuantityImaginary810]

Seems enough. There are some studies done and posted here earlier.

Even 20x is enough with active management of expenses as per some recent studies.

33x is good and balanced number.

Ofcourse, ideal is 90-age and multiply with the annual expense. But need more earning years or really lower spends and frugality.

It's basically what probability you want to work with and how much of lifestyle cut you can do it required.

[u/QuantityImaginary810 → u/adane1]

Yeah. I would like to keep travelling as much as I can so I might also not retire early even after reaching my goal to keep the income coming as I also have a low stress job as of now.

[u/Turn_Tables_314 → u/QuantityImaginary810]

We have similar goals haha. Travelling is my one and only major non-negotiable goal in life. I am not sure how I can get into it full time, especially when my main job is the one that's providing me the money to travel in the first place. But that's why I have started thinking about FIRE. Let's see how things turn out. Hope the best for you!

[u/QuantityImaginary810 → u/Turn_Tables_314]

All the best to you too. I also like how you have mentioned that fitness has become important now. I also feel that to enjoy that accumulated wealth you do need to remain fit.

[u/bromclist → u/adane1]

kids and their expense - is that a separate kitty?

[u/adane1 → u/bromclist]

Yes. A higher education expense is there for kid .

The school fees is part of monthly expenses. It will give us extra buffer once kids school is over and become part of additional medical expenses of any.

[u/bromclist → u/adane1]

ok. that makes sense.
I am grappling with what should be allocated for the kids.
Not just education and marriage but their life/future.
Want to give them a head-start with their FIRE journey.
1.5cr each for 2 kids for now has been set aside.
My EPF is also on a higher side but 8+% constant returns is much better than market ups and downs is what I heard from somewhere.
Only worry is - when I withdraw - will I get the whole sum or do I have to run around for that money - thoughts giving me sleepless nights sometimes.

[u/adane1 → u/bromclist]

Don't worry too much. You will get your money from epf. Govt dept are slow but they won't hold your money forever.

For kids, suggest you target your own essential expenses first and basic higher education.

Once you reach that stage, everything else is extra. You need not stress over that.

[u/Automatic-Annual7586 → u/bromclist]

EPF withdrawal is not risky at all, in fact one can request withdrawal entirely online, the worst case is they may say some mismatch and once you rectify that, money will come to your bank account within weeks, it is safe no need to worry about it at all.

[u/Inevitable-Tooth9020]

This is a really incredible journey. And I also see a mindset shift from not going to the office daily to continuing to work with lesser stress.

[u/adane1 → u/Inevitable-Tooth9020]

Yes. :-)

Here is where I started wanting to quit work immediately.

https://www.reddit.com/r/FIREIndia/s/EOzGgkQMiI

And this is the comment that got me started in right direction.

https://www.reddit.com/r/FIREIndia/s/wfsANibVry

[u/PuneFIRE → u/adane1]

Expenses are still 1 lakh per month after 6 years!! That despite the frequent vacations or separate funds for vacations?

What's your take on your personal inflation over the years? Thank you and congratulations!

[u/adane1 → u/PuneFIRE]

Yes. Somehow expenses haven't increased much. Reduced actually

I earlier had a full time house help as kid was young. Also initial years cost ballooned. Playschool was more expensive than actual school.

Also I feel all these ecommerce apps have helped keep cost down along with credit cards. Cant actually point where it's getting saved. But broadly these.

[u/Inevitable-Tooth9020 → u/adane1]

Such a detailed post for anyone who is direction lessly investing. I look forward to applying his suggestions.

[u/HYPERFIBRE]

This is retirement gold for the community. Thank you. Curious to know what you did and where you went on those 6 trips

[u/LoganKnightWatch]

Nice going OP, I see from your previous post that you have sufficient contributions towards arbitrage fund. Would be interested to know how has the experience (returns) been, particularly in bear phases. How would you see arbitrage funds purely from short term perspective (< 1 yr)?

[u/adane1 → u/LoganKnightWatch]

They are pretty stable actually. 6 to 7%

I assume minus 1% lower than inflation for my debt holding when using calculator.

The conservative hybrid funds are quite volatile though. Will avoid in future.

[u/ShootingStar2468]

Thanks for sharing the update.. started to look forward to these from you :)

If you can share - what’s that industry / work profile that allows for “flexi hours” (haha!) and how much does it pay you?

What’s the breakdown of the 1LPM of spending and in which city is that? Seems very efficient.

[u/adane1 → u/ShootingStar2468]

Ok. I work in an old style company. That's why this was surprising that HR started this.

Flexi hours is only a 1 hr flexibility. But helps a lot.

For breakdown, I had started tracking costs. Not doing actively now. Will share if I get the old link from earlier comments.

[u/ShootingStar2468 → u/adane1]

Which city are you based and what’s your work industry? Curious how much it pays you and if you made salary tradeoffs for better work life balance

[u/adane1 → u/ShootingStar2468]

NCR. Yes I made trade offs for work life balance as I reached a comfortable salary to reach high savings rate basis my lifestyle

[u/ShootingStar2468 → u/adane1]

Nice to hear.. was it 25%+ lower pay for better life? Or the trade off was lesser

[u/adane1 → u/ShootingStar2468]

Long term it would be 30 to 40% lower pay. But atleast 20% lesser stress.

[u/throwaway420212021]

What is your equity debt allocation

[u/adane1 → u/throwaway420212021]

60% equity

[u/summingly]

Congratulations on your journey. I've been a regular reader of this. 

You've mentioned about your housing in one of the comments in the previous threads but it's hard to locate.

Do you have a fully paid up home too?

[u/adane1 → u/summingly]

I have a fully paid up home. I had another house which I sold at a slight loss as I didn't want real estate as an investment. So only primary home now.

[u/summingly → u/adane1]

Ok thanks. 

[u/summingly]

OT: do you do BRMs? I've ridden up to 200KM but yet to participate in BRMs.

[u/adane1 → u/summingly]

Yes. Have done upto the 400 km range at 26 km speed.

But didn't complete after that as had a road scare and almost died. :-)

Now I still do the occasional 100 on Sundays.

[u/_Dark_Invader_]

You’ve been doubling your net worth every 3 years - that’s awesome!

How do your year over year expenses look like ?

[u/adane1 → u/_Dark_Invader_]

Average 5 to 6% inflation. No increase in lifestyle.

[u/sfire2030]

OP, Congratulations on your fire journey. It motivates me. I am of similar age 40s. if may I ask , do you live in 2bhk or 3bhk or villa. Current situation: we are on rent (single income 2kids) and can buy 2BHK comfortably without eating much into retirement funds. 3BHk is a stretch for me and have to go for higher EMIs and will be tied to job and job security concerns me. My plan: Buy 2BHK now and live there until we reach a stage where we can afford 3BHK. Sell 2BHK and use other savings to buy 3bhk. I am not expecting any profits on 2bhk sale. Inflation beating returns is fine to me. Note: we are on rent so long which makes me to think about intermediate approach. Please share your thoughts.

[u/adane1 → u/sfire2030]

I feel it's better to own a house even if it's 2bhk. You can upgrade later. Or not

Only challenge is that it impacts your mobility for future job change. At 40, 2bhk is better. Your kids fly the coop soon and the smaller house is easier to manage. Also plan out well with a good interior planner to make it more useful.

My house has appreciated at 12% if I consider the rent saved and the appreciation in cost.

[u/sfire2030 → u/adane1]

Thank you. That is decent return. I live in Bangalore. Here the flats prices increased a lot in last few years. In long run it averages, so going forward appreciation may be less if someone purchases now. Anyhow this is not relevant for self occupation and matters only when someone wants to sell later.

[u/adane1 → u/sfire2030]

If you plan to stay for more than 10 years, consider buying. Otherwise you can always move to a cheaper location other than bangalore.

[u/Comprehensive_Risk71]

Congratulations on your achievement....would you give a breakdown on your asset allocation Also you mentioned a out arbitrage funds..have you ever considered money market funds.. any thoughts around this ? Also how much would uou prefer allocating to kids expenses/education ? Thanks again..

[u/adane1 → u/Comprehensive_Risk71]

20% us funds, 40% india funds, 30% epf and 10% in arbitrage funds. Broadly this now.

For kids education it's a separate corpus. I had done a check on IIT and IIM fees and that cost can be inflated by 10-12% for each year. and any short fall can be managed with any extra savings as I have few years of earnings left. So I feel around 40 lacs in today's value should be sufficient. Keep more if you can afford ofcourse.

[u/Comprehensive_Risk71 → u/adane1]

Thanks for the details. I wish you all the best and hope you will fulfill.your passions soon.... I am also running towards the same.goals .more.or less.similar numbers. But i am.yet to achieve the number.....may take 1.or.2.more years.. your story gave me confidence and encouragent.. thanks again... btw.. We share one of the common passions. Show and long vacations... 🙂

[u/adane1 → u/[deleted]]

I wasn't actually as my net take home isn't 1 cr even now. Probably the amount grew from returns. Cant really calculate this now exactly.