Early Retirement Extreme Forums

@janfrombelgium - awesome! It sounds like your plan should work. Belgian civil servant pensions sound pretty good :)
You would think so, but actually these civil servant pensions are at/just below the level of the average pension in our neighbouring countries like the Netherlands, Germany and ...

@janfromBelgium I recall reading Belgians have a legal right to self-build a dwelling in the countryside. Is this still the case ?
If this has ever been the case in our country, that's history now :(
Every acre of Belgian territory has been assigned possible 'functions' (agriculture, nature ...

@thrifty To be clear on the 4%: we need about 1000 euro/month to pay for rent, electricity and heating. 4 % of 300k euro would about cover that. For the rest of our living costs: we both will have pensions (we're still the 'lucky' ones, civil servant pensions are better than others). My wife can ...

VTI Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (75 % of portfolio): 14.30 % over 2016
VYM Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF (25 % of portfolio): 9.21 % over 2016

Keeping our fingers crossed (but not too much )

We (myself 56, wife 49) are considering to pull the plug at about 300000 euro net worth (hopefully in about 2 years from now). As soon as I've left the cubicle, I will start as a city & travel guide (following certificate courses now) which is something I'd love to do and which should also generate ...

Hmm, I am a librarian for 20 years now. Although I can relate to your situation (have been there too), it is indeed completely up to yourself how you deal with 'boring jobs'. I have been in a place where I just had to correct records that other people had entered in a reference database. Have done ...

Well... the Amazon 'suggestions' did it for me. I was looking for books written by Tom Hodgkinson - the king of idleness - and just like that Jacob's book popped up in the suggestions list. From there, it was the logical search and find through reference lists and the web. So actually I was aiming ...

Thanks to everybody for the useful comments! Some remarks:

to Sky: your assumptions are indeed close my situation. Do you think it's wise to continue buying US $ denominated ETF's, and hold them until
a) the exchange rate to euro is favorable to sell them, or
b) sell them when needed (e.g. bear ...

Maybe other Europeans here have the same question(s): I've been investing a bit in the Vanguard VTI fund which is very popular in this community as a long term choice. However, in Europe we of course have to pay with euro's and currently the exchange rate is eating away my profit. What to do? Hoping ...

OK here goes the first entry from Belgium!

Being in our late 40-ies (my wife), early 50-ies, we have already built up some net worth and are not starting from scratch on our FI-journey. I also have to mention that the whole ERE-philosophy and Financial Independence idea is not that bizarre in our ...

Hello 'Belg'! Dank je voor de reactie. Kan ik jullie pm sturen met enkele beleggersvragen?
Hartelijke groet,

Jan

Hello all! Just a year ago, my wife and me started rethinking our finances. Our two daughters left the house at that time -both are in the beautiful city of Ghent. One is doing her PhD now, the other one is struggling to find a steady job, but she does replacement jobs in libraries and works ...