Denmark, 29M and here to learn

[lolxor]

Hi all

I'm new here but have been reading up on reddit and elsewhere for some time and have started taking small steps toward Financial Independence and possibly ERE in due time. I'm into systems, spreadsheets, chess, programming and similar ventures so you won't be surprised when I tell you that I like bullet points too

• I’m 29 years old and I only just got my first fulltime just less than 2 years ago after deciding not to finish my masters degree in computer science (BA in Maths)

• I live with my girlfriend and we are planning our wedding for easter next year. We live between Aalborg and Aarhus Denmark in a smaller town of around 10,000 inhabitants (housing prices are great here)

• We just bought a house in July 2016 and most of our spending is associated to that. Furniture, maintenance, gardening tools etc. Hopefully those expenses will be a lot lower in a year or two. We bought much more house than we need, but that is unfortunately one of the compromises I had to make for my girlfriend - on the upside she let's me handle most of our financials so whether she cares or not we are moving towards fi

• We bought on a 20-year fixed mortgage. Am not sure that is that I’d recommend it for others, but it made the most sense for us; reasons not entirely financial. We just saw yesterday that a 10 year mortgage would be affordable for us while still maxing out retirement accounts and saving a bit in taxable so we might actually consider that even if it won't earn us market growth. Still going from 2% to 0.5% interest on the principal of around USD 190k would be pretty neat, and it would free up a lot of cash flow for us in 10 years.

• We currently invest 2450 kr (around USD 350) monthly for both me and my girlfriend in an alderspension (type of Danish retirement account similar to Roth IRA) at nordnet.dk. I throw it all in Superfonden which is a 0% ÅOP, zero purchase fee, C20 Cap index fund. I balance this out by putting my arbejdsmarkedspension (equivalent of 401k) in a 50/50 split of a MSCI US-index and a MSCI world index. My arbejdsmarkedspension is currently me putting 6% of salary into it and my employer matching it with a nice 12% (as in double my input). I have a scheduled raise coming up and am so excited to see the actual retirement contributions rise to the new level

• In the near future (when we get our home fixed up) I plan to put at least another 2500 kr for each of us into a standard taxable brokerage account. Probably a 50/50 of the C20 Cap index and a US index.

• I hope to be financially independent by age 50-55. I’m not even sure I’ll want to quit the job if/when the time comes, but I want to be able to take long vacations when wanted and probably for both of us to go part time. Maybe I'll even want to do consulting or start my own company. Burnout is also real and although I’m not affected by it, who can say what their job-situation is in 20 years.

I'm really looking forward to reading along in here and see if there are different perspectives from the communities I've followed before

Best of regards from the small town of Hobro
Asbjørn

[Gilberto de Piento]

Welcome!

[wolf]

Hi Asbjørn.

How did you find ERE?

[Aurane]

Welcome Asbjørn,

I was wondering if you would show up here at any point

I have you as a friend on Reddit (as there are not many FIRE-interested Danes there), and sometimes comes across your posts. Based on them, it would seem you would be a natural fit here, seems I was right

[Eureka]

Welcome from a fellow Dane!

Always nice to know that there are more of us around.

Fun to read that you have already planned the next 20-25 years of your life (with work). I never plan a lot ahead and one aspect that really attracts me to ERE is the extreme aspect, that eternal independence from employment can be reached within such a short time frame.

Looking forward to following your journey

[lolxor]

@Gilberto: Thanks!

@MDFIRE: I've known about the site for a while. Jakob is of course well known by the personal finance community in Denmark, and then he is also mentioned often by MMM and jlcollinsnh- I read their blogposts once in a while. I very much prefer reddits setup as opposed to oldschool forums and that's the reason I haven't signed up here before, but I very much enjoy discussing personal finance and fire and it seems there is a large Danish userbase here which is nice. Jacob put a few articles on his site recently that caught my attention and finally made me sign up

@Aurane: Yeah whenever I see a dane posting on r/financialindependence I quickly trawl their post history. I don't spend as much time there any more, but I offer up my input every day at /dkfinance. There has been a large influx lately (you and I included I guess ) and it's great that there are people online also looking to discuss and optimize Hope to talk to you more both here and on reddit!

@Eureka: I haven't planned as much as just projected what is reasonable for me. As you say I'm not very extreme in my approach - I'd call it more of a Goldilocks view on FI and RE. While I'd like the security of FI and would also like to free up more time during the week, I enjoy certain aspects of my job, and even if I quit I'd still be working on a lot of the same stuff in my freed up time. So for me it makes sense to spend whatever money is actually bringing me joy now (international travel is a big one) and then still cut out expenses that does not bring me joy (cars, tv, work lunches) so that I can build up security to allow part time, complete RE, building a side business or whatever my priorities are going to be down the road But thanks for the input - it's always good to be reminded that some people shoot for FI or RE in just a few years.

[herp]

Welcome from yet another dane!

It seems that our backgrounds are similar to some extent - I have both a bachelors and a masters in computer science and I'm only just slightly older than you.

I just discovered this forum today, so I'm also brand new here (will make an introductory post very soon).

Definitely looking forward to following your posts.

[BRUTE]

derp

[lolxor]

Two years gone by. Forgot about this forum, remembered it again and thought it might be time for a quick update.

Strategy is on track (and at the same time it isn't - more in a bit):

• We had two kids since the last time I wrote - they cost a bit but it's not bad and it's more than been made up with rising salary.

• We refinanced our mortgage to 15 years fixed and with a great valuation we got it below 40% loan to value ratio with a small leftover bit thrown in a cheap bank loan. 0.5% interest.

• We still max our alderspension (type of Danish retirement account similar to Roth IRA) at nordnet.dk, but limit has been lowered to DKK 5000 (~USD 730) so it's very limited in capacity.

• We still both have large work place retirement account contributions (similar to 401k) but I've received the option to opt out and with near 0 match I just might.

• We contribute around DKK 9k (~USD 1300) combined to standard brokerage accounts and currently invest in semi-random single stocks.

• We plan to move some cash around to contribute DKK 100k each to danish "Aktiesparekontoen" if the limit is raised to 100k as expected later this year. If we do this we will probably buy a low fee accumulating index fund for simplicity.

In round numbers our current assets and debts are comprised of:

• Tax deferred retirement accounts: DKK 1 mil

• Taxed retirement accounts: DKK 150k

• Brokerage accounts: DKK 200k

• Home value probably around DKK 1.9 mil though last valuation at 2.4 mil - current mortgage balance -1.2 mil.

• Student debt: DKK 20k

Well that was a quick update. I'll probably post another when I get more clarity on the impact of Bessembinders recent (well 2018) publication on diversification and what it should mean for my semi-random single stock strategy going forward. Or if I don't get clarity I might post here looking for discussion and hopefully answers I guess