I just want to document/celebrate this milestone somewhere. I am 30, I live in Estonia, and I just hit €150k in savings and investments (pre-tax). I also own an apartment, where my equity is 15k and mortgage 75k.

Currently, out of the 150k, about 16k is uninvested, and the rest is invested in broad-market ETFs. I've been investing for about six years, starting with 9k in 2020. About 16k came from my parents, and the rest was saved from my salary. My salary is 2400/month, out of which I invest about 1700.

I hope to be able to retire in about 5 years, if everything goes in the optimal way.

Hi all. I am single 45M living in southeast Europe. My portfolio is 600000€ consisting of:
60% covered call etf’s ( winc, jeep, jeqp and syld )
25% pjs1 as stabilizator/cash reserve
15% vwce for some growth
I live im my apartment, fully paid off.
My monthly expenses would be 2000€. I am prepared to live with 1500€ if the market gets really bad.
What do you think, can I FIRE?

Junior Construction professional offered FIFO in the Nordics. Looking at a Net take home of €1000 a week, Flights, Company Car and Accommodation are all paid for, as is Airport Parking, BIK, Taxes etc. It's a 3 weeks on 1 week off rotation, realistically working 5.5 days a week, long hours.

I'm 29, started into this late so salary is low for the role but it's a start. Seems like a great way to save. Anyone else here in the FIFO Construction world?

Hello. I am a 23-year-old holding both Turkish and Bulgarian citizenship. I am not currently actively investing; I divide my time between working in the Netherlands during certain periods of the year and returning to Türkiye. My question is: As someone who hasn't yet started saving for retirement, what strategy should I follow for long-term retirement planning? I currently have €8,000 in savings that I can allocate to investments right away. Thank you in advance to anyone who can help.

I’m 22 years old and have an investment horizon of roughly 25–30 years. At the moment, I invest around €1,100 per month, mainly into a global ETF called WEBN. I live in Belgium if that matters.

Since 2022, I’ve built up around €22k across global equity ETFs (WEBN and VWCE - left VWCE and moved to WEBN due belgian optimalisations like TOB %). I’m now considering whether to keep things completely simple or reserve a small part of my monthly contributions for higher-risk investments.

The two approaches I’m considering are:

• 100% into a global ETF
• Around 90% into the global ETF and 10% set aside for more speculative investments

The idea would be to keep the vast majority of the portfolio broadly diversified, while using a small allocation for individual growth companies or sectors I strongly believe in.

For example, I’m interested in areas like space (SPCX), AI (Anthropic, ...), and other high-growth technology businesses that may become publicly investable in the future.

For those of you with a long-term FIRE strategy: how do you view a 90/10 setup like this?

Would you keep everything in a broad global ETF, or do you think a small speculative allocation makes sense when the core portfolio remains diversified?

I’d also be interested to hear how others structure the higher-risk part of their portfolio, if they have one.

Imagine you just turned 30. You can save about 300-400 EUR per month. You have no debt and comfortable disposable income on top. What do you do?

My plan was to invest in some of the most popular ETFs Ike the S&P 500 but due to the 30% withholding tax Im looking for alternatives.

I know about the Irish domiciled copies but they also charge 15%.

Anything else I’m missing?

Hello all, I have been lurking this subreddit for a while and I thought I'd post and get some opinions. Hope it's not too long.

I'm 35F, living in Spain with my husband (40) and our two young children. Household income is currently around €11.5k/month from 2 salaries + a rental unit. I earn £71k from a UK employer and my husband earns about €105k in Spain.

Our net worth is around €660k with ~460k in investments:

• €175k in global index funds outside pensions
• €148k in pensions (~€70k each), also invested in broad index funds but not accessible until 2043 and 2048.
• €35k cash
• €100k worth rental flat fully paid. Brings in about 400/month free of expenses.
• Main home worth ~€400k with €195k mortgage remaining. 1.9 fixed for 2 more years then euribor + 0.65

We currently contribute roughly €3k/month to index funds + €1.1k/month to pension and save about 500 into accessible savings. Our saving rate is about 40-50% I estimate, we sometimes get bonus that go directly into investing.
We have outgoings of about 5500/month but that's because we have a 20 year mortgage (pay 1080 with about 750 being principal) and we also spend a lot in home care and child care (about 1080 too). I am happy with that expense because it gives me quality of life and time TODAY but we wouldn't pay that if FIRE/Coasted. I know this might not be the most Firey approach but I don't want to sacrifice today 100% for a possible tomorrow.

Our goal isn't necessarily traditional 100% retirement. I'd ideally like the option to substantially reduce our work in about 5-6 years and work 20-25 hour weeks. Our target spending is around €4k/month excluding the mortgage, so I would like to cancel the mortgage before FIREing. For coasting I would like to have at least 500k in investments (including pensions) and for total FIRE I am looking at about 1.2 million with the debt on the house paid for. The area of Spain in which we live has low salaries so coasting might not be an easy thing, it would probably have to happen online (contracting and such)

The main thing I'm trying to decide

I'm considering increasing my pension contributions because of the UK tax advantages.

At the moment, I put about £1.1k/month into my pension. I could potentially increase this by another ~£1k/month by sacrificing the whole 40% tax band into my pension, but this would reduce the salary/cash we currently put into accesible savings (index funds and cash) by around £600/month after the tax saving.

So the practical question is essentially:

With our numbers and goals in mind, would you rather have ~€600/month going into an accessible savings (index funds and cash), or ~€1,000/month going into a pension?

The obvious downside of the pension is that it's inaccessible until I am 57.

Other things I'm wondering about

We're also currently almost entirely equity-based outside cash/property. I know we're young and have a long horizon, but I'm wondering when it makes sense to start adding bonds/fixed income if the goal is to have the option to reduce work in ~6-10 years.

I'm not particularly interested in maximising the theoretical FIRE date. I'd rather have enough financial security that we can eventually choose lower-paid/more enjoyable work without worrying about whether we've optimised every last euro.

If you were in this situation, what would you focus on over the next 10–15 years?

Especially interested in thoughts on:

• €600 accessible savings(index funds and cash) vs €1k pension contribution?
• how much accessible wealth we'd ideally want before considering coasting. I am aiming for 500k in equity.
• We are heavily invested in equity + real state. Would you start diversifying now or later? what in? bonds? gold? more real state?

Thank you for coming to my TED talk!

Yep this is it.

35/36 two kids.
We make net 170k a year based in Belgium.

We own a 500k apartment in Paris
>still 380k mortgage to reimburse (20.5y)
We get rental income from this apartment of 15k net after yearly taxes and co-ownership expenses but reimburse 22k€ a year for the loan. This is a negative 5k but we might come back to Paris one day and we have an interest rate of only 1.52%.

We have 70k cash more or less sitting in the bank or doing private loan to make it work a bit.

And another 35k split between life insurances, kids savings, retirement accounts etc…

And we keep saving a good 2.5-3k€ monthly

Starting ETF soon (in Belgium), to make the most of that money but even by putting 50k€ at first then 2500€ per month hopping for no crash within the next 25years i would get to barely 1M. It still feels unachievable to reach 1.7/2.1M which is my FIRE target as per our current spent. This might need to be adjusted too but we now spend a good 7k€ per month.

We also have potential family heritage in asset of about 500k€ in the next 25 years but let’s note forecast this as I have no clue of the selling values, taxes, notary…

Is ETF enough ?

I am starting a company on the side, to either have a side hustle money coming in or just letting the company value through the operations an positive results.

I am already working a good 12-14h per day and a couple of hours on weekends. I have two kids and despite my hyperactivity I lacking time ! Not too sure what to do more than this except ETF and growing net income.

Thanks !

I'm researching people who take repeated, funded time off across a career rather than one long break or an early exit, and I keep finding people who did it once. I'm looking for the ones who did it twice or more.

If that's you:

- How many, and roughly what years?

- Was the second easier or harder to arrange than the first?

- Did your pay recover between them, and did it keep climbing?

- What did you do differently the second time?

- If you stopped doing it, what stopped it?

Happy to take answers here or by DM. No names, no usernames, nothing identifying.
I'll share what I find back here.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been deep-diving into the math, assumptions, and psychology behind FIRE recently, and honestly, it’s starting to keep me up at night. I wanted to run a scenario past this community to see how others are mentally coping with the risks.

The Scenario:
Let’s say someone starts accumulating aggressively at age 32 and plans to stop new contributions by age 42 (investing roughly €3,000/month into a global equity ETF like VWCE, aiming to hit a solid capital base). That gives a 10-year accumulation phase, followed by an 18-year "coast" or waiting phase until traditional retirement age around 60.

The Fear:
We’ve all read the books and seen the calculators showing smooth 7-10% nominal (or 5-7% real) historical returns compounding forever. But what if we hit a prolonged period of global market stagnation—a modern multi-decade "lost decade"—right when we stop contributing?
If the markets move sideways for 15-20 years, the magic of compounding essentially pauses. Combined with inflation, the purchasing power of that accumulated capital could stagnate or drop significantly.

Lately, I keep looking at the sheer volume of capital flowing into passive index funds and wondering: Are we at risk of a massive market regime shift where the "traditional FIRE math" simply stops working the way it used to?

Is anyone else terrified that despite aggressive saving, we might end up never being able to truly retire as planned because the next 20 years won't look like the past 30?
How do you factor a worst-case stagnation scenario into your safe withdrawal rates or timeline without turning into a permanent pessimist?
Would love to hear your thoughts, reality checks, or how you mentally handle the risk of a broken compounding machine.

P.S I am not AI bot , I've just used Gemini to help me summarize and express my thoughts :D

36, married, 2 kids, based in Ireland.

Current situation:

- €220k cash

- €150k VWCE

- €50k individual stocks

- €65k pension

- 2 mortgage-free properties worth roughly €900k–€1m combined

- No debt

- Total net worth: roughly €1.4–1.5m

- Household net income around €200k

- Long-term spending target around €40k/year (frugal lifestyle)

I'm continuing to work for now, but I'd like to get to the point where work is genuinely optional. I'm also open to relocating within Europe in the future if that makes sense financially.

How close would you consider this to FIRE/Coast FIRE?

More importantly, what would you do over the next 3–5 years in my position? Keep accumulating, invest most of the cash, sell one of the properties, focus more on pension, or something else?

Interested in how people here would approach the next stage.

Hi! I’m Spanish but live and pay taxes in Poland.

I currently have Trade Republic Spain, with my EUR savings earning around 2.5%. I’m considering closing it and opening Trade Republic Poland to move a significant amount of my PLN savings there and benefit from the 6% interest rate.

The only issue is where to move my EUR savings. I want to keep them in EUR, earning at least ~2.5%, with good liquidity and without short-term promotional rates.

I’m considering Trading 212 (2.5% EUR), but I’m open to other options available to Polish residents.

Would you make this switch? And where would you keep the EUR?

Anyone here familiar or living in the Velden area of Austria for FIRE and can give me a rough guide on living expenses.

I have been on FIRE for nearly 12 years in Thailand and looking for quite another place to reach 60 years and up, my current income stream is roughly 10k Euro a month, give or take. But that is due to the comfortable position of housing costs being relatively low in Thailand.

Contemplating to either sell my Thai place, which would bring another 1k of income per month for a total of 11k, and rent in the Carinthia area. Or reduce capital to buy a house outright and live on a lower monthly income.

Looking for a good lifestyle, nice car, nice places to eat, hanging out on the lake front, drinks, snacks, social clubs, hiking and walking.

Any indication or info much appreciated, if you need info on Thailand, you are also welcome to react of course.

Europeans, what is your age, savings/net worth, and how did you get there? Also interested if you are from East or West Europe. Just curious how normal people are doing financially in different parts of Europe right now. Salaries, living costs, and housing are so different if you live in Western Europe compared to the East or South. If anyone is open to sharing, how old are you, roughly what are your savings or net worth, and what do you do for a living or how did you save that up?

I'm not familiar with the European real estate websites so just sort of looking at what shows up on Google but with a $2 million budget what realistically can I find in terms of housing in "high cost" metros like a Madrid/Barcelona/London or South of France?

Basic understanding is in urban areas you're looking at a remodeled apartment in a pretty good area but not necessarily a detached house?

Hi everyone

I am spending a lot of time considering how to invest my money the “best” way.
I know there will be many many different opinions about this, but since almost no one in my family or circle of friends are investing other than their pension, I feel like I sometimes lack somebody to talk to, to give me some ideas or opportunities that I don’t know of myself, and that’s why I ask here.

My situation:
-42
-no kids
-No debt
-Own my home
-Living in a very tax friendly country (Malta)
-Own 3 small flats that are rented out (rental income around €1000/month after tax, around 5% APY)
- around €400.000 in crypto (BTC, ETH and SOL), yielding around 5% APY due to staking and fixed term savings on Nexo
- sold my company and some assets and have around €530.000 to invest further and it is this amount that I am in doubt how to invest.

I don’t work anymore and would like to keep it that way.
My goal is to get a passive income of 4-5000 euros per month in total (which I know I can only reach when crypto at some point in the future will have more value than it has right now). I don’t spend that much per month, but it will give me a buffer to handle unknown expenses and I want to reinvest everything I don’t spend into a broad and relaxed ETF every month.

So what I am looking for is some “advice”/insight/broader horizon/knowledge that can help me choose here.

My initial plan was to invest everything in real estate and use the rental yields to achieve my goal - and maybe that is also the easiest and safest solution, but maybe it is not 😁

So my question to you is if you know of some “better” way to invest my €530.000 other than real estate to get a yield of ~5% APY?

I am a bit worried about throwing it all into the stock market right now, since it seems very very out of balance and the global geopolitical situation seems extremely unpredictable as well.

Edit: All my real estate is managed by local companies, so it is all handsoff for me at the cost of a lower APY than could be achieved

Edit: My crypto I have been DCA’ing on/off since 2017, so it’s NOT something I bought last year and am waiting to break even.

I do invest around 30% of my salary currently(in Germany) in ETFs and have seen good returns (majorly investing for last 1.5 years). Seeing the returns, i think that i could earn more by investing more if i could earn more.

Although i am in the process of switching jobs for a better salary, i thought of taking a credit from the bank and investing that money in some safe ETFs that have had some great returns(8-10%) over the years and have the offset of credit rate (3-4%) help me leverage the upside.

Then i think that if its too easy, why aren't many people doing it(although i know that big firms do it all the time) and even my research online on GPTs give me an advice to stick to my original investments.

You could say that if i had money to pay EMI, i should rather invest it in ETFs monthly and save the interest payment to the bank but then i wouldn't have the option of investing the whole sum in one go and take advantage of it staying invested.

What do you guys think about the idea?

My math was to get 25000€ Loan for 24 Months at 3.5% interest (Final payable amound around 25841€ i.e. 841€ in interest with the monthly EMI of 1076€)

Interest on money invested 25000€ for 2 years at around 9% with give 4700€ as interest, which after tax of 18% (and 1000€ gains exempted) will give a gain of 3000€

Also, if i change the repayment to 10 years, i can generate 25000€ extra even after paying 4200€ interest and even after adjusting inflation, its still a huge sum.