u/sheepguy13

Hi guys – I've been a long-time FIRE advocate but casually, whereas now I'm taking it more seriously.

I'm in my mid 30s and live with my wife and one child.

• We own our apartment and pay a mortgage of 2,500e per month.
• We spend another 2,500e monthly on core expenses including Hausgeld, all bills, groceries, eating out, etc.
• We "pay each other" 750e per month for personal spending.
• We budget 1,000e per month for travel / one-off or unexpected expenses.

This means our annual expenses is approx. 90,000e. We're high earners and can still invest 3-4,000e per month in ETFs. We already have 400,000 invested.

I've done the calculations multiple times and I keep getting the same answer. Depending on future returns, we could fully FIRE with 1.3m (in today's money) in 2036-2038 adjusted for inflation if I consider the following:

• Our mortgage is paid off in 2050 reducing our annual spend by ~30,000e per year (assuming rates are similar in the future, I have to make some assumptions).
• To be conservative, I'll assume we both receive 1,000e state pension from late 60s (even though it will likely be more). This also gives us 24,000e additional income per year.

Assuming a real return of 6% (inflation adjusted), am I thinking about this in the right way? I haven't factored in health insurance but my understanding is we'd pay the statutory minimum (we're both publicly insured).

I'm looking for a sanity check as I assume I've messed up something. I understand a real return of 6% is not guaranteed. I've also done calculations for a 4.5% return and it pushes FIRE out by 2-3 years, which is fine.

Hi all, long-time lurker but I've never posted. I've been casually thinking about and planning for FIRE for a few years, but never took it seriously. Now I am.

My wife and I live in a big German city. We're high earners (100k+ each), have one child, and bought our apartment with 500k remaining on the mortgage with 3.5% interest rate fixed for 10 years. We have 400k invested in ETFs and keep a few months of cash emergency fund.

I've gone back and forth with ChatGPT planning for FIRE and comparing different scenarios, such as barista FIRE vs full FIRE. It's always appealed strongly to me to have a mortgage-free home.

Our monthly core spend including mortgage is €5k. We pay ourselves €750 each as personal spend money, try to budget maybe €600-1k per month for travel and one-off costs throughout the year. This usually leaves us with €3k-3.5 to invest monthly, which we put in FTSE all world.

We could theoretically sell off ETFs in 8 years when our fixed period ends and may off the mortgage. I understand that if rates are similar in 8 years, this may not make sense on paper as our ETFs would generate more return than the €2,468 saved on monthly mortgage payments.

As I write this I realise I may not have a specific enough question that justifies good responses. But I'm struggling so any help I'd appreciate. Even resources to point me towards would help.

If the mortgage-free home is important mentally, should we do that? I have a lot anxiety about AI replacing my job in 5-10 years, so should I focus our family on full FIRE? Or barista FIRE as early as possible?

One of us is Irish so we've considered moving back to the Ireland countryside. We could sell our apartment in 8 years and buy a mortgage-free home in Ireland with enough ETFs left so only one of us had to work.