Hello ladies and gentlemen,
My name is Andrea, I'm a 36yo Italian guy (Andrea is a men's name only here).
Brief story of my life:
1980: born.
1984: family moves to Paris, France.
1986: family moves back to Como, Italy.
1994: started working weekends in a local restaurant, waiting tables.
1995: realized I loved cooking, so moved to the kitchen.
1998: spent 6 months in New Zealand, learned English above basic school level.
1999: stopped working at the restaurant because of start of college, Economics, in Milan.
2001: one year exchange student in Lyon, France. Learned French and Spanish.
2004: finished college and started working for big CPG company in Italy.
2005-2008: moved to Paris for work with the same CPG company. Kind of shitty salary in a very HCOL city, managed to save 20% of net income by sharing housing. Wasn't very frugal at the time.
2009:moved to Nice, France, for another job with a different company. Made average-good salary and experienced some lifestyle inflation. Still saving 20-25%.
Started investing slowly just a few months before the big crash. Thankfully I've been very well guided so instead of panicking I slowly built up my equities position. Bought in very low, in very good companies (index funds were, and almost still are in 2016, non existent in Europe). Too little money to really matter though.
2010: moved to NYC, for a new job, married Italian GF. Good salary, started to ramp up savings a bit but still trying to enjoy the NYC life, as I knew the experience will be temporary. Savings 30-35%.
2013: got promoted to a very nice position. Now salary was very good (average by NYC standards). I discovered Mr. Money Mustache and started to seriously look and track all expenses. Savings 50%
2016: got a nice job offer in Italy, so we moved back. Making less money than in NYC but costs are now less than 33% as much as before. My NYC rent alone was 150% of our TOTAL expenses today. Targeting 55% savings this year because of semi large one off costs (moving related), but should be able to break 60%+ as I'm always conservative in my estimates.
Interests:
Family
Hiking
Scuba diving
Nature in general
Economics and investing
Cooking
How I found this blog and forum:
Once you start getting into semi high savings, reading about FIRE, etc, Jacob and ERE are basically unavoidable.
Why I'm sure I will like it here:
Seems a smaller community compared to MMM forum (I don't like very crowded places, whether them be physical or virtual)
Most of the people are more aggressive saving than me but I really want to get better, so I'm sure this will provide motivation
Got tired about the fact that almost anywhere, anything other than "set and forget an asset allocation based on index funds" is considered "market timing", unless of course you buy on a 1% dip (in that case you're buying on sale). Here I have the impression that alternatives are believed to exist.
Financial Goals:
I'm aiming mostly for FI, that I more or less already achieved if I stripped down expenses at the bare minimum.
I am a very conservative person, so I will for sure stash away more than I need.
Don't think I really want to stop working completely as a first step, I would like to ease into independence by switching to a lower stress, close to zero responsibility job that will need to only pay the bills, to avoid touching my investments.
Plus, because of a tax break for Italians coming back to work after a long period abroad, it would be completely idiotic to not work at my current gig for at least another two years (the duration of the tax breaks) from a purely mathematical point of view.
Depending on bonuses, investment returns, and personal feelings I could pull the plug from my current high intensity, high stress job in anywhere between 5 to 10 years.
Ciao from Italy
Re: Ciao from Italy
Thanks!