u/Chidori1980

I am in the accumulation phase, 45M. I am nowhere near FIRE number and don't think can achieve it at all, but I want to be as close as possible to FI.

Situation:

Family with 2 kids( small kid and a teenager). Wife working part time and will continue to do so.

Total Portfolio is around 250k, main residence is not counted.

My point of this post, how do you prepare for bubble burst or at least side ways for a longer period (10years). I myself preaching to others in reddit about saving it for a longer time depends on your time horizon, standard answer. But seeing the stock up and down in the size of months of salary level, does it make you second guess if all in ETF or growing stock is always the best way? Bull market everyone okay with it, but when bear is roaring, how do you sleep at night?

I saw people with 3M net worth and imagine losing 1M in fortnight, how do you cope with it?

Surprisingly Spain is better than plenty of other European countries. https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/06/14/retirement-wealth-across-europe-which-countries-have-the-wealthiest-over-65s.

Not sure if I share correct Link when make the post

I want to sharing our situation.

I don’t think I can hit the RE in FIRE, and in position I can’t/don’t want to do extreme frugality.

Me and my wife (both 45) with 5- and 14-years kids. Living in Austria, so education and health cost is not the headache in general.

Family income net €6500/month, wife works part time. Salary structured to get 14x/year, so consider the bonus €13k/year.

Emergency fund 6 months expenses. Mortgage+insurance+utilities=€1450. Mortgage will be over in 4 years, mortgage budget afterwards will be used for bigger kid if she goes living in another city as university student. If not, half of it for her and half is for maintenance cost for housing(build in 2017, after 25 years you will need some bigger cost)

Car tax+insurance 110, diesel 90. All other insurances (private health for small kid, term life insurance for me and wife, travel insurance) 180.

Kids expenses 800(next September no need to pay kindergarten, minus 300).

Grocery 800, eating out 400.

Holiday saving 1000. Holiday is relatively expensive for family of four, 1 week holiday in aparthotel plus entertainment cost easily 3k without plane cost. If you fly it will add 2k easily. It is all holiday within EU.

Investment 1600, Bonus will be used to buy 1 ounce gold per year and the rest will be in investment.

Investment stock+ETF €190k, bonds €28k, gold €40k (per 15 May 2026).

In short, living cost €4830/ month, annual cost 58k.

Both of us working in automotive industry and the business is getting worse over time, more things transferred to Asia or eastern Europe. Germany just made the forecast that automotive industry will lose 225k job until 2035, and you can see every few months there are big companies close down the factories or slowly transfer things out. Company don’t want to hire anyone with 10+ years experience because of the cost. It will be getting tougher because we compete with everyone from EU.

Changing job is complicated, in the meaning of difficult to change industry, I am not EU citizens,  and so on.

How do you guys planning for FI if you are thinking of losing the job or how to do the estimation? I feel we don’t spend a lot of money (skipping holiday is must if I lost job ofc) and to do more frugality will be stressful.