I've moved this post series to my own blog now. You can find it here. https://cubicledog.substack.com/p/ive-started-my-fire-journey-in-india Blind Post Links: (Retaining the links so all the valuable comments are not lost) Part 1: https://www.teamblind.com/post/sqhzju14 Part 2: https://www.teamblind.com/post/ShzXbLBN Part 3: https://www.teamblind.com/post/4j3vmX8N One Year Update: https://www.teamblind.com/post/ak7GJVsu
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Excellent read. Love the details you share. Subscribed to your blog and thanks again for sharing
For outdoors do you find any hiking trails or even common gardens in Bangalore accessible? I am in Southern California and spoiled with outdoors access to parks , trails and I like open spaces more than city skylines in general and and freaking about this aspect before you mentioned here and your observations kind of resonated with me. Also for kid do you find a living in high rise with common garden where kids play in the evening would work for kids compared to US where you have to arrange playdate. Did you find it any better in Bangalore in that regard? in regards to age, family and YOE I am in same timeline as you and thinking of life in Bangalore or Hyderabad..great writing btw
Thanks!
Your active outdoor life will get tossed out of the window in Indian mega cities. I can't speak for all cities, but in Bangalore, you can forget about open spaces. There are very few parks that are spacious and well maintained. Cubbon Park is awesome. Lalbagh is pretty good too. Most other urban parks are tiny and right beside busy roads and are a disappointment. And again, getting to Cubbon Park or Lalbagh in the city traffic is a hassle, so you can't visit frequently depending on where you live. For trails and hikes, you'll have to drive to the outskirts of the city which again depending on traffic could be a hassle. Not too many clean lakes. Biking, street-running, a nice picnic, long peaceful walks all become hard to enjoy in this crowded, trafficy city. So yeah, you'll have to make quite a compromise on outdoor life here. I'm afraid these factors might eventually break me and I might move out but I don't know where. I don't wanna move to my native town, it's just another shithole, just with the bonus of less traffic. Neither do I wanna move to some new place in India where I don't speak the local language or where I don't know anyone. Instead of moving to a new place in India and feel lonely there, I might as well find a chill job and move to Europe and be lonely there but at least enjoy a great outdoor life. So I'm definitely a little confused about what I wanna do in the long term. Weighing my options 😰 About your second question on kids, living in a high rise apartment community has been nice since every evening, all the apartment kids get together and play. No concept of play dates here. Everything is spontaneous and ad-hoc. Kids just go to one another's houses on a whim. It's nicer that way, rather than playdates and other formalities we see in western cultures.
Hello sir! I came to the States a few months ago and even I am planning to return back to India in a few years(7-8). Would you suggest investing in HSA and 401k over here?
I would definitely invest in 401K and HSA if I were you. 7-8 years is a very long time horizon and you might end up changing your plans about returning and just settle down in the USA. So missing out on contributing to retirement accounts for that many years might not be financially optimal. There are people however that argue against putting money into 401k if you are sure about staying in the US only for a short time. For your time frame, I'd put money into 401k.
Can I DM you?
Sure. If your questions are generic and not too personal, then you could post it here too.
Its related to the blog post you posted about resetting your cost basis and effectively making your capital gains in US to zero! - India tax liability - If I understood correctly, if you have been a NR for last 9/10 years OR if you have stayed in India for less than 729 days in last 7 years you get RNOR. India in this case wont tax me on income generated in US. - US - if you have stayed less than 183 days in last 3 years based on - (31 days for current year + 1/3 of the days for year-1 + 1/6 of the days for year-2). I would be considered NR and US wont tax my capital gains. Is my understanding correct? So If I move to India in first week of Feb (lets say in 2023). And stayed completely in US in 2022 and 2021 = 31 days in 2023 + 365/3 + 365/6 = 212 days. In order to keep this number under 183, I would have to spend time outside of US in 2022 and 2021. Just trying to gauge if I need to plan this 2-3 years in advance. Thanks again for sharing your story!
How are you factoring increasing education cost into your long term plan? Is the monthly expense going to remain at 50k or go up?
Unless there's a life-style downgrade, the expenses will definitely go up in lockstep with inflation. So whatever expenses I talk about at a given point in time has to be adjusted for inflation in the future. We'll be fine with increasing expenses as long as our net worth (100% stocks) grows and stays ahead of inflation in the long run.
Great post. I binge-read all your earlier posts. One thing I don't see in your posts is estate tax planning. As per IRS link below, anything above $60k US-situs assets comes under estate tax purview for non residents. I believe retirement, HSA accounts are treated as US-situs but I don't know if taxable brokerage (fidelity) is treated as US-situs. If that is the case, while you have RNOR status, you may want to withdraw your brokerage investments and reinvest them back in US as Indian citizen. There are several fintechs available in India that lets you invest in US stocks from India. This way you reduce the networth that comes under estate tax purview. https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/estate-tax-for-nonresidents-not-citizens-of-the-united-states Btw, did you consult Galactic Advisors for any tax advice? If so, please share us how helpful they are and their fees. And please share with us the term and health insurance coverage details you may have taken in India.
Thank you for the inputs! I'm terribly ignorant about estate tax planning and haven't touched that topic at all. I know I have to get to it much sooner rather than later because without me around, my family might get into money troubles because of their financial inexperience. I better get started looking into this :) I haven't consulted Galactic or any other financial advisor because other than estate planning, everything else seems to be DIY-friendly. >> please share with us the term and health insurance coverage details you may have taken in India. I'm embarrassed again to admit that this is another thing I've been procrastinating on. I haven't bought any health or life insurance for myself or the family yet. Part of the reason for my indifference is that health care in India is affordable (relative to our NW). But it still isn't very smart on my part to be without these coverages. I plan on getting these coverages sometime before this year ends.
The advice I hear is to get health insurance via broker, term insurance you can get on your own. Talk to agents at ditto insurance, policy bazaar - this will help with your search. I personally talked to ditto and found their advise helpful.
Was Bangalore your first choice ? Why not goa/ Simla/ Darjeeling/ Ooty etc …
All my family is in Bangalore and I grew up here. To be honest, I don't see the point in living in a new city in India where I have no family. That experience then becomes identical to living abroad. I might then as well move back to the first world.
50k is too low for bangalore ? I assume you don’t rent ? Do you goto malls and do shopping ? Movies ? Travel to resorts ?
50k is only for basic necessities like groceries, utilities, home maintenance expenses (no mortgage/rent. House paid off), kid's education, etc. All other discretionary expenses such as travel, shopping, restaurants and entertainment are separate.
I see. You should give overall number which looks like 1 lakh per month. Still on the lower side coz I hear 2 lakhs now a days per month for a family with 2 kids in bangalore living upper middle class lifestyle
Is it worth to replace your work stress with financial stress and continuously looking at NW and expenses? Even though you have enough but it’s more like mind game
It definitely takes a lot of conviction and maturity to manage this mind game without going insane. We're generally frugal and have been managing our mental-wellbeing quite well. I don't check my investment portfolio and NW everyday and try to discipline myself to only take a look at these numbers during the weekend. As long as our spending is under $30,000 a year, I won't think twice about spending on our needs and wants. We're currently way too much under that budget and I actually want us to splurge more on our top two indulgances - travel and eating out. (A lame brag insert here lol - We're going on a one-week vacation to Maldives this September.) There are many FIRE types out there. FatFIRE, LeanFIRE, CoastFIRE, BaristaFIRE and whatnot. I am adding a new type to this list - "LoserFIRE". This is where your life begins to revolve around obsessive monitoring of NW, tracking every silly expense, endless bargain-hunting, picking the cheapest product/service while compromising on quality, etc. FIRE isn't worth it if this is what your life then becomes.
Maldive vacation sounds great! However my 2c you may want to keep expenses low for first 5 years than your target expenses due to sequence of return risk. For me I am thinking about Coast Fire with slightly higher corpus because can’t manage financial stress during long market downturn.
Somewhere in this great text of yours, did you mention what was your age?
Updated the post with my age in the very first paragraph.