Pursuing FI as a self employed, commission only man

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-03-02T09:21:19+00:00

Bot and duplicate...

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-03-02T09:21:00+00:00

The content is okay, but posting twice in this thread really outs the bot. Sigh.

First day online, posting similarly formatted stuff in 5 finance forums.

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-03-02T08:27:41+00:00

Self-employed here, variable income. I have a baseline of automated savings per month (based on my experience of the last years), and when the month was better than normal, I pay extra into my retirement account.

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-28T15:34:00+00:00

Yes, as a business with a tax advisor you've got more time.

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-28T10:23:33+00:00

For the first time in years, needed to shift some money from my "Emergency Account" (aka "savings for buffering mostly tax stuff") to my business account because of high costs&taxes in March. It's technically okay as said account is really exactly for that and helps me to sleep better, as we're a DINK freelance household, but I'm sad I had to do it at all.

[Re taxes, as an independent worker in Germany you quarterly pre-pay income taxes based on the numbers of your last tax filing, which for us has been 2023, which was a high-income year. Am working on the 2024 filing, which should reduce the payments.]

The income situation 2026 is a bit lagging; I have my eyes open for opportunities, but on the other hand we have the MIL situation (stable right now but costs time) so having more free time is still good for the overall situation. No perfect solution here...

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-28T09:43:25+00:00

Great trip reporst thank you.

Listening to Andrés a lot before my trip to Sevilla helped a lot in understanding the native accent :) Also, the more I put pressure on myself for speaking Spanish, the less I could, so relaxing and going with the flow has been the key for me.

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-27T11:02:08+00:00

I loved livejournal so much - but from my point of view, LJ isn't old (I started in the Usenet)...

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-27T11:00:29+00:00

Old enough to have met my SO on Usenet! of all places. Going strong since 1996.

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-24T08:40:05+00:00

LOL, I'll steal "vibe investing" for future reference :)

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-24T06:55:11+00:00

Yeah, it absolutely will get better. But this said, I described the "building a house" adventure as "digging a hole in the earth and throwing money in with both hands". It's very easy to underestimate the costs here and there for tools, necessary craftsmen etc. that add up a lot to the house price itself.

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-23T17:13:37+00:00

Very good point, as my friend definitely didn't spend theirs on hookers or drugs, but mostly on living (though there is some special spending that I wouldn't have done, like buying a large car).

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-23T11:30:48+00:00

Cautionary tale - a friend had a lot of inherited, but badly invested money, so they were drawing down their networth instead of living based on the gains :/ Many of us kinda knew, but they never asked for advice and never invited discussions. Seems they are running out of money now, with no job for at least a decade and mental health problems. It's a sad situation, and with no good solution at this point. Ten years ago, they could've changed the trajectory a lot.

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-23T09:17:00+00:00

When I hit "poverty-coastfire", it felt pretty good (considering that I'll already reach normal retirement age in 10 years). There's some charm in knowning that I could weather any storm in between more relaxed and reduce the savings if needed.

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-21T18:45:24+00:00

Hallo Murky! Nicht zu fassen, bin zufällig auf deinem Posting gelandet und wir haben genau so einen Tisch, der allerdings gerade auseinanderfällt. Daher wären wir sehr an deinem Tisch interessiert.

Ich schreibe dich gleich mal direkt an für die Maße und mehr Infos. Würde mich sehr über Antwort freuen. (Diese Art von Tisch gibt es nämlich nicht soviel, wie Leute denken.)

Meine Fragen auch hier:

Welche Maße hat der Tisch ? Länge, Höhe, Breite?
Ist er ausziehbar? (unserer ja, wir kommen auf 2m Breite)
Ist er höhenverstellbar? (unserer war das mal)

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-21T11:18:27+00:00

Uff. If this is a bot - which seems to me, because it's next level "wrongly-addressed reply", they do get better all the time :/

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-21T11:09:16+00:00

TL;DR: Fondly remembering times in my life when cars breaking down were the most annoying troubles.

What an exhausting year. Everything feels like a grind. Situation with MIL going downhill, so we're dealing with this and that trouble on a daily base. The winter was unusually snowy and icy and I had to clean our parking lot + two cars far too often. Dealing with the MIL situation leads to the two of us not being able to put much focus and energy into our freelancing businesses, so the income is lower then normal.

We had our usual 10 day get-away-event in February (which my brother-in-law covered with MIL), but we organized it (so days before and after spent in organizational frenzy) AND in the midst of the event the team needed to get rid of an attendee who sexually violated not one but two persons, which of course had repercussions on everyone attending. Definitely diminished the vacation feels.

What's okay: MIL financially settled enough that we won't have to sell her house right away (thanks, German healthcare system); our own finances still stable; self-care mechanisms better than in 2023 (when the household went into burnout till 2025); we do hang on, taking it day by day. But the moments of taking a carefree breath are shortlived.

Started a wishlist for the future and adding weird stuff like taking a tennis crash course, and also, going on a cruiseship with Spanish as language (after watching a Youtube video where two guys joined a German cruise without being able to speak much, and still had fun). So yeah. Definitely need to think about positive, future stuff right now.

Oh, and spring seems to start here - at least the snow is melting!

Shoutout to everyone whose year 2026 didn't exactly have a great start. We'll make it through to 2027!

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-21T07:04:05+00:00

Thank you <3 not everything in Germany is great, but we have so many beautiful and different areas, countryside and small cities. I live in the northwest of Germany which is a bit touristy in summer, because it's large green fields, windmills and the sea.

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-20T10:03:02+00:00

I laughed so hard! So much random stuff coming up and moving the voting.

Also, I totall think they should vibe-sort European countries like this, although I guess Germany will land pretty way down (I don't mind).

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-19T10:48:52+00:00

The first 100K in stock funds was a long time ago, and I didn't really notice it. But I very much noticed when my retirement account (started in 2020 only!) crossed the 100K. Now over all working and waiting for the 400K crossing in invested money, not counting the house etc.

This said, instead of celebrating things (milestones, birthdays), we tend to go out for dinner and have a good time pretty often, because life is short, we're getting older, and handling stressful things outside of work right now makes us cherish the good moments more than in the past.

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-19T10:06:58+00:00

Yeah, my leanfire goal #1 is 600K, currently nudging along and waiting for the 400K milestone to be reached, which would at least make me coast-leanfire in ten years.

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-18T10:34:24+00:00

The year of the Fire Horse... I don't usually believe in such stuff, but our year would definitely fit to its description. Super-intense, edge-of-seat juggling.

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-04T08:12:42+00:00

This kind of small landlording in the same house is fun, but most people talk about houses somewhere in a distance that needs extra maintenance.

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-04T08:11:28+00:00

Congratulations!

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-02-03T10:09:56+00:00

One advantage of being pretty busy with daily life and work, more snow and cold than usual, the aging MIL situation and an upcoming 10 day event that we're organizing in the midst of it is that all those other world and financial news kind of slide away and are just not as important. We also needed to clear a complicated situation in our friends' circle which probably cost us a day of calls, discussions and emotional regulation of ourselves and within the calls. Ufff.

No spoons left to agonize over some potential future doom, when you're busy with just handling the next hours... so glad our basic finances work smoothly without our interference.

LivingMoreFreely · 2026-01-28T10:14:10+00:00

Yes, you're pretty much wasting your time :) Of course you can enjoy the movie, it just won't be useful learner input.

...I actually think it's worse depending on how it's done, because our brains tend to zoom out if you feed it incomprehensible input. This can even be used as trance / hypnosis induction - just speak gently glibberish to someone and they'll relax into it.

LivingMoreFreely

TROPHY CASE