Hello All

So, income upto 12 lacs is non taxable.

We know people who retire will have multiple sources of income. Interest, dividend, real estate rent, LTCG/STCG.

So, say if there is income upto 8 lacs from interest/dividends/rent and a) 4 lacs from STCG. b) 4 lacs from LTCG c) Mix of a and b

Will there be any tax, any other ways to minimise taxes?

I feel this overall is a great news, if both husband and wife both have incomes. Then even 20-24 lacs is non taxable which is a good enough number for FIRE in India annually.

Also, I think Debt oriented or debt hybrid mutual funds or international funds would be really good, if one can chalk out 9-10 or more percent gains in those and virtually be treated as debt income upto 12 lacs. I think for LTCG, other than 1.25 lacs limit, even those earning less than 12 lacs will pay tax.

Need to figure out new bucket strategies it seems.

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Nothing much to say, I am just happy that I was able to hit it so early into my career 😁

Breakdown-

Mutual Funds - 15.5L

ESOPs - 21.6L

Investment property flat - 59.5L

EPF - 1.05L

Gold - 0.5L

Cash - 2L

About myself- I graduated in 2021 from a tier 1 college and am into IT.

Getting till 1M USD was a long time goal for me. And it just suddenly happened one day. I kept my money invested in the market. I didn't do anything crazy. S&P 500, Russell 2000 and some bond Index. A very basic 3 fund portfolio. No crazy options play. No wolf of wall street non-sense.

Once I hit 1.2M I started doing some Monte Carlo analysis to see if I can retire.

I am single. 33 years old. I have no intentions of getting married. I have traveled a lot. To European & Asian countries. Even within US I have traveled a lot. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I have no vices. I am also fortunate that my parents are not financially reliant on me for anything.

I estimate my monthly expenses to be around 50K to 60K tops. I can comfortably meet those expenses with my money. I also have a fully paid off apartment in Hyderabad.

Now if I had 10M instead of 1.2M. I can do the same Monte Carlo analysis and come to the conclusion that I can spend 6 Lakhs a month comfortably, without worrying about running out of money.

But the question is what the hell would I do with 6L per month? I am not going to eat at Taj every day because I have surplus money. I will still eat Masala Dosa at the road side stall.

I am not going to buy a Rolls Royce. I am not going to buy a fancy Villa. I am not going to travel to Paris every month. I have been to Paris once and it was enough. Even if I go to Paris again, I won't fly first class. I will probably spend 3K USD on the whole trip at most. Like I did the first time.

Also if I retire, I will retire in India. That's non-negotiable for me. When I die, I want to die in Hyderabad.

I don't have a notion of a chubby fire or a fat fire. Money doesn't buy me happiness the way it does for a lot of people.

The only thing that I would change if I had 10 million USD instead of 1.2 million USD is the fact that there is 100% chance that I won't have to struggle for money in this lifetime. The 96% or 98% I am seeing in my Monte Carlo Analysis would become 100%.

But here's the thing though. If I retire today, firstly I will be less miserable than I am right now. That itself is a huge win for me. The last 33 years of my life I have been miserable as hell. Whatever Neurodivergence bullshit that I am grappling with in my life is making it incredibly difficult for me to fit into society. Being able to withdraw from the society to a life of solitude would be amazing. If I wait 10 years to score a perfect 100% on Monte Carlo, there is a good chance that I might not be as healthy as I am right now at 43. At that point seeing a perfect 100% on Monte Carlo would be meaningless to me.

Secondly, I am pretty confident that if I work alone, I can at least make 800K in the next 10 years. I am reasonably strong programmer. With 2M I can be 100% confident I won't run out of money. And even if earning money is not the objective, I would be still building apps or websites. There is nothing I enjoy in this world more than programming. Even if I had 100M I wouldn't stop programming.

So at this point, it is patently obvious to me what I need to do in life.

Hey all,

So majority of this post is motivated by FIndia youtube channel, I recently came across them and their content was pretty good. Now since the credit is given where credit was due the actual problem.

Recently in one of the posts I saw someone mentioned that most of the FIRE corpus calculations don't include taxes and since there is a good chance that LTCG taxes will go up in India that could eat up into our corpus. That got me thinking LTCG today is 12.5% and it could keep growing till god knows what number. LTCG in US is 20% but crazy high in some EU countries.

Prior to ChatGPT I was hoping my expenses to be around 18L per year with separate buckets for all major expenses. So a 30X corpus would be around 5.4 Cr and 40X corpus would be around 7.2 Cr. My corpus was larger than that so I thought that I have a huge cushion and may be I am chubby fire :P.

Now after seeing some video on youtube from FIndia channel I notice he recommends around 47X corpus. Honestly that felt kind of high to me, I did use his calculator but I couldn't see the code so I thought may be he made a mistake, clearly I am not a very trusting person. After running few simulations on his calculator really got me worried though, that may be my corpus is not enough. So I decided to write my own script and soon gave up as honestly I wasn't motivated to write code for this and lacked statistical skills to identify my own mistakes.

So I resorted to using Chat GPT, so this is what I got.

LTCG 20% (I think it'll eventually go there)
STCG 15% (little conservative but okay)
Age 36
Life expectancy 90 (I know too high, but 🤞)
Expenses remain same (this is bit unrealistic but we are trying to be bit conservative).

---------

Corpus size 12 Cr
Expenses 18L
Chances of success 90%
66X

---------

Corpus size 8.5 Cr
Expenses 18L
Chances of success 80%
47X

One interesting thing I noticed in this is the code generated by GPT is assuming that current corpus is post tax and has no cap gains tax pending. I am not sure if that is the case by everyone. So I wanted to ask how do you guys factor in taxes? Are you planning to reduce your yearly expenses to pay taxes from withdrawal amount or are planning to withdraw extra to cover taxes?

I will try to share conversation with GPT sometime, I think they removed share button I need to export data somehow. Code generated by gpt looks okay at a cursory glance but in case someone else is also interested here it is.

Thanks

Those who have done Monte Carlo or planning to do what returns and standard deviation should I take for index , debt and balanced funds?

Somebody posted if 5.5 Cr is enough, I thought will reply in the free time, but meanwhile the post is gone. Probably bro who posted original thread, didn't get any helpful reply. Hence created this post.

TLDR: 5.5 Cr is enough if 1.3L per month is enough and house is paid off.

Assumptions:
Current Liquid networth: 5.5 Cr
Inflation: 6%
Tax Rate: 30%
Expected return on the capital: 10%
House: Paid off
Life Expectancy: Current age + 50 years

I feel about 3% withdrawal rate is good, provided the house is paid off. The corpus can last forever if the above variables hold.

https://preview.redd.it/yep2x64m4pfe1.png?width=1744&format=png&auto=webp&s=8df4be89ce012f5272b6f00f0e3bf46e089469a6

https://preview.redd.it/s7ukkgkp5pfe1.png?width=1702&format=png&auto=webp&s=7e8e8e8f0c913dc2b4f1410184cea42b57b78a11

How to get 10% in a tax efficient manner:
Use moderate risk equity saving schemes e.g. Not a recommendations but these come to mind: Kotak ESS and ICICI ESS.

1. Suppose you are a middle class family living in a tier 1 city. Then you pay around 40K in rent. 1L in monthly expenses. Roughly 1.5L per month is needed to survive.

2. Inflation in India averages around 6.75% annually.

3. Suppose you are a middle class family living in the US. You pay around 3000$ in rent. And another 1000$ for living expenses. Roughly around 4000$ ~= 3.45L per month is needed to survive.

4. Inflation in US averages around 3.5% annually.

5. After 28 years, for the same standard of living you would need 1.07 crores annually in US to survive. And 1.1 crores annually in India to survive.

6. Clearly India cannot become more expensive than US, so I think at some point there will be a significant economic pressure to calm inflation. Unless of course if India becomes as developed as US in 28 years. In that situation continuing to hike up prices could be justified? I am not denying that possibility.

7. But most probably what is going to happen is that there will be a civil war or riots or some kind of civil unrest in the next 28 years. When wages won't cover living expenses.

8. When that happens, stock market will tank significantly. If you have already retired, you will be in significant trouble when that happens. But then again you know, even if you have money no one will be around to sell you goods. So having money would be practically meaningless in that situation lol. You just have to wait in your apartment till some looter/bandit breaks into your house searching for food and murders you and your family.

9. Alternatively there could be enough economic pressure that inflation falls to some 3 percent range too. Which would mean, slower stock market growth? but also less inflation. If your money is compounding for 28 years, you probably wouldn't have to worry about it anyways.

10. Either way, you will either be dead in 30 years from now or you will have way more money than you would need!

I've read many stories of NRIs in their 30s living in the US or Europe, with significant assets, planning to retire in India. While it’s inspiring, I often notice a common struggle—health issues, loneliness, and stress.

Many are FIRE-ready but still unhappy. It makes me wonder—is all the stress worth it? If you're unhappy now, reaching FIRE won't magically fix everything. I've read of people afraid of losing their social life or even struggling to consider marriage

Why not aim for a less stressful job and a balanced life instead? Health and mental peace are just as important as financial wealth for a happy retirement. After all, what good is FIRE if you can’t enjoy it? Should we rethink FIRE to prioritize well-being too?

I am 33. Single. No intentions of getting married. I estimate my monthly expenses to be around 50K.

I have an apartment in Hyderabad. And I have 9.8 crores post taxes at market close.

Parents are not financially dependent on me.

I have done a lot of Monte Carlo analysis using the last 25 years worth of Sensex, inflation, interest rate data. Even if I increase my budget to 1 lakh a month, I have 98.4% chance of survival. (At 80K a month it's 99.4%, at 70K it's 99.7%)

But it still feels so scary to retire. I am not enjoying working and I desperately need to retire. Both my mental health and physical health are rapidly deteriorating.

(I either have Bipolar or Autism. I am really really struggling in my professional life. I have been to a doctor several times and I have been on medication for several years with absolutely no improvement)

My life lessons on money

I grew up in south indian tier 1 city. My dad was a honest government servant. He retired when I was in high school. We lived off pension till I graduated college. I studied hard and made it to the top college in the city and joined a tier 1 product company after college. This was about 20 yrs back and I was making 5 lakhs per annum.

I loved my paycheck and made the mistake of spending all I earned and went on to buy a car on loan since my friend did the same. Then tragedy struck. My dad was in ICU on a failed heart surgery. The hospital exploited all the corporate medical insurance and forced me and my sister take 5 lakh personal loans each to keep him alive for 50 days.They pulled the plug when we ran out of money. I missed office for many days and had a bad impression with manager. Dad had no term insurance. Now in debt and a single mother to take care and needed money for my sisters wedding. We had to sell out family house at a loss and fight a family legal issue with my dad's siblings to fill the debt and take care of the wedding. I moved to a smaller house in Bangalore with my mother.

Life lession 1: corporate insurance is never enough. Have personal medical isurance and term insurance. Dont take a car loan early in ur career, spend well but save for a rainy day. Tragedy can strike anyone. When it comes to money relatives can change color, don't assume you won't have legal issues with your relatives. In most cases you will have one.

I decided to stay in India for my mother, although I had original plans to study and work in Singapore after 2 years of working in blore. Slogged hard at work, got promoted multiple times but stuck to the same company for 10 years. I had a wealth of experience. At 2016., I was still making abt 30 lakhs but had a lot of work skills. Switched companies, slogged again and became a director in 2018 making abt 40-50 lakhs. I saved well and bought my second house with no loans.

Life lesson 2: Early years you will not get exponential income. Learn to gain work skills but save, get insured, put family first and live within means. Be patient with money.

Things were going well, but in the early thirties my health went for a toss, had high blood pressure and related complications, got admitted in ER. At this time I was married, had a 1 yr kid. Slogging at work, not exercising and eating junk was the main contributor. Got out of hospital with medications. Had to exercise and work controlled hours for a year to recover fully. This time my insurance covered me well.

Life lesson 3 : Health and safety of you and family first before anything. Personal medical emergency can be very scary. Keep that away. Exercise daily. I can't emphasize this more..

Continued to learn to work smarter and not always harder. Switched to more companies - got myself to the best paying jobs in the last 6 years. Making crores of rupees a year. But my investment returns were poor, I tried my own fund picking, fds and what not, only to get random returns. Then got introduced to financial planning, read books on finance and talked to sebi registered fee only planner to get this in order - simple investment on index, direct mutual funds. Investments grew beating inflation consistently., which I am very happy with. Fee only planner also helped with right amout and type of medical and term insurance.

Life lesson 4: Earnings will grow exponentially in your late 30s but that doesn't mean you are wise financially. Learn to invest with the right expectation. Talk to a fee only planner and have a yearly checkup for finance with them (and do the same for your health)

I am comfortable and happy now doing interesting and challenging work in the best company. I can walk away anytime from this work if culture goes bad - as I am financially independent. I can work on areas I like and explore new things at work. I spend good time with kids. I exercise daily and stay humble and kind to all. I save a lot and spend only if really needed. Still drive my lovely maruti car. I am 39 now and planning to work till I enjoy it.

( I have no debt and have 9cr in liquid assets in indian mutual funds. Real estate of 4.5 cr across three houses and a ctc of 2.5cr rsu+fixed working in India- these are enough for me to not worry about money anymore).

Life lesson 5: Your early life experiences will influence your behavior with money no matter how much you make. You don't have to leave india or do a business to make a lot of money. Earning a lot of money doesn't make you wealthy. Your investment and spending habits do. Having enough money lets you not worry about money and focus on more important things, it's not for flaunting. Being rich is different from being wealthy.

Above all stay humble and count your blessings for the day. Things can go wrong anytime, be grateful if you and your family stay healthy and happy. Thanks for reading.

So it took me around 2 to 3 weeks to build custom Monte Carlo scripts for doing the analysis. I might share the scripts in the future. But I cannot share the data that I used for the simulation as I pretty much downloaded it from Yahoo Finance etc.

The setup:

The idea is simple. I ran 60K iterations with my Portfolio with simulated data to see how many of these iterations survive for 67 years. I am 33, so I am assuming, I will live up to 100. Basically I arranged the data from 2002 to 2025 in various combinations to fill 67 years. Each of these 60K iterations is one particular combination of data from the time period 2002 to 2025. Once I pick a 12 month period from that time interval, I did not reuse any part of it for the next 5 years. I did not want just one random year like 2013 repeated 67 times.

For US, I used USD/INR, Indian inflation data, SPY(for equities), TLT(For long term treasuries), LQD(For long term corp bonds). I picked those three ETFs because they are the only ETFs with the longest history. I invested the money like this: SPY 80%, TLT 10% LQD 10%. I assumed taxes to be 15% Capital gains. 25% for dividends.

For India, I used Sensex data, FD Interest rates, Indian inflation rates. In India's case I invested the money like this: Sensex tracking mutual fund: 80%, FD 20%. I used 15% for long term tax. And the current tax slabs for FD interest tax.

In both the situations, I drained the fund which grew the fastest in preceding year. So if Sensex grew more than the FD interest rate, I withdrew money out of the Sensex fund for covering the expenses of the next year first. If FD grew faster, I withdrew money out of that first instead.

About me:

I have roughly 1.15M USD post taxes. Roughly 9.62 crores. A fully paid-off apartment in Hyderabad. I estimate my monthly expenses to be around 40K ~ 50K per month. But for the sake of this analysis I went with 1.25L per month.

Results:

In the case of leaving money in US, the survival rate was 96.24%. Average number of years survived: 66.42 years.

In the case of bringing money back to India, the survival rate was 99.64%. Average number of years survived: 66.91 years.

Bringing money back to India seems to be the better alternative! Which is a bit counter intuitive me.

For the sake of alignment with the US, I used data from 2003 to 2025 for running the Indian simulation. But if I used the full available history i.e. 2000-07-11 that I could find, then the survival rate drops to 93% in India's case.

Analysis and thoughts:

People argue that anything above 85% in Monte Carlo is a good enough score. Optimizing for the last 3% to 4% in Monte Carlo, especially when you are utilizing historical data is meaningless in my opinion. It's reading too much into historical data. And generally in the bottom 1% or 2% scenarios, the simulation is considering something absolutely crazy like a 2001 style crash, followed by a 2008 style crash, followed by a 2019 style Covid pandemic or something.

But having said that bringing money back to India seems to be a better option than leaving money in the US. I don't know if it is because the time period from 2002 to 2025 was better for India than US? But essentially though:

1. Sensex does better than S&P 500 on average.
2. FD interest rates tend to be around 6.5% when averaged over several decades. Which is much higher than what ever dividends long term corp/treasury bond ETFS typically pay in US.
3. FDs tend to be risk free unlike the corp/treasury bond ETFs in US. I simulated holding money in a money market account by holding the price of the bond ETF constant. But surprisingly it didn't make a huge difference in terms of survival rate.
4. FD interest is treated as income in India. So even if you make 50 Lakhs in a year in interest, you only pay 24% income tax. But with dividends, you have to pay a flat 25% tax. It is actually withheld by your US brokerage directly. You then have to claim foreign tax credit for it in India.
5. Even though USD always gains over INR, the fact that FDs pay such high interest rate & the fact that Sensex does better than S&P 500 makes up for it more than adequately.
6. Its far more easier to manage money if it stays in India. US tax year is from January to December. Indian tax year is from March to April. So for the months of Jan, Feb, March you have to calculate on your own how much tax you need to pay and file taxes accordingly. This obviously means that your tax return will be manually reviewed. This also opens you up to being audited and all the crap. Plus for all your calculations, you need to obtain the end of the month foreign exchange rate or something from SBI. If you have a competent CA who is willing to go the extra mile for you, all of this becomes easy.

But leaving money in the US is not without its merits though:

1. Having money in USD means you have a strong hedge against declining INR. If India's inflation goes out of control like Turkey, your money will still be safe.
2. Your money is not locked in India. Once you become a resident of India, it is very difficult to move money out of the country. There is a 250K USD cap per year for how much money you are allowed to transfer out of the country.
3. Your money will be in Indian banking system. You either have to leave it in a private bank like ICICI or with a government bank like SBI. ICICI can run away with your money. A relationship manager could hound you day and night to make you buy some stupid ULIP. Or you can lose money because of some incompetent idiot in SBI. At the very least you will be verbally abused every time you go to SBI. Or maybe even physically assaulted if you are down on your luck. Both of them could leak your KYC information. Opening you up to some kind of crazy Identity theft risk.
4. Then there are geopolitical risks like sanctions being applied on India. War with China or something. Then there is also political risks. The government could drastically increase the tax rate overnight. I was reading somewhere that when Pakistan was having a financial crisis couple of years ago, they were seizing foreign assets of people forcibly converting their foreign currency to Pakistani Rupee. I don't know if that's a risk in India. When Russia was sanctioned, a lot of people pretty much lost access to their foreign bank accounts.
5. Maintaining a foreign brokerage account and a foreign bank account on paper sounds easy. But I have read in several forums that banks like Chase Bank pretty much deactivate accounts that are dormant. You have to call their customer support and ask them re-activate the accounts. If for whatever reason your foreign brokerage account goes out of business, you have to roll over your assets to a different brokerage account. And if you are non-resident, nobody will allow you to open a new account. In that situation, I presume you pretty much have to sell your assets and pay taxes on them :|

Conclusion:

I am moving back to India in the next 2 months. I have decided to repatriate the money at the end of my RNOR period. This pretty much means that I will not be able to return back to US. But I don't care about it that much. I rather be with my parents in their old age.

I really want to live in a farmhouse. I have a few friends and we're setting up businesses left and right, most of these are little IT gigs. All of these jobs would mostly be work from home due to IT nature.

Now, let's be honest. Real estate in cities is costly. I want a house that at least has a backyard where i can grow plants, a house that does not kiss the neighbour's wall, and at least has a proper setback and is a little spacious.

You cannot have that in a city, unless you've inherited that much land. Or spend 1-1.5 Cr to buy such a land.

So, I thought, why not farmhouses? A quarter acre plot would be affordable, or at least I've seen 6000 sqft plots from like 18 lakhs some 50 kms from the Bangalore city centre.

Anybody who lives in farmhouses after FIRE? How's life? Or is there anybody who knows such a person? Any info is appreciated.

Hi all, I’d love to hear the community’s thoughts on my bucket strategy.

I’m in my late 40s, and I’m looking to transition to a retired life in the next 2-3 years. I currently have a liquid net worth of around 140X , and based on my earnings and anticipated market growth, I expect this to reach 180X by the time I retire.

A portion of this will be earmarked for specific goals, such my child’s undergraduate education (potentially at a top US college).

My current plan is to move around 5X to 6X into FDs for the first 5 years of retirement to cover expenses, and to sell additional mutual funds each year to replenish that “bucket.” Personally, I am not worried about running out of money and more concerned about leaving as large a legacy as possible to my child.

Does this approach make sense to you? Or do you have suggestions for how to better structure the plan for a retirement with this kind of corpus?

I do plan to consult a fee-only financial advisor to fine-tune things, but I wanted to get a range of perspectives from the community first. Thanks for your time!

Hello Everyone, need your inputs on this FI Strategy
Family of 3 - currently based in US, plan to retire in India next year (Tier 2 city)

Needs in India -- 1.2 lakh/month.. Kids education fund is sorted already
US Assets : Paid off home (hope to get rent of $1000/month - after all taxes, fees etc)
Stock Portfolio of $400,000 (which gives 1.5% dividend + plan is to withdraw 1% thru stock sales - roughly $300/month)

India Assets : 3 Crores - plan is to divide equally into 2 buckets -- short term debt funds bucket and long term bucket -- equity funds bucket.. Will rebalance every year to gradually increase debt allocations & reduce equity holdings over long run..
Plan is to tap into maybe 20K per month from the debt fund bucket returns

Plan is for me to continue working in India (non-IT) once we are back there & should have income of atleast ~50K

Total INR from these avenues - ~105,000 (from US) + 20,000(From India Funds) + 50,000 (From Salary)

Additional 50K to be used for travel + misc unplanned expenses

Non-salary income is covering the amount we need, but its not guaranteed income (rental might be vacant for a while, stocks might have a bad run etc)

Need inputs mostly related to feasibility of this FI Strategy working for 30+ years and what taxation would look like for the $$ coming into Indian account every month ? Would it make sense to split the amount into 2 accounts - husband & wife every month ? What can I do better to solidify this plan ?

Edit : Non-US Citizen, 36Y, paid off home in India ready for us when we return

Would like to understand pros/cons of keeping rental, so much stock in US vs selling & moving it all to India

Many redditors comment in posts "don't quit your job even if you have FI" or even fatFI. (Am talking about working as an employee)

Are we really trained in this way wherein we need to be told what to do by someone in a particular time slot to have a purpose?

Is it really that daunting to find a purpose or calling which will make you wake up in the morning?

Is there less entertainment to experience, less relaxation/lesuire activities that give joy or less skill set to be learnt in this world?

I am curious to know the thought process behind this, I quit my job 5 years back and never ever have I felt like going back again. I watch movies, play games, scroll through shorts/reels, learning to play piono, learning potery/painting, tweaking my portfolio , looking for new investment opportunity, swim, go on dates, water/dry fast, yoga, do a bit of charity (apart from paying taxes😛) etc..

In past 5 years since I quit my job not once have I felt that why did I quit my job? Or I need a 9 to 5 routine.

A kind of sequel to my last Life/FIRE plans...

Many months have gone by, and the situation hasn't gotten any better - rather, it's more uncertain than before. FAANGs are slowly and gradually cutting jobs. Middle managers and experienced professionals could be at greater risk. The Gen AI fad is everywhere; despite profits, companies are downsizing and relocating jobs elsewhere. There's an increasing supply of talent and fewer job opportunities. The worst hasn't happened yet, but as always, I'm preparing for anything and everything.

On the positive side, my liquid NW is hovering around $2M, thanks to market returns and employer stocks. I've made some adjustments - moved 30% to India, while 70% remains in the US. I'm still stuck in the visa and green card cycle. So, still pushing at work and holding onto my FIRE plans, primarily for my family and kids. Financial health okay. Physical health okay. Mental health? Not so much.

My experience from the last trip to India wasn't very positive either. If we move, kids are going to have a hard time for sure. Despite claims of progress, life in India still hasn't gotten any better. Heavy and more taxes but a lack of basic and essential infrastructure. I'm still hoping and dreaming of retiring in a small town or city, away from the hustle and bustle when the time comes. Let's see how things unfold.

On the other hand, US has some positives - strong currency, quality of life, civic amenities, sense, etc. However, the future of the next generation and careers in IT seem increasingly challenging. Moreover, without a green card and citizenship, life is extremely painful and limiting in terms of growth and opportunities. I don't think kids will necessarily do any better just by studying or staying in the US, but I don't see any other better option either.

Anyhow, I hope others have executed their FIRE plans or are at least on track to make it happen. As for me, I'll have to push a little more and hope for the best while also preparing for the worst.

We all love u/RaviHanda and he is one of the pioneers who openly on a broad scale announced about his FIRE decision and best part shared his corpus openly that too with his face in the media, which many people hesitate. So I consider him as my relatable FIRE hero, compared to a lot of people who are super secretive about their corpus. So my hats off to him!

It has been about 2 years or maybe little longer that Ravi Handa has been leading the retired life and I have watched his podcasts over the years and seen the evolution.

In his latest podcast, he shares most of the stuff which he has shared before

💸 How to Retire Early in India? | Ravi Handa on FIRE, Investments & Sisyphus | Jar App

However, towards the end, there are some new insights. One of thing that intrigues me is, even now he says he gets bored and says that the alternative of going to work is even worse. He also says there is no purpose to life, which I agree. But he also brings up the brilliant example of a Greek God who was punished to carry a boulder up and down a mountain and that was his purpose of life.

He also tells in the end that he is worried about his health and has given up on it. He also tells that when you FIRE, you do more of what you were doing before. So if you were a travel driven person you travel more. If you are a lazy person you become more lazy. Ravi Handa has mentioned about his love for alcohol. I can relate with him myself as I am also lazy and I love beer.

Now here is the danger, you have a lot of free time, you are lazy and you love alcohol and you are not the types driven to go to the gym and excercise. You see where I am getting at?

My message to myself and Ravi and also others on this forum is that, sometimes maybe it is better to take the intermediate path and also to fool ourselves that there is some purpose in life and pretend that we need to do 'something'. Maybe be this intermediate path is actually better than the other 2 extreme alternatives.

I did a rough estimation of the corpus needed for 40 years of retirement with 3 bucket strategy. This takes into account inflation and taxes with a total corpus of 4 Cr, for immediate retirement. I assumed taxes to be 30% for safer side. This doesn’t account for kid’s higher education expenses. Feedback’s are welcome. Thanks.

When you have a larger capital, you will likely prioritise stability of income over Investment alpha. At such a situation, when your portfolio becomes >Rs. 5 cr, a rational investor would likely be investing across the asset classes. Technically, it is said, a 12% IRR is a decent target IRR for huge portfolios. However, I did some number crunching on excel, and results aren't very convincing.

For ex - with a Rs. 8 cr portfolio with blended 12% IRR, real return is at paltry 2.3% adjusted for inflation and taxes. Which translates to a monthly income of just Rs. 1,60,000, which is barely enough to run a family of 4 in Tier 1 cities.

What I simply mean is, corpus to retire early is much larger than you think, and one would still not reach his financial independence, even after earning Rs. 8 crores !!

(Excel screenshot in comments, unable to post here)

Edit 1 - Most people in the comment section have either never lived in a Tier 1 city, lack sense on what it takes to live a comfortable life, have income level that is exempt of income tax or probably lack ambition 🤡

I know we are planning towards Financial Independence and doing a balancing act of saving and spending on life experiences while moving towards that goal. I saw this question asked in global fatfire sub and was wondering what are some examples of this in Indian context. It doesn't matter whether you are already FIREd or not, can you share what was your best/favorite expense from last year. (Travel maybe an obvious one, but I am curious about other categories/products/services)

https://autotranslucence.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/becoming-a-magician/

Was going through above mentioned blog and couldn't help to share the response of sensibles questions asked in this blog ( attached note), hoping for some like minded souls to top up and share theirs too..

While writing those answers, I never realised I have thought about them. The constant struggle to hit the number takes 90% of time and mind space while what we are going to do is left unanswered.

I must say yesterday's post by @dpsharma intrigued me and kept me wondering for some time. Such a streamline flow of life ( though in real life we understand the rough edges) was mood uplifted especially for late 30s like me. Not to mention the life journey of viral IIT baba of maha Kumbh doing the rounds, made me to apply leave and boom ticket to prayagraj

I feel sometimes we are applying Pareto principal here also but in wrong direction, 80% effort in belling the cat and not even 20% in what we always wanted to do !!

We (30, Married) are currently living in EU and started investing around mid 2023. We are DINK currently and have a plan to return to India by 2035. So our longterm goals are based on expenses in India.

One answer I seek - when accounting for X how do you all account for one-time, non-recurring expenses; both big and small? Is it just assumed to average out across years of tracked expenses?

Below is a log of our finances for the year 2024 along with a brief recap of 2023 and projections for 2025. After this I have given a break up of our NW by asset allocation. Then I have listed our long and mid-term goals with progress. Finally, a few life updates, key observations, takeaways and notes that may or may not be of interest to all.

Last year's post: Year 0 on our FIRE Journey

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The Numbers

Notes on number fudgery

• This is all very rounded math, please don't call me out on it. Also, we increased the savings rate at some point rather arbitrarily (while keeping inline with original distribution against asset classes) seeing a significant surplus each month. This is all a bit murky and hand wavy but hey, as long as we are saving more, trust the process and a system will form eventually is the mantra.
• Our fixed monthly savings rate at the beginning of 2024 was 5525 EUR. Therefore, 2024 Target NW = 8% growth of the existing NW (1.3Cr / 140K EUR) + 12 x 5525 EUR (60L / ~67K EUR).
• ~30L of the 2024 Log NW comes from our EPF contributions which we had not accounted for in the previous year. So it would be more realistic to say that our NW grew from 1.5Cr to 2.6Cr.
• Our fixed monthly saving rate for 2025 currently is 6145 EUR. Therefore, 2025 Target NW = 8% growth on 2.6Cr + 12 x 6145 EUR. I can see that Net expected income - estimated expenses would already give me a higher annual saving for 2025 than what I have estimated but I like to be conservative.
• We expect to spend more in 2025 because a few mid-term goals will be realized. Generally, expenses are estimated to go up by 4-6%.

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Goals and Portfolio Asset Allocation

• Ideally I would have retirement at 60-70% equity but it is currently heavily weighed towards debt due to PPF and EPF. It might take a couple of years more to get there.
• While I was targeting 50% equity for the house, I am okay with this allocation given that we have reduced the goal horizon and target.
• Liquid is earmarked for emergencies and 3 short term goals within the next year or two.

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Goals - Some Old, Some New

• This year was tumultuous for us with The Husband facing direct layoff threats and more workplace drama. He had to switch jobs and is no longer a fence-sitter with FIRE. Well at least he is fully onboard with the FI part. I will slowly but surely turn him to the dark side. :D
• Work life and pay are quite good in EU and now we are considering staying here till 2035 and then returning to India. I will FIRE & he might coast FIRE if we reach 12Cr. So the same target number, but with 5 less years, and fully with EU salaries. The hope is to also increase our monthly contribution to this once house goal is complete.
• In the same vein he is convinced that he no longer wants a home worth 4Cr+. Hence we have reduced the goal to 2.5Cr and will be looking for one in 2028 years as opposed to 2030. I had originally hoped to cover at least 50% of the costs but it looks like we may be closer to 80% even by then.
• We might buy a car towards the end of 2027. So far we haven't found the need for one but we will see as time goes by. I am saving for it either way.
• We're still undecided on having children but if we do finally decide to have them then a lot of life itself could change. Nothing unmanageable or unimaginably wild. So please don't ask me about this.

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And that is a wrap!

Edit: added a few clarifications right at the top.

I have a IBKR account in Dubai and can invest internationally through it. Is it better to invest in the S&P 500 and withdraw 3% annually or to invest in Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF and live off its ~3% dividend yield for FIRE?

I was pondering over this aspect why some people love their jobs and why some people hate their jobs. Leaving toxic work culture, toxic manager, politics etc aside.

I realized there are only 2 kinds of jobs and one of them is more suitable for early retirement vs the other.

1. Creation oriented jobs: These are jobs where you create something. For example; you add a new feature to a website, which was not there before. You helped in the manufacture of a new car. You teach in a school etc In these jobs, you can see your creation and be proud of it.
2. Problem solving jobs: These are jobs, which inherently start out as problems and a headache which now need to be "solved". The ideal scenario is that the problems never happened, so you dont have to do the job. So examples of these jobs are doctors, lawyers, IT support staff, car mechanics, customer support. Imagine you are car mechanic or a doctor or a IT support guy, if nobody comes to you with a problem, life is good. When someone comes to you with a problem, now you need to solve it. Best case scenario, you get back to where you were and worst case scenario, the problem becomes worse :(

So early retirement is possible for people who work in problem solving jobs, because inherently problem solving jobs are jobs where the end result to have no problems and chill. So when you quit your job you reach this state :)

Looking at many monthly expenses posts - wanted to just share this, as a topic of change

MPCE - Monthly Per Capita Consumption Expenditure

Example - 6.84% Urban India spends on goods and entertainment

10.96% of spends on food purchased/processed food

Unsure how the expenses compare in FIRE phase or does this even make sense

link here - https://www.mospi.gov.in/ go to recent reports and download

https://preview.redd.it/zd0qcymziqbe1.png?width=646&format=png&auto=webp&s=1a32e5d9231d8389ceff0bcef4a3260849abfbed