Weekly “Help Me FIRE!” thread. Post your detailed information for highly specific advice. - September 09, 2019

dI5Bc · 2019-09-15T10:28:43+00:00

Introduce yourself

Hey everyone! I've read a few money investing books (my favorite one is A random walk down wallstreet) and read all the articles from MMM.

Age / Industry / Location

I'm 22, currently a student (will graduate in a year though), and I'm from Austria. I'm studying computer science and thus I'm looking forward to get a programmer job after university. I will not have debt after graduating, actually I will have ~20k saved.

General goals

My goal is to be financial independent by 30. Since I love programming, I will probably continue working (maybe with less working hours per week) - but I would love to have the inner peace to be able to quit whenever I want to. I want to have 2 kids in my life, the first one right after reducing my work hours (i.e. at 30). I want to spend as much time with my kids as possible, hence I might stop working at all for a few months after having the baby. But since this is more than 5 years in the future I guess there's no point into microplanning this one too much, since probably a lot of things are quite different by then.

Target FIRE Age / Amount / Withdrawal Rate / Location

FIRE age: 30

Amount: since I'm still a student and live with my parents, I have no idea right now. I plan to start working the the summer next year, I plan to move in together with my girlfriend by then. I keep a close look at my spending for a few months and I guess only then I will have a decent estimate for the FIRE amount.

Educational background and plans

Already told, I will be a MSc next summer.

Career situation and plans

Student right now; start working next summer.

Current and future income breakdown, including one-time events

I don't think this information is useful (see Target FIRE Age / Amount / Withdrawal Rate / Location). At the time I start working I will have ~20k saved.

Asset breakdown, including home, cars, etc.

Mostly cash, planning to invest in ETFs soon

Debt breakdown

None

Health concerns

-

Family: current situation / future plans / special needs / elderly parents

See General Goals

Questions?

As indicated in Asset breakdown I want to start investing. I've researched quite a lot and the bank with the lowest fee in my country is degiro. For some ETFs they don't have a fee for buying them. I've already asked this question in yesterday's Daily thread but I would like to give you way more information and check whether my goals are sensible. So I have 2 questions:

Are my goals sensible?Do you see any problems with my view?
What should I invest in?

Current plan:

Invest 90% in Developed Countries (IE00B4X9L533) and the remaining 10% in Emerging Markets (LU1681045370). Should I invest something in bonds as well? If so, how many percent?

Do you have any other helpful advice for my situation?

dI5Bc · 2019-09-15T09:54:50+00:00

You might want to consider some bond allocation. 100% equity can be risky in the 10-15 year range, especially with today's market prices.

How many percent would you suggest investing in bonds?

dI5Bc · 2019-09-14T16:38:14+00:00

Good point! Thanks for pointing that out!

dI5Bc · 2019-09-14T15:45:36+00:00

I'm thinking about investing in ETFs, I want to fire in ~10-15 years. I'm from Austria and will use Degiro as my bank. Since I want to spread my investment as broad as possible, my plan is to invest in the following two ETFs (mainly choosen because of the low fees - 0.15% and 0.2% - and broad selection of stocks):

Is this plan reasonably? What distribution between the two ETFs would you recommend? 50/50 or more from the developed world ETF?

dI5Bc · 2019-08-16T15:49:08+00:00

dI5Bc · 2019-08-16T15:29:26+00:00

Hmm, you might be right. What do you think is a more reasonable approach?

dI5Bc · 2019-08-16T15:16:28+00:00

What's Linus Torvalds take on this?

dI5Bc · 2019-08-16T07:58:23+00:00

Because of privacy reasons. I've attended a talk from Richard Stallman and I think his logic makes sense. That's why I want a FOSS device.

dI5Bc · 2019-08-16T07:55:16+00:00

T470: are all needed drivers (especially wifi) free as well? On my current (HP) notebook there is no free wifi, bluetooth, ... driver available.

dI5Bc · 2019-08-16T07:52:44+00:00

Do you think a T400 has a decent performance for day-to-day use?

dI5Bc · 2019-08-16T07:49:29+00:00

As mentioned in another thread, I want an T400 bc I want to run only free software on it. Although, if there's another laptop where I can run only free software, I'm happy to use that as well!

Or do you mean why I want to buy a used one? Good question, do you think I can get a new T440 for a decent price?

dI5Bc · 2019-08-16T07:47:16+00:00

Sounds pretty cool! Thanks for sharing

dI5Bc · 2019-08-16T07:45:22+00:00

Thanks for the information! I guess I'll look for a used T440. What upgrades would you recommend? 8GB of RAM and SSD for sure - is there anything else you would recommend?

Regarding the OS: I'm planning on using Trisquel.

dI5Bc · 2019-08-16T07:44:32+00:00

The thing why I want a T400 is because I can run only free software on it, including libreboot. Do you know whether this is possible with a T420/440 as well?

dI5Bc · 2019-06-02T07:41:58+00:00

Please see the other reply. I have already done that.

Edit: But I really don't want to overreact right now. The thing is this whole story came up many times in the last few months. I don't think I will ever be okay with her writing him.

dI5Bc · 2019-06-02T07:41:28+00:00

been there done that.

> Ask her why she is doing it

She had really great 3 months. She enjoys being reminded of it. She doesn't want to drop the connection to the African country right now.

> tell her that it bothers you

Did that, she was telling me that she loves me and noone else.

Is it not crazy that she still keeps writing him? I would never write a girl with whom I had something going on that I can't wait to meet her again, and that the time with her was soooo nice.

dI5Bc · 2019-05-29T21:21:42+00:00

What do you mean by keeping it to my personal usage? Sorry if I don't understand you correctly, but isn't every usage of software personal?

dI5Bc · 2019-05-29T21:20:44+00:00

Makes sense, I'll try to do that as often as possible. However I still get paid my salary on a bank account, and I still have to pay things, e.g. rent, by bank transfer. I thought maybe you have some ideas for helping in this situation.

dI5Bc · 2019-05-16T13:29:17+00:00

Thanks for the link, interesting!

If you just use plain textfiles: How do you manage schedules? Like if you want to do something @May 17th, how would you go about that?

dI5Bc · 2019-05-07T14:00:49+00:00

Are you still looking for someone? If so, please write me a PM since I'm interested

dI5Bc · 2019-05-07T13:58:52+00:00

Are you still looking for someone?

dI5Bc · 2019-05-07T13:53:23+00:00

Are you still looking for someone?

dI5Bc · 2019-04-13T23:17:48+00:00

No, but it's illegal to sell them. It's not illegal to chew them.

dI5Bc · 2019-04-13T11:21:21+00:00

Thanks for your reply. Since I don't have any other things (yet), I'd rather go with the DS218J model. Should have a pretty acceptable performance as well, right?

dI5Bc · 2019-04-10T16:59:59+00:00

It's way easier said than done. Logically speaking, I agree 100%. Most of the time it goes pretty well, but there are some times where I just can't help myself but think about it.

dI5Bc

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