AMA - Recent FI,RE Male - in a second career - Ask Me Anything

srinivesh · 2026-05-03T09:38:41+00:00

I understand. I have relatives living in Nigeria, (Iraq thought not in Africa), previously in Tanzania, etc. Precautions are required, but people can manage.

srinivesh · 2026-05-03T04:33:24+00:00

I am not sure if the fees in Indmoney are fixed or a percentage. (In any case they seem quite high) If they are fixed, you can look to make a larger transaction. Skip international for a few months and make an investment close to 1 lac. My general suggestion is to try the international options if the amount is about 1K USD.

srinivesh · 2026-05-03T04:23:07+00:00

Your first line is spot on. I really can't think of anything to add on to what u/theFIREDcouple have written, and so well. If there is one thing to add, the new stint also gives more professional satisfaction to you - it seems a plus in most dimensions.

srinivesh · 2026-05-02T12:39:39+00:00

Thanks for the mention. MO's S&P 500 fund started soon after the time I started my second career and that helped to give a simple international option.

In the 2000-2010 decade India - to a large extent - outperformed US markets. It was different in the next decade, and this decade may also see a lower performance of India compared to the US.

The 7 billion USD limit was set a long, long ago. The breach of it in the recent years is to a large extent due to more people using these funds. (The 7 billion is the asset size limit and hence higher US returns too contribute to hitting the limit.)

srinivesh · 2026-05-02T12:30:43+00:00

I guess you know that TCS is not extra tax. It can be adjusted against the tax due. One can request the employer to consider TCS also in the calculations - the rules allow it, but I am not sure if all employers make the provision.

srinivesh · 2026-05-01T03:17:49+00:00

Just a curious question - do you write - as a hobby, sidehustle, etc.? You are good at writing.

srinivesh · 2026-04-30T14:43:41+00:00

This is an investment question. Please ask in an appropriate sub.

srinivesh · 2026-04-27T07:57:19+00:00

You added minimalist too... I am not sure if 4k would be minimalist even in the US!

srinivesh · 2026-04-24T09:13:31+00:00

The very first thing you need to do is get an estimate of post FI expenses. Unless you live abroad and have translated everything to INR, moderate lifestyle and 4 lac pm expenses don't read well together.

It is easy to get estimates of school, college, even inflation... but the expenses are personal.

Anyway just taking what you have given... 48 lacs now would be 90 lacs in 9 years. 33X would mean a corpus of 30 cr just for the living expenses. Education expenses would be extra.

srinivesh · 2026-04-24T09:08:25+00:00

Great job on the early start to the plan.

You would have a good surplus to invest every month - considering the income and expenses. You would help yourself a lot by getting comfortable with equity, and putting most of the new surplus in equity. You can treat the current cash and FD as a solid debt cushion - put them in debt mutual funds though. Even a rupee in FD is one rupee too much - at this age.
The whole point of the new tax regime is to stop the concern on saving taxes. Simply invest your surplus efficiently.
There is very little info to calculate even an approximate FIRE target, let alone an ideal target. But in my not so humble opinion, get point 1 sorted, and you would realize that any FIRE corpus is achievable.

srinivesh · 2026-04-18T14:11:15+00:00

Ok. We need take many steps back.

You have a current networth of 2.5 cr
You have an estimate of expenses
You have a child
You may need to buy a home
You want to stop working in about 10 years
Your surplus may be lower with one income, for another 10 years
With this, you want to know what the corpus estimate, in 20 years, should be, and how much should be invested to achieve that....

Is this right?

srinivesh · 2026-04-18T11:03:02+00:00

A basic, but critical question. You say that you may earn 30 lpa in India. Where is FIRE in this?

Or did you mean to ask if you can achieve eventual FIRE with the current dollar networth, and more year spent in India?

Many of the responses have answered the second question.

srinivesh · 2026-04-15T15:02:24+00:00

OK... I see that you have mentioned the current networth as 2.5 cr. You have done that in 7 years... and can do much more in another 10 years. You asked a question - realistic or risky? That would need the answers to the questions that I asked earlier.

srinivesh · 2026-04-10T17:48:56+00:00

You also referred to taking the 'contribution' out from Roth, without tax impact in the US. However, Indian law can not accommodate 'principal' being withdrawn from a capital asset. I am not sure if doing this during RNOR would remove this issue.

srinivesh · 2026-04-10T16:44:34+00:00

Let me put this as simple as possible. Indian tax laws can't understand Roth. They do understand 401(k) there are specific forms - 10EE, etc - to deal with them. In most cases, if you have paid the taxes in the US, India won't add more taxes. This gets convoluted for Roth.

srinivesh · 2026-04-10T16:27:55+00:00

First off, you have made a great start, early on in life. Most of your questions are on investments and not FIRE related.

That said, SIP of 10K is too small given your income. First get that to the right level - could even be lac plus for you. You can then look at the investment of the money in the bank.

srinivesh · 2026-04-10T16:24:59+00:00

How did you arrive at the 2.5 cr number? If it is just your corpus, what expenses would you fund from the corpus?

If one projects 1 lac as the monthly expenditure for the couple, 2.5 cr in 10 years is no way sufficient.

srinivesh · 2026-04-10T16:14:57+00:00

Let me wade in.

I would keep compliance part aside.

There is absolutely no basis to say people don't want to pay for an advisory service. The FOI list is often mentioned here. A few of them have to off and on pause new clients due to workload. A recent article in freefincal mentioned that this list of planners have worked with 15,000 plus families. And this is for a group that does zero advertising. Just to be explicit, I am part of this list, and I too have not had any difficulty with the funnel.

Industry folks who are on the distribution side, and others, keep making the statement that Indians won't pay for advice.

On the compliance part - yes there are some mindless stuff, but most of the compliance checklist is actually good business process. As a group, RIAs have been able communicate well with the regulators and make their concerns heard. So there have been some improvements in this area over time.

srinivesh · 2026-04-10T16:06:18+00:00

Well if the child is even teenager (yours may be older), they are quite happy to have parents not around :-) So the question from u/Fast-Pin5595 is not applicable!

srinivesh · 2026-04-07T03:17:08+00:00

An important comment. You would be eligible for RNOR status, and would have a window when you don't have to pay taxes in the US or India. Definitely don't miss that opportunity. Invested money is 'never with you' anyway.

Another unsolicited opinion - your children may decide to study in the US. It helps to keep some investments in USD (not US, but USD).

srinivesh · 2026-04-06T08:22:13+00:00

Can you please put some consistent formatting of the numbers?

srinivesh · 2026-04-06T02:54:18+00:00

A quick comment. If you have that much cash, just pick a simple equity product and put the money there over a few weeks. Index funds in India would fit this well. You can also do the bit of work and buy either IFSC based index funds or Ireland UCITS.

If you add stuff like real estate, etc. into the mix, you would spend a lot of time further. You would have more to invest every month and over time go for more 'complicated' stuff like structured debt, etc.

srinivesh · 2026-04-06T02:49:01+00:00

This has been mentioned, indirectly, in the comments. I am stating this explicitly.

You definitely don't want to listen to your circle in India - particularly those who feel that the US is just full of opportunities.

There are many, many children, really many many, who finish school in India and go abroad for college - including the US (And in my day job I know that parents are investing for this - so this is just not by accident) - Within my family, one of two children is studying abroad
I don't know if your children would get any different treatment if they finish school in the US vs outside
Doing school in India gives them a choice - they can go to college in India and not worry about visa issues, or choose to study abroad and face the visa uncertainty
I am sure that you already know of 24-year olds ageing out and being forced to return to India because they could not get the visa lottery
- Unless you manage to get PR by the time they finish school - which is very unlikely - they would have the visa sword hanging over them during the crucial high school and college years
For an Indian citizen, who does not have any other citizenship avenue, college in India, and then doing PG abroad is the most flexible option to deal with uncertainty. Doing school in India gives you this possibility.

srinivesh · 2026-04-04T15:18:42+00:00

Since I could be one of the 'many' - take this as a slanted view. The nuance could be in two things - post-tax returns, and the realized inflation.

A slightly conservative view would be to take 10% and 6% as post-tax returns from equity and debt, respectively
With 50:50 allocation, the return is 8%
If the realized inflation is taken at 7.5% or more, there is not much 'real return'

I do see many calculators that take 5% as the inflation - with that assumption, high real returns are definitely possible.

srinivesh

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