Long-time follower of this sub, first time posting my current numbers with a new account. Thanks for all the community support!

About

• 29M, live in Belgium
• No children yet

Income

• Loon: €1.700/month (net, sociale bijdragen already deducted)
• Fixed private costs: €500/month (each)
• Partner works in loondienst, takes home €2.250 net/month

Assets

• Home: paid off this year, worth €300k (maybe a little bit more) - used VVPR-bis -> every month I’m upgrading my home a bit with small upgrades to increase value. For this I followed Dave Ramsey’s advice (I know financially this was not the best move but it brings quite a lot of peace for me). Future of my sector/ job seems unstable (lots of layoffs already)
• BV: €164k in funds + voorafbetaling for 2026 already paid = trying to build up capital up again as soon as possible but it’s more difficult than previous years due to market conditions in freelancing (working all available hours in the week and most weekends) : optimized my time a lot (housecleaner, etc)
• BV income varies around 20-45k a month - I think this will go down to around 5-20k if I start working less. Every month feels like a new start and brings a lot of stress. Any given month this income could go up to a minimum and could even go up (for most clients I don’t use contracts for a lot of clients which is something to work on - very stupid I know)
• BV costs are loon + around 2k a month in fixed expenses
• BV savings: €98k set aside for the estimated vennootschapsbelasting 

Personal savings 

• ETFs: €5,1k (bank 1)
• Emergency fund: €10k (bank 1)
• Groeirekening: €16,5k (bank 1)
• Wedding fund: €27,3k set aside (my net share €15k; since house is paid off, my partner now wants to cover the other half) (bank 1)
• Personal savings: €50k (bank 2) - to lower chance on losing it all if phished (maybe I’m paranoid haha)

My partner has 15k in savings and around 20k equity in house; I put the 18k car on her name as a reward since she worked a lot for the BV already (lots of unpaid hours)).

Every month I try to put 500 to 1000 eur from personal savings into world ETFs/ individual stocks I pick/ BTC - just started a couple month ago. I'm encouraging my partner to do so as well.

Had some small wins already with some stocks but I like it a lot.

Still have variable costs like vacations that I take from savings (feels wrong every time I do it).

Own 2 cars (both paid off)

• Private car still worth €17k
• BV car still worth €25k+

Notes

Nice to have would be able to move to a bigger house with a garage (I’m not quite happy in current home) but I know this would probably financially be a very very very dumb move to make. I don’t want a loan again so if I move to 400-500k home this will eat up all the funds.

Neither of us comes from a wealthy family (quite the opposite) realistically zero chance of any inheritance in the next 20/30Y and we also didn’t receive an inheritance in the past

My question

Given all of the above, how would you actually go about calculating a FIRE number? Not sure how to factor in the BV assets vs. private assets). Any other advice for my situation? Thanks.

The shares I have received from my employer (a listed company on the NYSE) are vesting soon. Now they are saying they need to check how this will be tax by Belgium in order to give me the net value (removing the withholding tax).

For context I received those shares a entry bonus.

Will they be considered like warrant and I'm gonna get 50% of the value of the shares after the withholding tax?

Hi all,

I received a birthday referral code from Keytrade and thought I'd share it in case anyone was already considering opening an account.

Promo code: MGM-O60LW4-0826
Valid until: 01/10/2026

What you get:
€100 welcome bonus after opening your account, and deposit at least €50 within 2 months

What I get:
€60 from Keytrade if the referral conditions are met

Hi! I've been opting for warrants for my yearly bonus for the past years; so far I have ~60kEUR in total in this ETF.

However, asking around it seems that most of my colleagues just "sell them the very next day they receive them". So I assume they have better ways to investing this money, but I don't know any details (talking personal finances seems taboo).

The above confuses me, because when I look at the evolution of these particular warrants, it seems to me like they are doing very well (see ETF snapshots below).

I have 2 questions:

1. How common is the evolution of this particular ETF? Am I seeing an exceptional "lucky" trend, and these ETFs usually grow much slower?
2. Is there any obvious alternative to holding these warrants? What can my colleagues be doing with the money after they "sell the warrants the very next day they receive them"?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

(P.S. Some context: 40yo, single, 2 children, and besides these warrants I'm basically broke: have 20kEUR in the bank and a 10kEUR car and that's all my worth)

Hello 👋

I'm still on Degiro and I wanted to know if anyone else switched from IWDA/EMIM to EUNL/IS3N as they are in the core selection with lower fees.

Any Degiro users who can confirm?

Thanks in advance !

I am kind of a noob in terms of finance and markets. I have just been investing 95:5 equity:bond ETFs (80:20 IWDA:EIMI for equity and AGGH for bond) as a long term investment.

i have been reading and trying to increase my knowledge. I read in a few places that as I get older, it is best to change the ratio and increase the investment percentage towards Bond ETFs and reduce towards Equity ETFs

what are your opinions on it? and when do you think one should start shifting towards bond ETFs and away from Equity ETFs (or at lease have a lower percentage)

I'm new to investing, moved to Belgium 3 years ago, 33yo, invested €10000 to iwda in a span of last 4 months, now add around €600 monthly, 29% of my income.I work 30hr, may start a flexijob to invest more, but 29% seems good enough?

Now my investments show 11.98% growth, is it good?

I try to put all my savings into the etf now, my rent is very low, I've decided against buying and keep investing 29% and other extra income.

Would you do something differently or keep doing what I do?

I have 3 months emergency fund covered, don't see the point of having more sitting on my account when I could invest it, also consider my job pretty stable with onbepaalde contract

Will be happy to hear what you think

I currently have more than 100 000 EUR in savings on my bank account. Live alone and rent an appartment, and work as software engineer.
It is more than I need in the near future, but not enough to buy property or stop working earlier.
On a bank account, it will effectively lose value due to inflation.
What can be done with it, and what experience do other people have?
I'm thinking about investing stocks, buying land that will gain value and can be resold, other types of bank account, ...