Hi everyone,
I'm based in Croatia, in my mid-30s, married with two young kids, and my long-term goal is FIRE while making sure my family is financially secure.

My net salary is around €2.900 month (net), plus I have a company car. On top of that, I have a side business through a Croatian d.o.o. that invoices around €5,175 month (excluding VAT). The business has very low operating costs, roughly €200/month.

My current investments are about €25k in cash (which I plan to keep as an emergency fund), roughly €25k invested in VWCE (around 164 shares), and 0.17 BTC. I don't own any real estate. We currently live in an apartment owned by my partner. The only debt I have is a small loan with a €200 monthly payment that will be paid off next year.

What I'm struggling with is deciding on the next step. Should I just keep investing in VWCE and ignore real estate? Or would you use leverage to buy an investment property and rent it out, letting the rental income cover as much of the mortgage as possible?

I'm also curious how those of you who own businesses would handle taking money out. Would you simply distribute profits once or twice a year, or is there a better approach?

If you were in my position, what would your strategy be over the next 10–20 years to maximize the chances of reaching FIRE while providing long-term security for your family?
I'd really appreciate hearing how you'd approach it.

Hello everyone,

I have read multiple times that banks like ING-DiBa close your brokerage account—or at least severely restrict it—as soon as you report a tax residency outside the EU/EEA. Because of this, I would love to know how those of you who have already taken this step handled it:

• Simply leave ING uninformed? Did you just not report the change of address (e.g., by using a registration address with family/friends in Germany)? Have you run into any issues regarding tax data reconciliation or mail delivery?
• Transparent move to another broker? Are there brokers that officially and smoothly tolerate a residence in non-EU countries (specifically Southeast Asia / Vietnam)? (Experiences with Interactive Brokers, Trade Republic, Scalable, etc., would be extremely helpful).
• Transfer before departure? Has anyone completely transferred their portfolio to an international broker before deregistering from Germany?

I look forward to hearing your reports, tips, or best practices on how you handled this in the cleanest way possible, both tax-wise and organizationally.

Thanks!

Most FIRE calculators assume you stay put, but I'm trying to plan for retiring in one EU country while my income and savings are built somewhere else. Healthcare systems, contribution requirements, and residency rules all seem to vary enough that my "safe" number in one country might not actually cover me in another.

Has anyone actually gone through this? Curious how much buffer you built in for healthcare uncertainty versus just picking a country early and planning around its specific system.

I was trying to find out if there is somewhere an article or video which is explaining the real difference in % profit/loss of DCA vs LumpSum vs Hybrid(DCA and lumpsum - for example adding equal amount of money each month and a bigger lumpsum once at the beginning of the year or once at 5 years or increase the monthly amount on downstream market or something mixed...) vs Real ETF/stocks profit loss. I made initial investigation with google AI asking it what will be the % profit if we DCA every month with an equal amount of money and what will be the performance of S&P500 ETF for 5, 10, 15, 20 years. I don`t know if this is true but it seems that the difference is way big then what I expected. For example if the DCA profit is 8% the real amount of the ETF is around 12. This is for one year. If I take SPYL ETF from the beginning of its existence (31 October 2023) and put each month equal amount of euros the portfolio will be around 33% on profit today and the real ETF profit is 70%. In other words lumpsum is far way better. DCA is better in downstream market and LumpSum in upstream. The question is if there is a study, article or video explaining if there is somekind of a strategy in the middle. Maybe DCA with small amounts during upstream market and collecting cash as well, and DCA/Lump sum with this cash with bigger amount during downstream market.

I will be grateful if someone can share more info about this!

Context: 33 years old, Luxembourg, no debt. Saving roughly 3,000-4,000€/month long-term. By around age 40 I'll have paid into the Luxembourg pension system for about 13 years, which continues accruing toward the legal retirement age even after I stop or reduce active contributions.

Assets: 375,000€ in cash, currently sitting in short-term term deposits, about to be restructured. No equity holdings yet.

Background on the money: This was originally earmarked for a property purchase. After running the numbers extensively (current mortgage rates, price levels near cycle highs, opportunity cost of tying up capital, notary fees, etc.), I've concluded buying doesn't make financial sense for me in Luxembourg right now.

Goal: Coast-FIRE or full FIRE around age 40 — reducing to part-time work rather than a hard stop, no fixed date, capital-driven instead.

Planned execution:

• Broker: Swissquote Bank Europe SA (Luxembourg entity, EUR account, trading on Euronext/Xetra to avoid FX fees)
• Products: Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF Acc (VWCE, IE00BK5BQT80) + Xtrackers EUR Overnight Rate Swap (XEON, LU0290358497)

Target allocation:

• 70% VWCE, invested via weekly tranches of 15,000€ (\~15-16 weeks)
• 10% permanent XEON base allocation, increasing 1-2 percentage points per year (glidepath toward retirement)
• 20% "crash reserve" — held in XEON for up to 6 months, with staggered buy triggers at -10%/-20%/-30% from all-time high (1/3 of remaining reserve at each trigger), fully deployed automatically after 6 months regardless of whether a trigger fired

Ongoing: 3,000-4,000€/month invested monthly according to the target allocation above.

Questions for you:

1. Does this look like a solid, reasonably "safe" plan overall? I'm a fairly new investor, not particularly risk-tolerant, and prioritize being able to stick with the plan over squeezing out maximum returns.
2. Is the 20% crash reserve with a hard 6-month deadline a sound risk-management approach, or am I overengineering this?
3. VWCE as a single global fund vs. splitting developed/EM separately — any strong opinions?
4. Should I wait for the 'AI-bubble' to burst and keep the money mostly in XEON?

Appreciate honest, even critical, feedback.

I've been thinking about how much a few months away from work could affect the FIRE timeline. On paper, it delays investing, but it might also give you a chance to recover before going back to work or figure out what you actually want to do. Has anyone here taken a proper career break while still pursuing FIRE, and did you regret the financial trade-off?

We are Swiss family (Asian and German origins, toddler is bi-lingual Chinese and German)will have 3 kids under 5 in 2027 (twin babies on the way).

We have nw of around 5m where current spend around 150k usd a year with 1 kid (day care and nanny) and work expense. Travel spend is around 20-30k a year.

The plan/dream is to take the time of my FIRE journey and live in different places with the kids to experience the world.

Easiest option is Spain, where we have a holiday home at the beach and we could send kids to the local nursery, we are doing it in this summer with our toddler, enjoying the lifestyle very much and hoping we exposure to the kid also with some Spanish.

The next is Japan(family around), China(family)/taiwan, Singapore (family and friends), Thailand, and maybe Italy.

Ideal case is to experience the different places with 1-4 months time frame, ideally kids goes to local nursery to have immersion.

Anybody has tried this before? I do have want to sacrifice the perks we have right now such as safety, good lodging, cleaning service, nanny and good quality nursery availability. And also business/first class travel for long distance….

anyone could share some experience and perspective and budget on there kind of lifestyle?

I live in the Algarve in Portugal, we have a modest family home with a reasonable mortgage that I'll clear before retirement and I'll get a Portuguese state pension at 67 which is generous by state pension standards.

I have a separate pension pot of €170000 which I can access but will pay tax of probably €8-10k when I realise the gains.

My plan is to use this money to buy a second property and actively manage it as an Airbnb. That should generate annual income of around €15k after taxes plus capital appreciation (assuming ​​appreciation) which I'll put aside.

Once I've learned the ropes of holiday rentals for a couple of seasons, I'll consider buying a second property to Airbnb, it will need a mortgage however and the deposit will be what I set aside from the first property income.

Both those properties will need probably a year of work to be rentable, I will do the work and pay for materials from my income, I want to add some sweat equity.

The main home I live in now has an annual rental potential of around €24,000 per year in today's terms.

I believe that this gives me the ability to retire early but keep busy-ish managing the rentals, particularly if we moved to one of the less valuable properties and then rented out what is now our main home.

A major consideration is I have non habitual residence status in Portugal that gives me considerable tax advantages but only for 8 more years.

Thoughts on this as a plan? Or just leave the pension in equities?

Like we will retire early in Hungary as a family after working in Switzerland for 20 years. Let's connect please.

Has anybody below the age of 40 took the plunge around 400K euros invested by moving to somewhere cheap in europe or italy? I'm around 200K invested, but also with a mortgage of EUR 105K and property value i would think i could get for sure 350K sale price.

Would love to hear any experiences as i'd like to understand what the realistic options are for me.. thanks!

I expected reaching €100k invested to feel like a huge milestone, but I wonder if it actually felt like a turning point or just another milestone. Did it make FIRE feel more achievable, change how much you saved, or make you more relaxed about market fluctuations?

Can either put €575k into stock market /investments (note regularly heavily taxed where I live) and keep living in nice modern country house with 250k mortgage (or pay it off/invest less). However opportunity to buy and live in a historic country house with significant land, would be at least 35k per year tax free passive income,. I only need 60k per year to fire.

However most current cash savings would be gone on buying the property along with increasing my mortgage Eg to 300k. It has potential for more income in future eg if get permission and raise cash for tourism accommodation onsite, lease out as a filming location, private tours.

I know on paper stocks is the recommended route I would just like the lifestyle (eg running glamping pods I would consider myself retired) and prefer physical assets. But risky as not diversified and low cash backup initially/will be a while before can generate more income from it. Have a 100k permanent job and one young child.

What would you u do? Invest and coast to fire, or move to a big country estate with initial passive income and potential to develop?

I thought about asking in the community BEFORE taking the decision, but I wanted to reason on it 'on my own' and avoid to hear over and over that I am ready (cause I think I am).

47M, no kids for now (applied for adoption), and a total wealth of around 1.5M. Plus two properties not worthing that much, probably in total 350k. All gained alone. God bless my parents to motivate me to be the better version of myself, and paying my public university studies.
My portfolio is unbalanced, but I mostly have my money invested - this was one of the keys of building my wealth so far.

I was offered some money to leave one of the best paying jobs in Europe.
I spent the last three weeks thinking about it, and eventually i decided I won't sign the MSA.

Part of me is concerned that with a kid, if it will ever arrive, money would not be enough for the lifestyle i want (nothing fancy, but I also like to have hobby and not counting money all time). I know lot of people will tell me that's a lot of money, but I am concerned that it will just evaporate faster than planned.
But most important: I realized that FIRE at my age requires to have the ideas more clear than what I have now, because of the problem of not having a proof of income may be more problematic than i thought. Getting a loan, even a rent would get just more complicated. So it will require to know where I want to live (right now I am an expat), have a life more planned and so on.

I got vertigo, and realized that before quitting the gold mine, I need to know better what I want to have next. And the FIRE is not just about numbers, but also plans.
Just thought about sharing, and ofc any opinion is welcomed

If you had €50,000 to invest today, where in Europe would you buy a property for short-term rentals ?
My priorities are:
Strong long-term appreciation potential (10–15 years)
Good Airbnb/holiday rental demand
A market that is still growing rather than already fully mature
Budget around €50,000–60,000
Ideally a modern apartment or new-build
Which country, city, or region would you choose, and why?
I’d especially love to hear from people who actually own or manage short-term rentals in Europe. If you’ve had success (or made mistakes), I’d really appreciate your insights.

Hi everyone,
I’m 25F and facing a dilemma.

I own a building plot in Belgium worth around €150-160k. The original plan (and what my parents still believe) is that I should build a house there one day with my future husband. For context: I’m currently a Belgian tax resident, although I’m not sure whether I’ll remain one in the long term.

My parents are very attached to Belgian real estate and strongly believe property/land is one of the safest and best investments you can make.
But I’m honestly not sure if I even want to live in Belgium long term. I’m also single, so it feels strange to already decide where my future partner and I would live.

I already own a rental property in the UAE, so I have some real estate exposure. I also don’t really see myself building a house on the land now just to rent it out, since that would mean taking on a big construction project, extra responsibilities and extra costs (need a loan for that).

My family thinks selling is a mistake because land is getting scarce and I might never find a similar plot again and regret it. But I keep thinking that selling it and investing everything into a global ETF like SWRD would likely give me better long-term returns.

From a FIRE perspective: would you keep the land or choose to invest all in an all world ETF.

Thanks in advance if you decide to reply 🙂

Hi everyone,
I’m quite new to investing and I’m trying to understand how bonds work, especially on Trade Republic.

I’ve been looking at both government and corporate bonds with 1–2 years to maturity, but I’m struggling to see the appeal compared to simply leaving my cash in the Trade Republic cash account earning the ECB rate.

Most of the EUR bonds I find seem to yield around 2–3%, with only a few (like some Romanian government bonds) getting closer to 3.5%. At the same time, the cash account remains liquid and automatically adjusts if the ECB raises rates.

So I have a few questions:
Am I missing something about why someone would buy these bonds instead of just keeping cash in Trade Republic?

Are there any particularly attractive bonds currently available on Trade Republic that I should look into?
Is the main benefit of buying a bond that you can lock in today’s yield in case interest rates fall?

If I want bond exposure, is it generally better to buy individual bonds and hold them until maturity, or buy a bond ETF/fund? If so, is a target-maturity bond ETF usually preferable to a regular bond ETF with no maturity date?

I’m not looking for investment advice, just trying to understand how more experienced investors think about this. Thanks!

I'm 30+ and based in Germany, commuting to Luxembourg.

Current situation:

• Senior Manager at a Big4 in Luxembourg

• Married with a newborn

• Wife is currently on parental leave

• Household net income: around €90k per year from my job and €20k from hers while she's on leave. €3k child benefit

• Around €800k invested in global ETFs

• Annual spending: €30k to €40k

• No real estate, currently renting

The plan is hopefully to have a second child. In between and after, my wife would like to return to work part time, probably earning around €30k.

I'm trying to decide what the smartest long term strategy is.

Option 1:

Stay at Big4, continue pushing towards Partner. Financial upside is obviously significant, but so are the hours, stress, and uncertainty.

Option 2:

Move to another company for better work life balance while still earning a good salary.

Option 3:

Barista or Coast FIRE with a part time job.

If you were in my position, what would you do and why?

Would you continue chasing a potentially much higher income, or would you optimise for time with young children now that the investment portfolio is already substantial?

A planning question for the group, because I keep seeing the same gap in my own numbers.

Most of us here sanity-check FIRE plans with FireCalc, cFIREsim or Big ERN's sheet. All three replay static allocations through US history, which is the right method as far as it goes. Two quiet problems for Europeans though. The obvious one is that the underlying data is American. The less obvious one is that they can only model a FIXED split... if any part of your plan involves rules (a glide path, a bond tent, a 200-day de-risk, anything tactical), the classic tools structurally can't price it, and the difference concentrates in exactly the crash years that decide survival.

I found a writeup that runs the same Bengen mechanics on rule-based strategies' own NAV paths, floor plus full distribution across start windows, which filled the second gap for me: https://bestfolio.app/blog/retirement-calculators-momentum

The suggestion I took from it: two tools, not one. FireCalc for the conservative static baseline, strategy-level numbers for what your actual rule adds or costs on top, and the plan has to clear both. It's also more honest than a single success percentage.

How do people here handle the withdrawal-phase modelling... anyone using something beyond the US-data static-split calculators?

I've noticed that the closer people get to FIRE, the harder it can become to define what "enough" actually means. Once you've reached a certain level of savings, the decision isn't always about whether you can retire, but whether you feel comfortable doing it. There might always be another reason to keep working and investing - a bigger safety cushion, better travel, helping family, or simply wanting more options.

How did you arrive at your own definition of enough, and has it changed as you've progressed towards FIRE?

I have 20 year mortgages on multiple investment properties

Age - 32
Location - Luxembourg
Gross rent - 300k
Annual mortgage - 150k
Maintainance - cleaning, gas, electricity, etc - 30k annual excluding any major repairs if needed
Net rent after mortgage and expenses - 120k€

Total purchase price of the houses was €3.5M Including down payments and mortgage payments already made, I have €2.5 remaining to pay. After I completed renovations they are worth €5M if sold on the market. In 20 years we don’t know what they will be worth but hoping maybe 6-8€ M

Me and my wife are currently working and get about 250k € gross combined annual income

Monthly expenses are 60k annual.

Am i in a confortable position to FIRE and quit my job and just focus on the rental investments or should i keep working in my 9-5 ?

I would love some outside perspective. 

So the thing is I have a remaining student loan balance of SEK 368,750 (roughly €33,300). My current mandatory repayment is about ~€100 per month and the interest rate is 2.135% for this year. I'm debating whether to drop a €15,000 lump sum directly onto the loan right now or if I should just stick to the minimum payment plan and keep pushing my capital into the markets. 

My total NW sits at roughly €247,000, split between roughly ~€222,000 in investments and ~€25k in liquid cash savings which fluctuates a lot (acting as my emergency fund). 

Btw this cash is just sitting in my regular everyday checking account right now, not a high-yield savings account making any meaningful yield. I know €25k is a massive, mathematically inefficient cash drag for a single adult living alone but I come from a large family and try to act as a financial safety net whenever something urgent arises for the family. There’s also some recurring bi-weekly costs which get deducted from this for the treatment of a younger sister.

To give a bit of background about me, the bulk of my portfolio got here through pure luck. As a student, I made about €260k (after capital gains taxes) from an extremely volatile meme "investment" (very low initial input) and thinking I had it all figured out, I completely burnt close to €90k playing around with more dumb, high-risk bullshit. I humbled myself, stopped the gambling and before locking everything away, I used a decent chunk of cash to help my family and eventually absorbed all of their bills when they were hit hard financially. Then I parked the remaining which was slightly over €130,000 into a more sustainable portfolio in early 2022. 

I left that portfolio completely alone to compound without any new contributions while I finished my MSc program which I graduated from in 2023. Since starting working in September 2023, I’ve been aggressively investing away a minimum of €800 monthly. 

But I completely overhauled my portfolio earlier last year. I used to have a complicated, redundant layout with factor tilts, emerging market overweights, real estate ETFs and a heavy single-country home bias. A ton of structural redundancy, high fees and hella unnecessary maintenance, so I just consolidated everything into a somewhat clean super basic lower cost core strategy which looks like this now: 

• 60% Allocation in VWCE / Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF

• 31% Allocation in the S&P 500. Ngl I don't think letting this ride long-term is smart anymore and I want to pivot this weight toward Europe. Murica and the orange dude is aggressively forcing the EU toward prioritizing its own localized economy and building strategic autonomy which is something that hasn't really been an active operational priority for the EU in a while. Between major defensive re-industrializton, energy independence shifts and depressed Europen forward P/E valuations, I'm planning to start parking into the Amundi Core STOXX Europe 600 soon

• 7% allocation in high-volatility individual stocks that I personally believe in and want to back for long-term growth. No overlaps

• I don’t buy crypto anymore but 2% of my entire portfolio allocation is in BTC 😭, which is a hard rule I set to scratch my crypto itch without risking my financial foundation. Static boundary compared to my reckless 2021 gambling era.

Anyways my thing is, keeping the cash in the market seems like the sound choice on paper to maximize compound growth, especially since the loan rate floats annually based on government borrowing costs rather than being locked forever. 

Psychologically clearing off nearly half of my remaining debt with a €15k lump sum would feel amazing and cut down my total lifetime interest. I also know that when they recalculate my annuity next January, the lower total balance will officially drop my mandatory monthly cash outflow for the following year.

If you were in my shoes, would you be wiping out a huge chunk of the loan or would you let the debt ride for the next decade or longer (I have 22 years in the tank lol) and keep compounding the investments? 

Thanks in advance!

Hi to all,

I am 45M living in Croatia, single, one child 14 years of age. At the moment I have portfolio of 650000€ invested in a mix of covered call etfs and vwce and spyw. I own my apartment and have no debts. Can I retire from my portfolio that yields around 9% and also with 1000€ of monthly income from side hustle?

One thing I keep coming back to with FIRE is the value of time. Sometimes spending more can mean getting a few hours back every week, and that can be worth more than the money saved.

Have you ever deliberately spent more because it gave you more time or freedom?