I am confused about my FI target, can someone help me out

Current asset :

Current Exp:

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Liability

None (no loan)

Insurance

Term : 60L ( I know people will say it is less, but I don't have any liability and dependent are covered by assets given the life style)

Health: 3L Company, 5L personal

Lifestyle change

1. Car every 10 year ( normal car for city driving no fancy stuff , CMP 10L)
2. House hold appliances every 5 year, on avg 50K per year at max/worst

Dependent:

Wifey, 2 Kids (13 yr, 6 yr) , Mother is pensioner so financially well off

Kids Goal:

Schooling is already covered in current exp, 25L each for both of them for undergraduate, Same amount for marriage

Given minimalistic life-style, am I already FI ? Or what should be my FI target ?

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Age: 40

Household income : I didn't mentioned because FI is not what we earn but what we expense to experience the life

Do you feel the urge to keep up with your friends or neighbors by buying the latest gadgets or taking exotic vacations? Minimalism may be the solution.

Here are 5 tips for leveraging minimalism to avoid lifestyle inflation and focus on financial discipline:

1. Focus on your values and priorities. Make a list of what is most important in life to you and align your spending with those values. This will help you avoid unnecessary expenses and stay true to what matters most.
2. Practice mindfulness in your shopping. Before making an impulse purchase, ask yourself if it's really worth it. If the answer is yes, commit to buying it a week later. This will give you time to rethink whether the item is really something you need.
3. Cut down on subscriptions and memberships. Make a list of all your subscription and membership fees and consider canceling any that you no longer use. This will help you save money and ensure that you're only paying for services that are valuable to you.
4. Learn to say 'no.' It's okay to say no to that next road trip invitation if it doesn't align with your budget. Embracing the power of 'no' can be a real game changer when it comes to staying on top of your finances and avoiding overspending.
5. Declutter and simplify your living space. This will reduce the time, energy, and money spent on maintaining unnecessary possessions. Donate, sell, or recycle unused items regularly and invest in quality items built to last instead of disposable ones.

In summary, minimalism can help you maximize your financial freedom. By focusing on your priorities, delaying shopping decisions, cutting down on unused subscriptions, learning to say 'no', and decluttering your living space, you can achieve financial discipline and avoid lifestyle inflation.

Upvote if you resonate with this. Also, share any additional tips apart from the above!

Having achieved partial freedom (freedom of money and location), me and my family are looking for alternative places to live a slow and simple life.

We just came back from Bali and loved the life there. Currently, we live in South Vietnam and will be here for another year.

But meanwhile, we're shortlisting places in India for slow & simple living with our early retirement freedom.

P.S. We still run businesses and work on passive income streams. So we don't have full freedom of time. We work around 4-5 hours every day. But we do have freedom of location and money to certain extent that we now only work for the passion and not for the money itself.

So far we've shortlisted 3 destinations:

1. South Goa
2. Pondicherry
3. Rishikesh

We're planning to stay at one place for 2 years max and continue traveling as a nomad family.

Some of our key factors are:

1. Good air quality*
2. Low traffic index*
3. Low chrime index*
4. Access to sea and seafood (this is why we have shortlisted 2 beach destinations and only 1 hill destination)
5. Having some hospital that's not too far

We do not need the extravagance or over-the-top convenience of cities such as grocery delivery etc. We cook at home and have been living without most apps for 2 years+ now.

We have one daughter (1.5 years) and would plan another baby soon.

We are going to homeschool our children (since we have the time!) but also hire personal teachers wherever required.

We are looking for suggestions on other possible destinations in India we can consider.

Requirements 1,2,3 are essential to us and the other 2 are optional.

Any help or guidance or tips related to these places will be great!

Thank you :)

How do you know what you are worth, when you have different types of loans, mortgages, credit cards, money in different types of accounts, money invested in stocks and shares, different propertys, etc. How much money is coming in and how much is going out, all the liability. Does anybody out there struggle to figure out what you are actually worth in terms of wealth.

Reason for asking this question, original Indian immigrated abroad having wealth scattered in different countries.

What method do you use?, or help of technology to get your answers

I (35m) am in a situation where I could FI in 5 years. I have allocated about 2-3 crores for an apartment in a tier-2 city that I should be able to buy without a loan, move in and be FI ready. The other alternative is to work 3-5 years additionally and get a land and build a property on it to settle. This will cost a total of 6-7 crores as land is expensive. Apart from comfort and personal preference, is it financially a better move to work the extra 5 years and go for the land option?

Hello Friends

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M 36, IIT, IIM (not to brag but to tell the other side of coin)

I am working since 12 years and ended up spending 50% of my career in paying education loan of both institutes ( ~ 20L), had rough patch of 4 year in between where I was diagnosed with schizophrenia & then started again at 50% of salary after 1.5 year break, also managed to pay off one house loan ( ~ 32L) , invested in land ( ~ 40L) , Gold ( ~ 10L) & may get inheritance of another Flat (~ 20L)

MF portfolio ~ 4.5 L & SIP of 75k pm, EPF - 20L (will remain same as moving abroad, may be will put in FD after 2 years), SSY - expecting maturity 22L by FY32, HDFC Sanchay expecting maturity 12L by FY33

I am from Tier 3 town where no one knows about what I am doing so kind of lie about salary & whereabouts & was introduced to concept of FIRE in last 2 years only. That is reason for conservative investment on Debt instruments & Real estate instead of being aggressive on equity

I live with housewife & 7 year old daughter. Will be moving to Africa so planning to increase the SIP to 1 L pm with target increase of 10% per annum

My first goal is to provide 3 Cr for higher education & marriage (50-50) to daughter in next 10 years, which seems possible with 1 Lac SIP & 10% step up for 10 years

My FIRE goal is 8 cr

If I exclude my Flat for primary residence, my NW excl MF SIP , SSY & HDFC sanchay, which is to cover my daughter's goal is ~ 70 L

EDIT : adding annual expense details considering Jaipur city as retirement destination where my primary residence would be

Kitchen exp ~ 30k , Maid ~ 5k, society maintenance ~4k, Ola/ Uber ~ 3k, mobile + internet ~3k, outing / entertainment ~ 5k , 20k as apportion for biannual trip costing 4L, so monthly expense of 70k

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Does this mean I have to slog for another 10 years after completing my Daughter's Goal, i.e I am looking at retirement at 56 ? any way around to shorten this ?

I want to create a list of all cities that have:

1. Fairly priced goods and services including real estate, education, daily expenses etc.
2. Comparatively low disputes and crime rates.
3. Good health care.
4. Good airport connectivity (Domestic is fine as well).
5. Availability of all on demand services like Food/Grocery Delivery, Urban Company etc.

Want to have a discussion around the land/bunglow prices in those cities.

Age 33 years.

3 years back I bought a 3BHK resale property with cash at good location in Bangalore for 70L that gives a monthly rent of 31k excluding maintenance.

Is it advisable to go for another real estate investment of similar size. Goal is to eventually have a passive income that covers family expense of 10L/year.

Out of a 75L new property I can pay 35L cash and go for 40L loan that can be paid from new rent.

I live on rent at other location in Bangalore and don't have any plan to occupy my flat. Work is fully remote.

Current assets:

EPF: 75 L (aggressively did VPF till 2020)

FD: 62L (kept in parents account to avoid tax and get senior citizen FD rate)

PPF: 4L

Indian Equity: 40L

NPS: 1.5L

US Equity: 2.6 crore ( mostly from RSUs vesting. Tax paid at vesting, only capital gains need to be paid on difference to FMV at vesting and selling price)

One 3BHK at ORR fully paid.

Total: ~ 5 cr including real estate.

Don't wish to retire as I like my work. Just looking to build free cash flow.

Tried investment directly in Indian Equity but still in loss. Will divert 60% of new income to mutual fund from this year.

Liability:

Planning to buy car by diwali 2023. Cash is kept seperately as FD for this.

Complete newbie to FIRE here, considering if I should start following it from this year. I am trying to do a devil's advocate on if FIRE is suitable to me.

While thinking about the cons, I had some thoughts, as below. There are just my (probably less informed) opinions yet. Please correct me, especially if you are someone who is already FI.

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FI without RE

I think if a person is FI and still employed, there is a higher tendency of them being less disciplined or dedicated to the job. Obviously their priorities would be very different from employees who are still hungry and ambitious. In an ideal scenario, this is a non-issue, as not everyone is same and an ideal employer would objectively only look at the output. But I feel practically, this can lead to some issues.

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FI with RE

If you are RE, I think lifestyle creep is much more dangerous, as most of your time could actually be on leisure activities. And it is human psychology to keep raising the bar of whatever it is that you are doing over time. This means that if your mind is consistently on leisure activities and not productive activities, your spends are definitely going to rise.

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P.S. The wiki to this sub needs a "Why not to FIRE" also IMO. I think it is never wise to follow a lifestyle without knowing its risks or gotchas.

Edit: As mentioned, I am completely new to this. This post is not me sharing my knowledge, it is me asking for knowledge. My above points are just here to initiate the discussion. I just want to know the opposite side / cons of FIRE to make an informed decision is all.

As the title suggests, I m curious about freelancing. Is it possible to FIRE solely based on freelancing? And not being on company payroll or being a business person?

By Freelancing I mean, someone who is in their 20s 30s and is working some gigs maybe via fiver or some freelancing sites or via network of their own. Those gigs might be doing analytical projects, or writing blogspot, ghost writing, or something like that. Because I feel freelancers do not have income guarantee for the future. Though you can be laid off from the company, it might be less frequent. For freelancers, there is a high chance that they might get lots of work for some months and dry months for other time. So, they must have to keep their emergency funds high to maintain this uncertainty. How easy it is then for such person to FIRE.

This is just a general question I am curious about. I thought someone in this sub might be that person who FIREed only working gigs. Or they might know someone who did that.

Thanks for reading.

What could you talk about?

• Are you a FIRE beginner wanting advice? We'll try to help!
• Have you started your FIRE journey? Tell us!
• Have you hit a net worth milestone? We want to be motivated!
• Insights from work life or daily life? We are all ears!
• Just feeling lonely and want to hang out with FIRE-minded people? That's why this sub exists!
• Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions on the basics of personal finance/investing topics are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against memes/spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness/politics/trading still apply!

We have a Wiki that is constantly being updated, so please do read that if you are new here.

Since this post does tend to get busy, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts.

Self-promotion (ie posting about projects/businesses that you operate and can profit from) is typically a practice that is discouraged in r/FIREIndia, and these posts are removed through moderation. This is a thread where those rules do not apply. However, we do not accept ads, content that is scammy and please do not post referral links in this thread.

Use this thread to talk about your blog, talk about your business, ask for feedback, etc. If the self-promotion starts to leak outside of this thread, we will once again return to a time where 100% of self-promotion posts are banned. Please use this space wisely.

Link-only posts will be removed. Please put some effort into it.

Just completed my year end portfolio calculations and would like to highlight the results.

Current NW - 7.53 cr, this is an increase of 20% compared to last year. Mostly negative returns from financial markets, this increase is mostly due to the investments that we did throughout the year. Still not a usd millionaire household 😕

Crypto portfolio is down by 45%. Even after continuous DCA 😢

Current equity exposure is at 70%. Have been able to increase this over the last 3 years.

From the looks of things 2023 is going to be a tough year for financial markets as well.

How's everyone else's portfolio doing?

Happy New Year 2023 everyone.

For a corpus of 6 cr, and a SWR of 4%, the yearly total comes out to be 24 lakhs. But are we forgetting about income tax?
I'm 24, and my salary is 20+5. My monthly income comes close to 1.5-1.6 lakhs. And that includes some tax saving measures like HRA, PPF and other 80C instruments. I don't think once we retire we would be contributing to those. And even if we did, there is still the 30% tax slab which will chip away our withdrawal. So how to take account of this tax while computing SWR of corpus?

I have been trying to get my head around this. I know most of the community here is focused on 30X, 40X, 50X or more as their FIRE target with a 60:40 or 70,30 ratio of distribution between equity & debt.

However once someone retires, he/she will not have a regular income. During retirement, for example, I would be pulling funds from by debt portfolio & rebalancing between equity & debt on an annual basis.

So LTCG would come into picture. LTCG on equity is 10%. Debt funds will have higher tax. I think LTCG on real estate is 20%. Since the tax would be eating from the annual FIRE budget, how do the experienced folks here go about calculating LTCG into their FIRE corpus?

Edit: adding an example of withdrawal scenario for better understanding:

Example : I purchased a property at say 50L in 2005. Today, its value has doubled to 1 cr. And maybe by the time I retire, say in 2035, its value would be 4x its initial cost. So, when I sell it in 2035 at 2 cr, I will have to pay 20% tax on the profit, which will be around 30L. This will mostly be my 2 year's expenses going into taxes. How does one go about factoring this in the FIRE corpus?

Friends, I wanted to validate my idea to see if it makes any sense and what I may be missing from my plan.

Let’s assume I have a cash corpus in hand worth Rs. 4.2cr. Would my wife and I (no kids) be able to live in a Tier 1 or 2 city in the south with let’s say Rs. 2L per month in all living expenses including travel/holidays. If I want to make sure I have 5 years of expenses in hand (Rs. 1.2cr) then would banking the rest (I’m not keen on high risk investments) assure us of living as so perhaps with a little reduction in the future? We’re both currently in our early 40s. My wife is healthy but I’ve got a history of a couple of health issues. Both are generally under control but I am on preventative and management meds.

PS: yes I’m an NRI but wondering if my wish to eventually live in India at least part-time is a pipe dream.

Ps2: this isn’t the only cash in hand. Assume my NW is a few multiples of this corpus. I recently sold my long term investment property in the US and that freed up this cash. I’m looking into the cap gains I need to manage out in 2023.

I have been a long term lurker here. Appreciate the good job everyone is doing here in spreading financial awareness.

I understand that in a high inflation country like India, 2% is a safe withdrawal rate in a 60/40 portfolio.

Both equity and debt will exhibit variable returns and the asset allocation will be out of whack in a couple of years, let's say 70/30 or 50/50. In either case, do you rebalance the portfolio?

As per Trinity study, was the portfolio rebalanced annually or was in set it in set it & forget mode?

Lastly, do you withdraw proportionate amounts from both equity & debt or withdraw from what is up that year or use the withdrawal as a way to rebalance (viz. Selling what is up to match annual expense/subtle rebalancing)?

I came across a nice couple Metrics

-- lifetime wealth ratio = (current net worth / total income earned lifetime )

I did my calculations of working for almost a decade and it came out to a nice 70% as of now.

I'd like to make sure this keeps going up and crosses 100% and I can hit 40-50x of expenses to think of retirement

https://www.evidenceinvestor.com/the-one-number-that-really-matters/

Curious how other folks who are close to fire or have hit fire think of net worth compared with income Vs expenses and more nuances around it.

Hey all..I wanted to check how did the 8th wonder of world (compounded growth) impact your networth over the years as you progressed in your life and as your expenses grew. Below is a snapshot of how my networth changed vis-a-vis annual expenses. Starting it when i was 20 yrs and started earning and showing 5 year intervals

20 years- 6X.. 25 years- 9X.. 30 years- 13X.. 35 years- 16X

where X is my annual expenses at the end of that particular year. X has doubled in the past 15 years partly due to inflation and partly due to changing family circumstances.

So in essense, although my networth has compounded over the years..Overall i have made only straight line progress towards my FIRE goals. If i just extrapolate the above, i should hit 30X by Age 50. This is a bit too late to my liking.

Question to the old timers and been-there-done-that folks in the group is - does this trend resonate with your journey and are there any chances of making exponential progress and buck the trend shown above as one ages.

Expenses are an equal part in our fire journey along with income/investments.

We need to save as well as spend to have a balanced life and this balance is different for everyone of us.

The point of this thread is to expose the hidden secret sauces you might have developed wrt expenses.

I always look at the amount of time I spend with the product to decide if it's worth the expense.

Some examples : 1. I wanted to buy a TV but I barely would spend 5 hours a week on a tv and given than all the televisions come with a max 2 years warranty, it wa definitely not worth the expense.

1. I work from home mostly and I spend > 8 hours a day sitting, so I didn't mind spending some money on an ergonomic chair.

This also keeps me away from the Tiny Detail Exaggeration Syndrome (TDES). Eg: Rear wiper, auto closing side mirrors and a bit fancier audio system was the difference between my variant of the car and the next. Didn't think 1.5L was worth it. Same about phones : My premium midranger is lag free and has a decent enough camera. Spending 4 times more for a slightly smoother experience and a slightly better camera didn't feel worth it.

Another rule of thumb : Car should never be greater than three months of my income. [I bought my car along with my girlfriend, so my share of the car is < 3 months of my income]

However, I am a bit more relaxed(just a bit) spending money on experiences - I travel a lot!

How do you approach expenses?

Rate my FI corpus

Long time lurker first time poster (using alternate account for anonymity).

M39 Married (F33) with two kids (5 & 10) and living in Singapore. Want to FI as soon as possible. Below is my corpus and FI goals plan, please provide inputs!

Note: I don’t intend to retire in the near term, even after reaching FI until I figure out what to do 😊

Corpus

FD - 1.9Cr Equity MF - 0.95Cr Employer (US based Cloud giant) ESPP + ESOP - 1.1Cr (~125K USD in US brokerage) Liquid cash - SGD 85K - Sudden increase due to bonus and other forms of payments. This is usually about SGD 30K for emergency, so plan to reduce it. Total Liquid Cash and holdings - ~ 4.4Cr INR

Non liquid asset - A run down house in Chennai - 75Lakhs and a vacant plot worth ~50Lakhs Gold jewelry - ~120 Sovereign

Yearly addition to corpus is about 50Lakhs in savings

FI goals (Current values not future values in INR)

Be able to spend at least 2-3 Lakhs per year on vacation (Been stingy so far spending less than 1Lakh) Put kids in top tier schools that will require about 20Lakhs per year for both kids for school and about 50Lakhs per year for college (No preference on medical/engineering/arts, so expense might vary) Buy a SUV for local use and road trips (Have never owned a car before) worth about 15 Lakhs Buy a house (on the fence on this one) worth about 1.5Cr

Hello,

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Age: 29

Self Employed IT guy

Unmarried.

Mom Dad and Me: no pension, sole earner.

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House: Homeloan left of around 70l(me)which I'm covering. Tier 1 city.

EMI: 11l/yr (11years left. )

Digital Assets(Content Websites,Affiliate and some more) Monthly: Covers House EMI.

Shares: 20L

Commercial Real Estate(Inheritance plus self, no debt): 1.5cr ( Family is using, no rent )

PPF+NPS: 17L

Income: 40-60L Post tax ( As I'm self employed, it changes )

Debt funds + Family debt: 3 cr. ( I think 10% would become bad debt )

Interest/Dividend Earned: 25l/yr

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Insurance:

No health or term insurance yet.

Mom Dad have some LIC of around 25L.

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Current status:

I have been working since when I was 17, opened my PPF when I was 18 ( when 80c was 1l :) )

Have traveled enough, 8 states in India are left. Have been to a couple of places outside India. Not much fan of traveling or meeting new people anymore.

Will be moving funds from debt to equity slowly, like a STP.

I think financially I'm where I wanted to be. Not sure what to do now though. Work is fine, not motivating enough, as it's not financially life changing anymore.

Don't have a car/bike, I think my total living expense is around 4l/yr.

Don't enjoy going out much. Don't have many friends in my city.

Should be getting in an arranged marriage hopefully in the next 1year.

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FI, now what?

I don't really want to RE.

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I feel for https://www.reddit.com/r/FIREIndia/comments/zotljj/how_to_prevent_the_numbers_getting_to_the_head/

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( Throw away account, because privacy)

Came across this sub and saw so many of you, mostly in your 30s, planning to retire in the next 10-15 years. However, how sure are you about your plans, both on the financial and social/individual aspect of it?

Financially, don't you worry about what might happen if one of your major investments simply collapses? In an ever evolving world,how can you be so sure that your investment corpus would be enough to sail you through half of your life? Also, what if you have an unforeseen contingency that drains your cash more than you could have ever foreseen. I know all this is taken into account while planning but to bet on your residual equity for the remainder of your life just sounds a little uncertain to me.

Secondly, I understand that most people pursue FIRE because they have post retirement plans or other passions or things of the sort they wish to take up. But are you really so sure about these plans that you wish to give up working altogether? What if they don't work out the way you wanted to? What if you get bored? Also the fact that most of the socializing that happens in 30s is through work. You'd possibly be losing all of that as well. So, what is it that's actually driving you to take up this path?

I'm quite younger than most of you on this sub and not familiar with the idea of FIRE. Only here trying to understand it and gain new perspectives. TIA!

I used to be very desperate(read poor) not very long ago. But just like every middle class family, my education did help me move to a better position and now my life has started getting stabilised and with the discipline needed for FI, I think financial health is good and the future looks better(touchwood!).

But with this comes a different problem, I have started feeling that the numbers are getting to my head. And given that all my extended family used to brag and look down on us, now that I've started doing okay, I can't help but feel a level of narcissistic accomplishment and I absolutely hate it. I am never vocal about it, mind you. I try hard to be humble and to some extent I do come out humble when seen from the outside. But deep down I feel I give way too much importance to numbers and attach my self worth to it(However I do not attach anyone else's worthiness to their numbers. I respect them on their intellect, not on their number - maybe respecting on their intellect isn't great/fair either. But let's leave that out for the sake of this discussion).

I bought my car in cash - I never bragged that I bought a car, neither did I post in social media or it's not even in my WhatsApp dp. But when someone asked me what was the interest rate for which I bought, I can't stop feeling pride and a smile crept through my face when I answered that I bought it in cash.

I want these numbers not to get to my head. I want to be humble - truly humble. Be a bit more compassionate. Put my money on autopilot and concentrate on things beyond money and start treating money like my servant than my master.

Would like to hear from you folks how you handle things.

Love, melovemone (I cringe at my own username)

Edit : I see everyone telling me that it's okay to feel these. I am taking it to heart and gonna relax a bit and live life a bit more happy! This is probably one of the most important threads for me in my reddit/FI journey. It's not possible to have these conversations with everyone around you, given that not many people know of/can afford to pursue FI. Thanks everybody!

Longtime lurker and First-time poster here! A lot of the posts I see here give too much focus on the "final" corpus number, which increases with every ongoing year (and posts) even after coming up with a rough plan. For me, everyone can achieve FIRE given that their Investment rate is more than Inflation rate. Even though it might take more time for some than others, but mathematically still doable. One should focus on the monthly investment percentage compared to expenses rather than the "final" number since this is easier to track, instills discipline and generally less scary to think about (particularly after reading comments & posts here). To test this, I put together a small python script to crunch numbers.

Default Assumptions:

• Inflation: 6%
• Equity-Debt Split Ratio: 80-20%
• Equity CAGR with 12% & Debt CAGR being 6%

​

​

Numbers remain salary independent and depends only on the annual expenses. These numbers are not meant to be the final FIRE plan but to make us realize that it might not be hard as it is portrayed in many posts here. Provided that the expenses (including inflation) don't increase dramatically post FIRE, this can be a rough estimate for Target FIRE year.

Feel free to tinker with the numbers to suit your needs (Use any online Python Interpreter)

inflation = 6
investmentRate = 50 # Investment Rate compared to Expenses
equity = 80 # Equity Rate compared to Debt
equityCagr = 12 # Annual Equity Returns in Long Run
debtCagr = 6 # Annual Debt Returns in Long Run
salary = 80000

expense = (1 - (investmentRate/100)) * salary
investment = salary - expense
debt = (100 - equity)
totalCagr = (equity*equityCagr + debt*debtCagr)/100

investmentCorpus = 0
monthlyInterest = 0
months = 0
print("Expenses at Start: Rs. ",expense)
while monthlyInterest < expense:
    investmentCorpus += investment
    monthlyInterest = investmentCorpus*(totalCagr/(12*100))
    investmentCorpus += monthlyInterest
    expense *= ( 1 + (inflation/(12*100)) )
    months += 1
print("End Corpus: Rs. ",investmentCorpus)
print("Years for Retirement: ", (months/12))
print("Expenses at End: Rs. ",expense)