Again: ERE in Germany impossible?

[Jean]

The problem is in the 800EUR (roughly $1000/person). This is quite high by ERE standards. It is reasonable for ER.
Here's the budget that covered my needs in Switzerland.
Rent: 355CHF (included internet, electricity, water, shared restroom, showers, and kitchen)

Food: 150CHF (food is very expensive in Switzerland)

Health insurance: 115 CHF
(About 470EUR or 600USD). This was in the second-most expensive Swiss city.
The only thing I really spent money on beyond that was train tickets and a few books per year.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it kind of seems that your rent including all those stuff was subsidized one way or another. Subsidised student appartment with all included in Lausanne cost more thant 600.- a month now. Don't now the price in basel now, but the cheapest I can found in basel is 567 for a studio, and it doesn't include utilities or internet. Lausanne is probably comparable to Basel about prices, the cheapest i managed to rent was 500.- per month per person including everything, and I had connection, and I was actively looking all the time, and I've been lucky.

Also, today, for this food budget, you get 3500 kcal a day in lentils, which if its enough, doesn't allow a diet as rich as the one you describe when you talk about your stay in switzerland.

And the cheapest alvailable health insurance plan in basel (with highest possible deductible and most contraining practicioner choice) cost 245.-

So I don't find it extremley honnest to use those numbers, even if it's to motivate someone, because for the same lifestyle you had 15 years ago, price doubled.
Of course you still can live for 600.- a month, but it requires to live in a squat (where you usually en up paying only utilities around 100.- a month), dumpster dive (but you still need to buy grain usualy, for about 100 a month), an get money from the government for health insurance.
What I mean is that it requires a lot more creativity than before to live with the amount you used.

Well, I got traped by the post date. So I take back my say about honnesty.
But it's notable than prices doubled since then.

[simplex]

Hi Fab,

ERE in Germany is certainly possible, but the environment is different than in the US. First you have generous welfare. That means, once ERE, you have a societal safety net if you fail.
On the other hand, saving might be more difficult. I don't think the taxes in Germany are that different from the US, once you factor in:
US: sales, property, state, income, investment, and federal tax and health care.
Germany: sales (MwSt), property, income tax and health care.
There's also the difference in pensions, but I don't know much about this.

I don't know where you get your income from, but income opportunities vary with location in Germany, quite like in the US. You earn twice as much in Silicon Valley than in Kansas, and if you can keep your living cost low that's a great geoarbitrage opportunity. If you could work at the ECB in Frankfurt, and live some miles outside, that would be a great deal (for the money, I don't think for the work).

[Ydobon]

@Jean

You do know that Jacob isn't personally responsible for inflation, right?

[Jean]

Yes yes,
It's just that those numbers without mentioning the time at which they occured to be reached isn't complete information.
I'm under those numbers (except for health insurance, which is bether seen like a tax in switzerland), but it required to immobilize a considerable amount of capital, and to consider anything providing less calory per fruit than legumes to be a luxury.

[jacob]

Maybe I'm wrong, but it kind of seems that your rent including all those stuff was subsidized one way or another.

Well, if in doubt, always assume you're wrong or don't have the full picture. "TL;DR - have opinion anyway" doesn't go far on these pages. I'm not going to provide a complete autobiography every time I post. Also, this was written 5(!) years ago. There are more details on the blog and at the time probably everyone on the forum was well familiar with the various dates.

First, you're comparing apples and oranges. I didn't live in a fancy studio apartment. I lived in a dorm where I shared the kitchen and 3 showers with 18 other people. There's a link to it almost immediately above. That immediately cuts your prices.

I'm rather famous for my grad student diet which was either lentils or tuna salad (I think still better than Ramen and McDonalds though) with few variations. I wouldn't exactly call that rich. Not sure where you get the "rich" diet from. Today I eat much different from that. I would definitely call my diet rich since DW can cook as well or better than restaurants. However, a hipster-who-eats-out probably wouldn't call it that. As a grad student I didn't have time or interest in cooking and just ate a really easy and basic diet. I spent about 30 minutes per week(!) batch cooking the whole thing.

Yeah, the post date matters. I also see that grad students are paid somewhat more now than they were in my days accordingly, so it probably takes about the same amount of creativity. What's important is that it DOES take a lot of creativity. I spent those 4 years testing boundaries, everything from not turning the heat on (even though it was included!), not buying anything, darning my underwear, ... and other crazy enterprises to find out what works and what doesn't and what the extent of my comfort zone really is as opposed to what I just thought it was. This is the mindset to get into.

[jacob]

This post is from 2010 on which Jacob comments. But it says he joined in 2013? How does that work?

The forum software and databases have been upgraded and even completely changed to another system twice. First time in 2013 ... and then again in 2014. In the 2013 upgrade the user reg dates didn't transfer---possibly because the field in the SQL databases changed---but I've been here since the very beginning.

For some reason posts that are older than the last upgrade in 2014 seem to be written in a different/larger font.

[Jean]

Maybe I'm wrong, but it kind of seems that your rent including all those stuff was subsidized one way or another.

Well, if in doubt, always assume you're wrong or don't have the full picture. "TL;DR - have opinion anyway" doesn't go far on these pages. I'm not going to provide a complete autobiography every time I post. Also, this was written 5(!) years ago. There are more details on the blog and at the time probably everyone on the forum was well familiar with the various dates.

First, you're comparing apples and oranges. I didn't live in a fancy studio apartment. I lived in a dorm where I shared the kitchen and 3 showers with 18 other people. There's a link to it almost immediately above. That immediately cuts your prices.

I'm rather famous for my grad student diet which was either lentils or tuna salad (I think still better than Ramen and McDonalds though) with few variations. I wouldn't exactly call that rich. Not sure where you get the "rich" diet from. Today I eat much different from that. I would definitely call my diet rich since DW can cook as well or better than restaurants. However, a hipster-who-eats-out probably wouldn't call it that. As a grad student I didn't have time or interest in cooking and just ate a really easy and basic diet. I spent about 30 minutes per week(!) batch cooking the whole thing.

Yeah, the post date matters. I also see that grad students are paid somewhat more now than they were in my days accordingly, so it probably takes about the same amount of creativity. What's important is that it DOES take a lot of creativity. I spent those 4 years testing boundaries, everything from not turning the heat on (even though it was included!), not buying anything, darning my underwear, ... and other crazy enterprises to find out what works and what doesn't and what the extent of my comfort zone really is as opposed to what I just thought it was. This is the mindset to get into.

I know it was a student dorm. But if I were to bet on it, i'de say it was subsidized one way or another. Do you know that it wasn't. Couldn't the owner have rented it for more money. I'm sur he could (also note that the price got close to what I state 420 to 620 and you need luck to get one of the cheapest room).
And yes, Tuna salad is out of the budget today in switzerland if you wan't to eat for 150 a month. Maybe as an ocasional luxury, but not as a stapple. This is true for tuna but for many other stuff.
Salary increased as well, (I had 3900 a month as a grad student, friends in lausanne had 3500), so in term of saving rate things didn't change much, but 600.- a month is one level higer than when you achieved it.
That's not a personal attack, just a fact that was worth being stated, even if I was fooled by the post date, other readers may be fooled too.

[jacob]

I do not know if it was subsidized. But I do know it wasn't the cheapest dorm around. I also know that because I was a grad student, I paid more in rent than the regular students. I also know that cost of living would have been cheaper across the border in Germany or France.

When I say tuna salad I mean the kind that comes from combining a can of tuna with chopped onion and mustard. Are you really saying that this would blow out a 150/month budget or do you have a different concept of tuna salad?

What's important is that the savings rate is preserved. It's hard for me to remember exactly what my salary was 15 years ago, but after-tax I think it was 1800/month in the first year and then later increasing to about 2200/month.

[fiby41]

The database change explains why there are so many dead links to the forum from the blog.

People may not always find what you're linking to even after searching. A little change in the forum URL takes them there.

I've previously sent you an email requesting to fix such a link from one of the static pages linked on the front page to the forum. Perhaps there's a plug-in/add-on that does this automatically that we can use?

This will make earlier discussions accessible and when answer to questions that are already discussed are available, visitors can be pointed in the direction or even better can find relevant older info on their own which currently seems to be not possible using search.

[Jean]

1 can of tuna cost 1.90 (sometimes 1.60) and contains 292 kcal.
It wouldn't work in 2015 as a stapple for a diet if your budget is 150.- a month. You can afford it sometimes, but not as a base for a diet.
But If we adjust it to the inflation of food and grad student, that's fine. 250.- is what i needed for a diet based on rice pasta and legume, with cheap vegetables and the ocasional tuna can or piece of cheese.
I just get frustrated by your 150.- food budget, because in switzerland, you can now only reach it with a rice lentils onion canola oi diet, which altough doable, is much less pleasant than this tasty tuna salad you keep braging about.
I hope we are not in bad terms.

[fiby41]

Also since you don't like repeating yourself, you might want to use a Wordpress plug-in called jetpack that links every mention of specified word.

Example, once specified, all mentions of 'lentils' on the blog can be linked to 'Do I have to eat lentils to ERE?' question in the FAQ automatically.

[jacob]

@Jean - Go buy 3 cans of tuna in water (remove water), one onion (chop finely), and a tube of mustard (add to taste, the tube will last a while). You should have spent less than 10CHF now. This will last a week (3 days---lentils for the other 4 days). You eat this on bread (two pieces of bread) with lettuce and/or tomatos. Dinner would be four of those sandwiches. The tuna side of my diet would be about 15CHF/week then. The lentil side is less than that. Recipe on the blog. Canola is too expensive for such a budget (oatmeal is fine though). The base diet from the recipe would cost less than 100CHF/month. You get 12CHF/week to get bananas, the rare piece of cheese, whatever is on sale, etc. to add some variation.

I only assert that this diet and budget worked for me about a decade ago and that based on current prices (from coop.ch --- that's where I used to shop) it appears that it would still work because food inflation appears to have been low. If not ... just correct all these old numbers for inflation.

Before anyone goes and calculates calories to prove it doesn't work or asks me exactly what to buy... Again, it worked for me. I didn't die of malnutrition. The point it. I solved the problem of eating for <150CHF/month for four years in between 2000 and 2004. Maybe today's solutions are different than mine but it really looks like they're still there.

It does annoy to be told that it's "impossible" mainly because so many people in the past have told me that various things that I and others have actually done can't be done based on not succeeding in their own personal attempts. Now, question: Did they try as hard as I did? Did they consider alternative solutions to the same problem? Are they approaching the world as a problem to be solved? If they failed the first time are they going to try a second time? A third time? Or even a first time? It's my experience that the typical answer is no and instead they're going to tell me why it won't work. I find this attitude frustrating.

This post is a classic and I wish I had written it.
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/ ... ainypants/

The point is that you shouldn't be frustrated that you haven't figured out how to match my grad school food solution and then spend your time explaining why it's now impossible for everybody. I would not expect anyone to reach the top of the mountain by retracing my exact footsteps. Instead, see it as a goal to accomplish or something to strive for. You might not reach it, but at least you can get closer by trying to achieve it than simply declaring all attempts futile.

@fiby41 - A handful of times per year I get emails suggesting that I ought to go through my archieve and fix all the typos, edit out bad idioms, fix broken links, and ... believe it or not ... even simplify the language because "it's hard to read". I even got a request if I could please republish a new version of my book with a few grammatical "errors" (<- the kind of which if you ask two people what the correct way is, they will give two solutions one of which is the original one) fixed so the person could buy it and gift it. This person got it from the library.

Now, I'm sure those emails are well-intended. Perhaps they don't realize that I have more than 1000 posts to go over or that republishing a book takes at least a week's work (40+ hours). However, I can think of a great deal of things I'd rather spend 1000 hours or 500 hours ... or even 5 minutes for a single post ... than to fix this kind of trivia. Perhaps they don't realize either that keeping such things up to date would be an ongoing and permanent job.

7:8 Confucius said: "If a student is not eager, I won't teach him; if he is not struggling with the truth, I won't reveal it to him. If I lift up one corner and he can't come back with the other three, I won't do it again."

I think as far as the blog and book goes, I've already lifted up 3 corners.

I also think that issues like typos, "creative" idioms, broken links, and weak reading comprehension constitute about 0.02 corners

[Jean]

I don't even know why we got in that argument.
I read this post, I thought it was a new one, and to me restating those outdated numbers seemed dishonest and made me react. It was an old post. My bad.
I understand that you get anoyed to repeat that it was your solution at that time, and that it's often possible to find one. Of course it's stupid to copy anyone's solution. I got myself an 85% saving rate with a different solution. And it's fine.
Again, I tought you were still repeating those old numbers, it sounded a little bit like someone who has the same job since 1970 telling me how to find one. I should have seen the post date.

[fiby41]

Tell them you're doing that 'to preserve journalistic integrity.' 'The water that broke the camel's back' is favourite idiom that you invented. I want to use it but still don't know what it means.

[jacob]

@fiby41 - Ha! That's either an intentional or an unintentional combination of "the final straw that broke the camel's back" or "the last drop makes the cup run over".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_that ... l%27s_back

While idioms that summarize the same concept vary across the world, it's made worse by the pleasure I take in twisting them into new forms which explains why the burned child smells bad ;-P I'd suggest spending about as much time researching and checking the meaning of individual sentences or words as I do (very little) and instead spend it on the general concept of the entire post (very much).

[wolf]

@ktn: I will post my budget after August. I then have data for 2 months. Spending in July and August was VERY HIGH

Unfortunately there wasn't an update. I would be interested, how you do? But there was no activity for some years now.

[FutureUnknown]

Consider the "Günstigerprüfung" for taxes. As I am understanding it, is reducing your capital gains tax to your income tax. This could be a substantially lower effective tax rate than the regular 25%+"Soli". Keeping capital gains unrealized until you reduce income in ER is key to a lower tax rate in Germany.

I'm reading this forum for years now - finally my first post