FIRE and ZNMD(Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara) have a very close link and this movie was released about 15 years ago and those of us who were working in our jobs at that time and were inclined towards FIRE would have naturally been able to relate with Hrithik Roshan's character.

The iconic dialogue "Chalis saal tak note chaapo fir aish karo".

So I followed that path and achieved financial independence. But another important character in that movie that of Abhay Deol, didnt really register into me. Until now.

Remember, that scene where Kalki Koechin gate crashes into their trip and in the car she tells Abhay Deol. "Shaadi ke baad tum kahan aise boys trip par jaoge?" And at that moment both Farhan and Hrithik look at each other shocked. Eventually Abhay Deol calls off the wedding.

Now, most of us in India, are mostly family oriented, marry, have kids, most of our life is a struggle between work and life balance. But even that life, we are actually not living for ourselves but for our family. Weekends go on in spending time with family. Vacations we take are family vacations.

But the individual 'I', what about him/her? What about personal hobbies, taking time for yourself, like going on a boys/girls only trip etc? I am part of Bangalore Bikers group and majority like 99% are bachelors in the 20s. Most bachelors in India enjoy riding their bikes, but then society traps you into upgrading to a car. Suddenly the car is about the family, taking your family out on weekends, family vacations etc. All aspirations suddenly become family aspirations rather than individual pursuits.

I think now I relate to what Bachelor Python and Traveller_for_life keep saying about not succumbing to societal pressure/not marrying/not having kids etc

But essentially what they mean is to activate the Abhay Deol character of ZNMD and not just focus of the Hrithik Roshan's character :)

Cheers :)

Edit: In the comments, many people are thinking I am against marrying or having kids now. Nope that's not the point.

Abhay Deol wasn't against marrying. He was against Kalki becoming totally dependent on him and expecting to give 100% of his time to her.

Maybe this point didn't come across clearly, let me add it to the main post.

Hi all,

I am looking to buy a used Dominar 400. If anyone of you is selling, let me know

Cheers!

Hello guys,

I have been riding the Avenger 220 for last 1 year and I mostly do weekend rides around Bangalore 200-250kms and maybe couple of longer rides in a year. The avenger is good, but I want to try something more powerful and see if my riding experience improves.

I am not a fan of the retro bikes of RE or Triumph. I am attracted to the Dominar 400 since it is known for its touring capabilities and it looks awesome too.

I am looking to go the used bike route because it is likely I will get bored of it in a year and want to change to something else again, so to minimise the depreciation.

My question is should I stick to the UG model with DOHC or whether the 2017-2019 original SOHC model is also a worthy upgrade from the Avenger?

I am also a bit concerned about the weight, I am sure I won't be able to take it for offroading, because if I drop it I won't be able to lift it. My height is only 5ft 5.5 inch. So I am curious if I can practically manage this bike.

Thanks in advance

As a FIRE aspirant I was cut throat optimizer in all financial decisions. Ultimately every purchase I did became a financial decision first and a consumption decision later.

Whether it is buying groceries or discretion items or investing, the first question I would ask is, is this financially worth it, or is it value for money. All this was towards the goal of accumulation towards financial independence and early retirement.

Even when it came to investing, I have optimized to keep it passive and spend the least of my effort.

Now I am reached the stage where the pursuit of FIRE has come to an end. I have reached the destination. Now I don't know what to do.

For someone who spent all life optimizing money decisions, my life is already optimized and I have made more than enough money to sustain myself. I never thought about what I should spend the money on other than the usual non discretionary items. Like groceries, fuel etc

I am not a big travel person. I like to go on weekend bike rides. We have our own house, we have our cars and bikes. So all the big ticket purchases are done. So I don't know what to spend money on.

I am not someone who enjoys buying a farmland and do farming or buying a homestay and host people etc I prefer keeping all my assets as financial. So that leaves me with a surplus of both time and money and I don't know what to do with both of them.

Most people either spend time to earn money or spend money to kill time. I don't need the former and I don't know how to do the later. It is a wierd conundrum.

If you are in early 20s and you are coming here to take inspiration for FIRE from the previous generation who have done it, I think you are going to be disappointed. I belong to the previous generation and were incredibly lucky because when we came of age, India got the IT boom and we turned from being a poor country to relatively middle income country and we enjoyed not just the jobs growth, but also the asset growth and from here on the next 25 years are not going to be anywhere close to how the previous 25 years were. People like Saurabh Mukherjea have spoken about this. But this is visible in plain sight.

Lets discuss this point by point.

1)The IT boom: So we enjoyed the meat of the IT boom and jobs outsourcing. Costs were low in India and we had engineering colleges mushrooming and our starting salaries in early 2000s were higher than our parents retirement salaries. If you saw the old Amitabh Bachchan movies, you will notice, offices in the previous century were mostly desks with a huge stack of files and we our generation heralded the Windows PC 98, lotus notes, MS Office 97 etc, we were the pioneers of that boom and we were talking to clients in the US, this was incredible, our parents couldnt understand what we were doing. For the 1st time ever, we lived like global citizens, even though physically we were in Bangalore. We were the first generation who had internet broadband at home and home PCs too.

2)The onsite opportunity: Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Satyam etc so called WITCH companies now, were our golden ticket to the land of milk and honey. Just 1yr experience and we could move onsite. It was that easy. Those who didnt get US, would get Australia, UK or Singapore and we would look at these countries as consolation prize. The savings we could make in these countries was a fortune, we could remit the dollars saved in couple of months and buy a 30X40 site in Bangalore.

3)Asset prices: were quite cheap in places like Bangalore and easily accessible. Even people from non IT made a fortune just by leveraging the property markets. Indian economy went from relatively unorganized to now formalized as per global standards. We reaped the subsequent runup in asset prices in the financial markets too.

4)Social media distraction: Thank God we didnt have the social media distractions, we didnt have to buy 1L rupee iphone or 20L Thar or go on an overseas vacation because everyone is doing that on Instragram. Life was far more relaxed and peaceful.

Now think about this if you are in early 20s, the odds are completely stacked against you to even have a normal career, leave alone FIRE. As Saurabh Mukherjea says, things look very bleak for the next generation. You cannot follow the playbook that our generation followed. Still doing the same engineering course and then hoping to make it in IT, will not work. You have to think different. Think about the areas where AI cannot enter. IT will be mostly jobs where you need humans, so trades will do well. Dont spend a bomb on college degree or even worse overseas degree. Instead take up trades that are in demand overseas in developed countries, do those courses and move abroad if possible.

Cheers!

I understand the categories of FIRE is mostly based on spending quantum;

Lean

Coast

Regular

Fat

However, what I find more interesting and what isn't discussed enough here is

Depleting portfolio

Perpetual portfolio

This sub mostly talks about SWR for the depleting portfolio, the 4% rule or 3% I.e. 35X. However if you extend it slightly more to 2% rule or 1% rule I.e. 80-100X you get to perpetual portfolio.

Now, we need to make a distinction here, most people at this stage would go, "oh you will never retire", you are in the "wealth accumulation game". That's not what I am saying. If you have brought children into this world and you are providing for their education and wedding couple of crores like what is common among Indian FIRE discussion, why not take it a step further and get to generational wealth creation.

Generational wealth as a term sounds fancy, we think about people like Ambani or business families where the business is passed down from one generation to the next. But it doesn't have to be that dramatic.

Legacy planning and generational wealth can be done even with quantum as low at 10Cr which is not extreme now in this sub. As long as you stick to 1-2% SWR. I.e. expenses of lean FIRE with a networth of regular FIRE gets you to a generational wealth corpus.

In this age of AI disruption, the next generation kids don't have the same awesome opportunities that we had 20 years ago, we could move abroad with average skills and mint money. We were a lucky generation who enjoyed the meat of the IT boom in India from late 90s to until 2023, when chatgpt was launched.

Now when I see in my close family, the people who have established business, their kids don't slog in corporates, they do degree/mba and then join family business.

Now as a perpetual portfolio creator, you can let your kids skip the rat race and find their passion regardless of whether that will earn them a living. Most kids I feel will find something of their liking. They don't need to follow our boring path of engineering and medical. They can do anything they are interested in for example start farming right away instead of burning out in IT first, and your perpetual portfolio can help fund their ventures.

We never see kids of generational wealth creators slogging in an average corporate. Their parents create pseudo businesses for their kids for example Anant Ambani got Vantara. His brother too didn't slog, got a top position. Same case for Narayan Murthy's kids. Their kids careers are taken care of by their parents and you will never see them in ordinary slogging careers.

This is my thought process as I have 1 daughter and I don't plan to push here into the rat race I myself hated. Curious about your thoughts.

Cheers!

My current organization couple of years ago migrated from SQL server to snowflake and I noticed in some of the documentation, they have mentioned SQL Server as legacy technology.

I started working in SQL server some 20 years ago and some of the developers in our team are cloud first developers and they find it so difficult to navigate SQL server management studio and they ask me questions like is there timetravel feature in SQL server and can we see what data was there 10 mins back. I was totally dumbfounded when I heard that question, because I had never come across such a feature. Apparently snowflake has this. So I am curious is SQL server now really considered as legacy technology?

I joined the BI/DW bandwagon around 2006/07 when it was hot and the only skill I could easily acquire was SQL and PL/SQL. Prior to that I tried my hand at programming C/C++ and that drove me mad and had given up on career in software. However, thanks to MSBI GUI based SSIS I found it easy to get a break through. In couple of years I was given a project on SSAS and learnt MDX and found that to be very interesting and became quite decent at it. I read the original book by Mosha Pasumansky tuples, sets etc and really liked it and I noticed most people found SSAS difficult to understand, but to me it came more naturally and suddenly I was good at something. So I had come far away from the person who hated IT.

Then over the next 15 years I slacked and completely missed the big data, cloud bandwagon and focussed solely on financial independence and took up work that was not related to tech and not interesting, but paid well.

Last year I achieved financial independence and quit my job and took a break. But after trying out various hobbies, I got bored and started looking for a job. Lo and behold I got an offer as an SSAS developer! It is so nostalgic to work again in SSAS. All my peers are now big shot Engineering managers and Directors etc and when I tell them I am working on SSAS we recall the good old times.

Now there isn't much of work on SSAS in my company, it is a matured product and very little enhancement or changes. So again I am slacking. Our tech stack includes snowflake and Matillion etl and the front end is pyramid analytics. The semantic layer is SSAS and I am the only person who knows SSAS, which I find funny.

My manager wants to replace SSAS and asked me to do a PoC on Tabular to replace SSAS and I did the PoC and was able to recreate the dimension hierarchies and add all the fact tables as partitions and match the base measures. However, the cube has lots and lots of calculated dimension members which is very difficult to recreate in Tabular as tabular is too simple, like excel

The architect in our company suggested that all the calculated dimension members be persisted in the snowflake and then the tabular model becomes easy.

So that's the status as of now. My job is safe as long as we migrate out of SSAS and that could take a year atleast.

Since I am financially independent I am not so worried about losing my job, but I love SSAS and really wish it would live on. It was the only thing that I would interesting and was good at, in my otherwise boring IT career.

I am curious, are you guys really passionate about your job or are you guys just keep upgrading your skills for the fear of jobloss?

A lot of NRIs plan for FIRE and R2I(return to India) for various reasons. But general theme is visa issues, aging parents, proximity to family.

Being NRI accelerates FIRE potential because of higher potential savings rate. Hence you see a lot of NRI posts here about people wanting to FIRE.

However, this is a case of 2 double edged swords and the potential for disappointment is double for such NRIs returning back.

As an NRI who has returned back to Bangalore after working overseas for 16 years, when I interact with resident Indians who never went overseas, almost everyone says this "Dur ke dhol suhane" or translated in English, grass is greener on the other side. So people who have never been abroad live in India totally in bliss because they havent experienced the 1st world comforts.

But as an NRI who gives up your overseas life and also gives up your identity that your job gave you, you are losing much more than what a resident Indian does.

Hence I call it 2 double edge swords, on the positive side, FIRE is much easier to achieve, double the speed of what a resident Indian will take. At the same time, the potential for disappointment, if things dont go according to plan is also double compared to what a resident Indian would face.

This is one of the reasons, I kept pushing myself much longer even though I could have moved back and FIREd a lot earlier.

A lot of NRIs plan for FIRE and R2I(return to India) for various reasons. But general theme is visa issues, aging parents, proximity to family.

Being NRI accelerates FIRE potential because of higher potential savings rate. Hence you see a lot of NRI posts here about people wanting to FIRE.

However, this is a case of 2 double edged swords and the potential for disappointment is double for such NRIs returning back.

As an NRI who has returned back to Bangalore after working overseas for 16 years, when I interact with resident Indians who never went overseas, almost everyone says this "Dur ke dhol suhane" or translated in English, grass is greener on the other side. So people who have never been abroad live in India totally in bliss because they havent experienced the 1st world comforts.

But as an NRI who gives up your overseas life and also gives up your identity that your job gave you, you are losing much more than what a resident Indian does.

Hence I call it 2 double edge swords, on the positive side, FIRE is much easier to achieve, double the speed of what a resident Indian will take. At the same time, the potential for disappointment, if things dont go according to plan is also double compared to what a resident Indian would face.

This is one of the reasons, I kept pushing myself much longer even though I could have moved back and FIREd a lot earlier.

I have reached a stage where if 1cr disappears from my networth, it wont make any impact in my life. I mean think about it 1Cr is a still such a huge huge aspirational number for 99% of Indians, yet for those who have reached the end of this FIRE journey, it is a meaningless number.

I am still the same person I was, when my networth was 10L. My money habits are the same. If I go back to the year 2009 when my networth was 10L if I observe my spending habits, if anything, I am spending less and not more. In 2009, I would buy a large pizza without thinking too much. But today, I went to buy a large pizza and when the store told me they dont have any offers, take it or leave it, I said I will leave. I would rather have awesome chicken biryani rather than pizza, which cost half of the large pizza.

So I realized, the pleasure and fun is in the optimization of money and not in the absolute amount of money. The amount of money I have made, I wont be able to spend in my lifetime, that is very clear as my annual withdrawal rate is about 1% of my networth.

So those of you who are still working to amass large networths, ask yourself or realize this early that you are not going to spend it. So if that journey of amassing wealth is at the cost of your happiness or health, stop it, it is not worth it.

Cheers!

The place I work has Oracle Fusion cloud ERP. A new project to implement Oracle Fusion Data Intelligence is coming up.

My manager asked me if I wam interested. I have worked in MSBI very long ago. I did a bit of research on FDI and it looks interesting. Should I take this up? I am curious if you guys have worked on this tech.

The place I work has Oracle Fusion cloud ERP. A new project to implement Oracle Fusion Data Intelligence is coming up.

My manager asked me if I wam interested. I have worked in MSBI very long ago. I did a bit of research on FDI and it looks interesting. Should I take this up? I am curious if you guys have worked on this tech.

I understand there is a strict requirement for declaration of all foreign accounts, including brokerage, savings, wallets, insurance policies etc

However, there seems to be a disconnect between the real world and this ideal world. I know so many Indian techies who have gone abroad on short stints, long stints etc had accounts opened and then came back to India, left their accounts with zero balance assuming nothing else needs to be done. None of them are declaring their accounts and have no idea that they have account also.

Millions of such people exist. So I dont understand this disconnect, we are expected to declare yet most dont.

Similarly I know people who do FNO trading, foreign stocks trading using Indmoney etc yet noone declaring.

Please help me resolve this disconnect.

One aspect of FIRE that I don't see discussed enough is the role of luck in shaping not just our outcomes, but our relationship with work itself.

Most people will probably work in only 4–5 companies throughout their careers. Looking back, how much of where we ended up was actually the result of deliberate planning, and how much was simply timing and circumstance?

Consider a few examples:

• Graduating during a boom versus during a recession.
• Getting an exceptional manager early in your career versus a micromanager who makes every day miserable.
• Landing in a high-growth company with interesting work versus a stagnant organization.
• Having the flexibility to relocate abroad and benefit from geo-arbitrage versus having family or personal constraints that make it impossible.
• Joining a company just before a major growth phase versus just after it.

These experiences can have a profound impact on how we view our careers.

Imagine two equally capable people. One graduates into a strong job market, joins a company with a healthy culture, gets supportive managers, works on interesting projects, and sees steady career growth. Work becomes engaging, rewarding, and intellectually stimulating. Such a person may never feel a strong desire to retire early because they genuinely enjoy what they do.

Now imagine someone who graduates during a downturn, ends up in a toxic workplace, reports to poor managers, and spends years dealing with bureaucracy and office politics. For them, FIRE may not just be about financial independence—it becomes an escape from an unpleasant work experience.

This makes me wonder whether our attitudes toward FIRE are influenced by factors far beyond savings rates and investment returns. Perhaps some of the strongest FIRE advocates aren't simply people who value freedom more, but people who happened to have worse experiences with work. Likewise, some people who have little interest in FIRE may not be workaholics at all—they may simply have been fortunate enough to find careers and workplaces they genuinely enjoy.

If we had all been dealt a different set of cards—different managers, different companies, different economic cycles—would our views on career and FIRE be completely different today?

Curious to hear what others think.

Excluding people who climbed up the ladder and became managers/directors. What is the median age of people in your workplace who actually do the work?

I see most posts here are from 20 somethings. I am myself 46 and I am an individual contributor who stopped upskilling 15 years ago, and slacked away. so basically I am earning what a 30 year old should be earning in Bangalore. I focussed on financial independence by moving to Singapore and using geographical arbitrage.

Now back in Bangalore doing what I already learnt 15 years ago(SQL Server business Intelligence) without the ambition to grow. I wonder if such people exist in Indian work places.

Cheers!

Hello guys,

I just filed my taxes for this year and I noticed that the latest version of the AIS utility has a bug.

If you have debt mutual funds that were bought before Apr 2023 and you sold them last year, long term capital gains tax applies @ 12.5%, without indexation.

However, when you click the button "Compute Capital Gains tax", the cost of acquisition figure for some reason uses indexation and the amount is higher which makes the capital gain lower.

It is better not to use the AIS compute capital gains feature, instead use the raw data and calculate it yourself. The raw data has both "cost of acquisition with indexation" and cost of acquisition without indexation". You need to use the later figure.

disclaimer: Not a CA, just a DIY income tax enthusiast.

Cheers!

There’s a lot of hype around FIRE, especially given the size of this community and the number of people in their early 20s who are drawn to the idea.

I wanted to share a few thoughts on separating the hype from the reality.

Time is more valuable than money

This is probably the most common argument made by FIRE advocates. But is it reality or hype? In my view, it leans more toward hype.

The reason is simple: I haven’t seen many people dramatically change their lives after achieving FIRE. If time is truly the scarcest and most valuable resource, what exactly are people doing differently once they have an abundance of it?

Most people are still constrained by the same factors—family responsibilities, children, social obligations, and so on. They continue operating within the same circle as before. Sure, they may spend more time with family or dedicate extra hours to hobbies, but I would have expected something more transformative.

After all, the idea is that you’ve completely freed yourself from corporate constraints. With all that freedom, wouldn’t you move to a different part of the world, pursue a radically different lifestyle, or take on entirely new challenges? Yet I rarely see that happening.

A few extra international trips or longer vacations— is that really the extent of it?

Even among people who are single and relatively unconstrained, the post-FIRE lifestyle often seems to consist of moving to a Tier-2 city and managing daily life at a slower pace. That’s perfectly fine, but it’s a far cry from the way FIRE is sometimes marketed. The narrative often makes it sound like you’ll quit your job, move to Brazil, and reinvent your life overnight. 😄

Personally, I know only one FIRE’d couple who made a truly significant change by relocating to Thailand. Their children were independent, and having EU passports likely made the transition much easier. For most people with Indian passports, however, life after FIRE is unlikely to look dramatically different.

That’s why I think that while you’re still young, you may be better off actively pursuing what you genuinely love. Explore the world, try living abroad, build meaningful friendships, and, if it aligns with your goals, settle in a country that offers greater mobility and opportunities. In many cases, that path may provide a richer life experience than postponing everything in pursuit of FIRE.

I need to call this out. I was invested in Kotak debt hybrid fund because it was the only decent option apart from PPFAS Conservative Hybrid fund.

I invested exactly 1 year ago. They were running a very high duration for the debt component which was 75% of the portfolio. The average maturity was around 18years.

I was betting on yields falling as india bonds were just included in the global bond index.

However yields kept rising relentlessly and the fund underperformed, which is fine. I took a bet and I was okay with the consequence.

But here is what Kotak did. Right at the worst time in the month of APR 2026, during the iran war when bond yields had hit the peak, the fund Managers capitulated and cut their duration all the way down to 7 years!

This is like crystallizing the losses. There is no way now to recover the losses even if yields falling from here.

I was so pissed off, I moved the entire allocation to ICICI all seasons bond fund. This seems to be much more predictable in terms of their moves.