Detailed Steps: 1. Maximizing Income in HCOL Areas: Start your journey by securing a high-paying job in a high-cost-of-living area. Aim for a total compensation (TC) between 100k-250k, depending on your lifestyle and frugality. This step is crucial for building a strong financial foundation quickly. 2. Fostering a Strong Saving Habit: Develop a robust saving plan. Your savings rate is a key determinant of how quickly you can transition to FIRE. Aim to live below your means while still enjoying your life. 3. Exploring LCOL Locations: Begin exploring low-cost-of-living locations. Spend time in various LCOL areas to find one or more that align with your lifestyle preferences. This step is about balancing quality of life with affordability. 4. Transitioning to Remote Work: Work towards gaining remote work permissions. This flexibility allows you to spend more time in your chosen LCOL locations, further reducing your living expenses and allowing you to learn more about those locations and your preferences among them. 5. Investing in Cash-Flow Assets: Channel your savings into assets that generate good cash flow. These could include real estate, e-commerce, online businesses, gas stations, or other investments that yield over 10% returns. Choose options that are more active (i.e. require more work from your side) than ETFs but yield higher returns and still align with your risk tolerance and interest. 6. Coasting Towards FIRE: Once your passive income is sufficient to support a coast FIRE lifestyle (one where you still need to work, but not that much thanks to other income sources), transition to a lower-stress, fully remote job, even if it pays less than your initial HCOL job. Continue to save and invest, but with less pressure. 7. Achieving Full FIRE: Reach the ultimate goal when your passive income covers all your expenses. At this point, you're financially independent and can pursue what brings you joy without financial constraints. Quantifying the Journey: - Income Goals: Aiming for a TC of 100k-300k USD is ideal. This range is broad enough to accommodate different lifestyles and saving goals. - LCOL Lifestyle Cost: An ideal LCOL location should allow for a comfortable/luxurious lifestyle for less than 4k USD per month. - Savings Thresholds: Accumulating 100k-250k in savings and investing in assets with a return of over 15% can set you up for coast FIRE. - Income During Coasting: A coast FIRE job bringing in 3k-6k per month after taxes can be sufficient during this phase. Additional Remarks: 1. Family Planning: Consider postponing having children until youâre fully FIREd, or at least coast-FIREd, as raising kids in HCOL areas while you are still in the accumulation phase can significantly impact this strategy. 2. Timeframe Expectations: Steps 1 to 6 could take between 3 to 6 years, while transitioning from coast FIRE to full FIRE might take another 3 to 6 years. 3. Career Progression: Achieving a salary in the 100k-250k range should be feasible within 3 years of focused career development. 4. Alternative FIRE Strategies: While this blueprint offers a harmonious approach to FIRE, there are other methods, such as focusing on career advancement to attain a high net worth and then investing in lower-risk assets like bonds. More info on / full article on https://theeuropeanengineer.substack.com/p/how-to-reach-fire-as-a-software-engineer
Step 1) Move to a prosperous country like the United States
Ain't reading all that
Just follow the bullet points and read the first few words for each. If you do this itâs like a 15-20 seconds read
Those salaries are very high for Europe, most wonât make that
Nit: vacationing in a LCOL area while maintaining residence in your HCOL won't save you any money, but good to get to know the place
Yup. You can also spend some time doing remote work in LCOL and while you wonât save much you can allow to be less frugal as compared to being all the time in HCOL
Didnât follow directions. Started and sold companies instead.
Savings Thresholds: Accumulating 100k-250k in savings and investing in assets with a return of over 15% can set you up for coast FIRE. What does this mean? Why this threshold? Donât you need 1M+ to get 4k/m of passive income? Also your guide should tell us how much to save each year
1M is full FIRE for 4k/m. Coast fire is when you have enough for investments to grow to full fire eventually, but you still need to work to cover living expenses.
Coast FIRE: there's a link in the article to a full-definition, but what I meant with this is that you don't really need a full-time/high paying job at this point since you already have some passive income from your assets, but you still need some income from work. Math: 15% of 100k-250k is 15k-37.5k yearly income. Which should be enough to coast fire in LCOL. >Also your guide should tell us how much to save each year noted, maybe i can create some content diving deeper into this (although you can also run the math yourself depending on how quickly you want to go through the plan's steps).
Which European country would accept you if youâre not white and donât speak the language? Assuming you get residence permitâŚ
Most. Germany is facing a labor shortage at the moment
You forgot Step 0: Be ethnically native to the country
Step -1: get dual citizenship at birth
Not really necessary. Immigration exists. If you have EU citizenship you came move everywhere in Europe. If you donât, itâs more difficult but still possible
Overall I think this is good stuff, thanks for sharing! But Iâm confused, why is the title related to âEuropeâ but the salary mentioned is in USD? What salary paid in Euros would it take to achieve this plan, factoring in a realistic European salary? Are you in Europe or the U.S? Last question, what LCOL areas do you recommend?
- currency is USD cause is the worldâs reserve currency (in Europe there are many currencies too itâs not just euro) - what salary -> the article goes a bit into details but basically any salary that lets you save 20k/30k+ per year - Iâm in Switzerland - LCOL area depends on what you value: southern Europe if you like sub is a good choice, turkey is an interesting option and dirt cheap, Central Europe also offers a lot of value for money (Serbia, Poland, Romania in particular)
Ok Rajesh , now catch BMTC 335E city bus and reach home đ
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