FI or bust; FBeyer.

Where are you and where are you going?
Tyler9000
Posts: 1758
Joined: Fri Jun 01, 2012 11:45 pm

Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by Tyler9000 »

FBeyer wrote: If I am setting a good example, it means I'm doing something unusual in regards to what you have observed before. What is this difference then?
I only know of one way to start something new: go absolutely crazy with information, pile on knowledge, start sorting the heap, and start asking questions.
You already answered your own question. :D IMHO, too many people just want answers, not knowledge. And they definitely don't have the patience for wisdom.

Beyond that, two particular things that stick out are the fact that you started with reducing spending and maximizing savings and only then got into investing, and your self-awareness about what motivates you as an investor.

FBeyer
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by FBeyer »

Noided wrote:@ FBeyer
On dividend investing: You and I are from Europe, so we have acess to "accumulation ETFs" that don't distribute dividends. I don't know about Denmark but in Portugal the dividends are highly taxed, so I would prefer to defer the payment of those taxes to when I am selling some ETF shares to fund my early retirement. Because of this I am also reluctant to study much about dividend investing.
EVERYTHING is highly taxed.
27%/43% on capital gains, dividends I believe are taxed like regular income and accumulating funds are taxed annually as the difference in value from the beginning of the fiscal year to the end of the year, unless I sold them during the year in which case the sales price substitutes the end-of-year value.

I'm taxed if I sell, I'm taxed if I don't...
You read that right.

You're not supposed to invest your money in DK, "only rich people do that", and "we" don't like rich people.

My tax management thus revolves around putting money into different tax bins and shuffling income around between them.
Thus the personal income bin, the dividends bin and the capital gains bin have to be weighted against each other, on top of the portfolio diversification in order for my FI to make any kind of sense. I can't just invest in small cap value stocks around the world, 'cause they throw off too much capital gains to make sense. I actually NEED gold, not just for bear market protection but also for loss-harvesting. Now I just need to read up on the rules for wash sales in DK :)

Noided

Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by Noided »

FBeyer wrote: EVERYTHING is highly taxed.
27%/43% on capital gains, dividends I believe are taxed like regular income and accumulating funds are taxed annually as the difference in value from the beginning of the fiscal year to the end of the year, unless I sold them during the year in which case the sales price substitutes the end-of-year value.
What?? you are taxed every year even if you don't sell? Jesus...

What's your savings rate and at what % of FI are you if you don't mind me asking?

FBeyer
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by FBeyer »

A truly bizarre opportunity has presented itself.
We can buy a small house. Rent, heating, electric etc. will be 50.000 per year, currently we're at 100.000 per year (exchange at 685.21).
The catch is that we'll be moving into 30m2 less, which is actually fine by me, and we'll have to take out a loan of 300.000.
We KNOW that we can pay off that amount of money in a very short time span, but I'll have to sit down and make an estimate of the long term costs of moving.

In the short term, we'll have to pay off a loan. In the long term, we're looking at almost 20% savings rate, just from moving and from eating primarily non-organic food. So, do we want to delay the accumulation to pay off debt, but then know that we're living almost as cheaply as one can in a 90m2 house in Copenhagen area, or do we want something that does not require taking out a loan, but with an even higher rent per year? 2 years to pay off loan, 5-6 years to accumulate money for FI. 'seems lucrative somehow :roll:

The mind Heinrich! It boggles!
-----------------
I've also fallen into a classical motivational trap, by communicating my intentions about becoming Financially Independent, my mind is telling me I'm already there (sort of). Not really, but I can tell the feeling is there in the back of my mind.
I need to get grounded mentally again
-----------------
I'm now reading How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. I find Browne's way of argumenting very lacking. I can tell he's a bit of a political anarchist, but he's not making a very good case I think. It's not that I can immediately tell what's wrong with his argumentation but I feel there are holes that need patching. As someone who is constantly confronted by people with superior knowledge and reasoning skills, I've become tuned in to who knows what they're talking about and who does not just by way of how I feel about their arguments. Browne hasn't convinced me yet.
For obvious reasons it has soured me somewhat about Fail Safe Investing (which is on its way in the mail).
-----------------
It has also come to my attention that the soil in the Copenhagen area is to contaminated that it's not advisable to grow your own vegetables and eat them. :o
FuuuuUUUUUUUUU!!!
'will need to check up on that though.

FBeyer
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by FBeyer »

It looks like we're actually buying a house. A house that will cut our housing expenses down to 40% of their current level as soon as the loan is paid out. Paying the loan back should take about 1.5 year or so, then we're on the fast track towards an 80% savings rate...

GF was hospitalized, had her appendix removed, the little one is VERY MUCH 2 years old and is tremendously demanding, which is an issue since GF is post-op and cant' lift a thing around the house. I'm ridiculously swamped in course work with machine learning and generalized statistical modelling, aaaaaand we're buying a house soon.

My calender is literally booked from 6:20 in the morning to 21:30 where I collapse in bed and sleep 'like a baby' until the alarm wakes me again.

Whenever I log on to the ERE forums, I see new book recommendations and the list of things to-read is growing rapidly at the moment so I'd better just stay away until I truly have the time to spare.
This SHOULD be the last post from me for a couple of months.

I'll be back, stronger and wiser than ever!

FBeyer
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by FBeyer »

Daughter is home sick so I now have the time to update this WIP on my WIP on actually getting freakin' started towards FI.

We DID buy the house! Turns out the neighborhood is optimal for children, meaning TONS of free and interesting activities for children aged 3--18!
The rent is ridiculously low for Copenhagen standards (3200 DKr for a 90m2 house).
Projected savings rate is thus close to 75%. Quality of neighborhood for children: 100%

So I've read about 200 pages on Danish tax laws and I'm only slightly wiser as to where things go. It's a jungle, and it's irritating me to no extent.
It seems, actually, that I will have to construct a portfolio that goes completely ass-backwards and if I were to give it a name it'd be:

The Taxation-directed Value Averaged Global, Two-Step, nine-to-five Crowbar Portfolio(*) :roll:
Rather than build a portfolio based on risk tolerance I will have to address the actual taxation of my gains, before I can begin to address volatility.
The reason is that bond pay directly into the same bin as my personal income. Dividends and capital gains from stocks go into a separate bin.
Now, since I'm still working the 44000 DKr tax deduction is already used by wages and so I'll have to build the volatile assets first i.e the stock portion of my portfolio. That's the Tax-directed Crowbar. Let volatility work for as long as possible, then add stable income once equities are in place (that's the two-step process).
Now, stocks are taxed 27% or 42% depending on your stock-related income. Up to about 50000 DKr is taxed at 27% the rest at 42%. Thus, my pain threshold is at the estimated 50000 per year. Assuming the historical 11% nominal income, I get 460000 DKr needed in stocks indexes to meet the taxation criterion. A Danish investment firm has an index that tracks the 2500 biggest companies in the world a 0.57% annual expenses (That's the global part of the portfolio) so I'm looking to build the stock portion from that and bit of small Cap USA and small cap EU. The stock split will probably be 5/5/30 between the small caps and the global stocks.

Bonds will potentially be split into short-term, intermediate term and some form of high-yield bonds (to emulate the 'missing' equities) so the portfolio's overall balance is closer to 50/50 in terms of the regular bonds/stocks allocation.
Now when I do become FI, the 44000 DKr tax deduction is where all interest from bonds will go, furthermore there used to be a straight 8% tax on ANY kind of income, but for interest that is no longer the case so I'm hoping to make all my bond-related money tax free!
Given a historical return of 5% on bonds I'm guesstimating a total need for 880000 DKr in bonds to fill the bonds-bracket.
Soo about 9K in bonds 5K in stocks and you have the 9-5 part of the portfolio.

The stock and bond portion will be build using Value averaging as far as possible, I haven't made up my mind whether to use the no-sell value averaging or the 'true' value averaging approach.

This is the maximum size of a personal portfolio given this simple approach to investing that doesn't have to pay more than 42% taxes. The theoretical yield is up to: 80500 DKr per year which is absolutely freaking adequate for FI so I'm actually aiming for much less than that, but until I actually quit a paying job, I can only make optimum use of dividends and capital gains, not interest... :?

The final twist is that I'll most likely have to build up a straight equity portfolio while accumulating and then slowly bleed money from equities and savings over into bonds while transitioning to FI. I have no (read: zero) clue how to do this best. Investing 460000 in stocks can be done in about two/three years (I'd think) depending on how fast my GF can pay me back the money I've borrowed her.


(*) I don't suspect the acronym TDVAGLOB9to5 will catch on any time soon.
Last edited by FBeyer on Mon Jun 13, 2016 12:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

FBeyer
Posts: 1069
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by FBeyer »

Fun Fact: I used to be a very prolific and humorous writer. I was actually part of a small "blogosphere" in DK and was invited to write a recurring guest column for a magazine that shall not be named for now :)
These days I only write about money and complain in writing about how boring life is.

That's where life has taken me...
Fuck this.

Also I just wanted to let you all know that some people make, presumably because other people buy, glass lobsters.
Image

You're welcome.

henrik
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by henrik »

You bought a house and still have to pay rent? Or is it something like property taxes?

jacob
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by jacob »

@henrik - FBeyer has a Danish-English translation issue(*) ;-) ... mortgage payments are called "husleje" = house rent.

Orwell would be proud.

(*) Which is peanuts compared to trying to translate "retired" into Danish -> "pensionist" (connotates old geezer being put out to pasture) or much worse: "retired early" -> "f0rtidspensionist" (connotates taking disability SS-payments in the US).

wizards
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by wizards »

Guess FBeyers house is an "andelsbolig" - sort of a housing co-op.

Regarding the taxes on income from the bonds - which bonds will you be buying?
The yield these days are in no way near 5 % - except high yield/junk bonds.

The tax on bond income/"Kapitalindkomst" is btw approx. 37 % for the first DKK 41,900 and 42 % for the rest (when using the tax deduction for working income).

(Kapitalindkomst has never been subject to the 8 % tax)

jacob
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by jacob »

DK andelsbolig == US condo with an HOA.

FBeyer
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by FBeyer »

henrik wrote:You bought a house and still have to pay rent? Or is it something like property taxes?
It's a special form of housing. I don't know if it's idiosyncratic to Denmark but what we're buying is the right to occupy the house. Every house, out of the 25 that comprise our little union, pays rent to this association. The upside to this communist plot is that the price for such a house is easily half of a regular house where you can do as you please. Currently there are rules for what we can and cannot do to our house but that is totally fine with me. If we get, say, a leaky roof or similar, the association pays for the repairs and probably fixes up lots of other stuff at the same time. This means that when one buys a share of such an association (ie buys a house/condo) you have to look at how their finances are doing. This particular association is run by misers and long-term planners. Every one who has seen the books for this association is genuinely surprised that it's possible to be so well off. That is also part of the reason we chose that house, we're quite certain they don't fritter away money.

The condo where we're currently living spent millions of DKr on extra insulation, even though it has no net effect on our heating bill. Those 'improvements' also hiked rent by almost 2500 DKr per month, and all of a sudden living here was not a long term proposition.


jacob wrote:@henrik - FBeyer has a Danish-English translation issue(*) ;-) ... mortgage payments are called "husleje" = house rent.

Orwell would be proud.

(*) Which is peanuts compared to trying to translate "retired" into Danish -> "pensionist" (connotates old geezer being put out to pasture) or much worse: "retired early" -> "f0rtidspensionist" (connotates taking disability SS-payments in the US).
FBeyer specifically refers to rent. The mortgage stays about constant compared to where we're living now, due to the added value of all the carpentry I've done around our current condo :D



wizards wrote:Guess FBeyers house is an "andelsbolig" - sort of a housing co-op.
Regarding the taxes on income from the bonds - which bonds will you be buying?
The yield these days are in no way near 5 % - except high yield/junk bonds.

The tax on bond income/"Kapitalindkomst" is btw approx. 37 % for the first DKK 41,900 and 42 % for the rest (when using the tax deduction for working income).

(Kapitalindkomst has never been subject to the 8 % tax)
I've had a look at sparinvest and their short/long (1-3year/6-9) indexes and recently also some of their high yield/investment grade. I'm not well-versed in bonds so I'll have to familiarize myself further with the intricacies but I thought of adding high-yield as a stock proxy as mentioned above.
I WILL have to start digging around Nordnet too, but I haven't made an account with them yet so I can't see their products.

You mean that above and beyond my current working income I'm 'only' taxed 37 percent for the first 42000 or do you mean to tell me that 'personfradrag' does not apply at all to interest for someone without a salary/wage etc?
In other words. do you mean to tell me that:
1) there is a tax discount on the first 41900 DKr for someone who is working AND earning interest at the same time?
2) or personfradrag only specifically applied for people who receive wages? (No... that wouldn't make sense)

I'm trying to gauge whether I should buy bonds earlier in my portfolio construction process or if I should once again get dizzy with the tax theft in DK and thus NEED to find a job that'll pay me the 44000 per year so I can make use of the personal deduction. But if I need to go that route I might as well make use of the employment deduction of 28000 as well. At which point all of my income covers my expenses tax free.

wizards
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by wizards »

No. 1 - there is a discount for the first 41,900 (no "topskat" equal to approx. 37 %) and "kapitalindkomst" above 41,900 have a cap of 42 %

http://www.skat.dk/skat.aspx?oId=satser

"Bundfradrag i positiv nettokapitalindkomst i topskattegrundlag 41.900 kr."
"Skatteloft (positiv nettokapitalindkomst) 42 pct."

Most of the Danish bond funds (except high yield) have an effective yield of close to 1 % - deduct the fee (0.25) and at the moment you will often be better off putting the money in bank deposit which could have approx. the same yield but no cost.

Feel free to drop me an email if you have questions :)

FBeyer
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by FBeyer »

wizards wrote:No. 1 - there is a discount for the first 41,900 (no "topskat" equal to approx. 37 %) and "kapitalindkomst" above 41,900 have a cap of 42 %

http://www.skat.dk/skat.aspx?oId=satser

"Bundfradrag i positiv nettokapitalindkomst i topskattegrundlag 41.900 kr."
"Skatteloft (positiv nettokapitalindkomst) 42 pct."

Most of the Danish bond funds (except high yield) have an effective yield of close to 1 % - deduct the fee (0.25) and at the moment you will often be better off putting the money in bank deposit which could have approx. the same yield but no cost.

Feel free to drop me an email if you have questions :)
Thank you. You are a treasure trove of information!

I am looking at these: http://customer.morningstareurope.com/D ... rinvest.dk

I don't understand bonds well enough to see why this bad performance should persist. If you look at last years performance, then yes, it has been bad, but it's still a 4.5 over 10 years and 4.8 over 5 years.

But you are right about the fees. For the most part they are so severe it's really not worth putting your money anywhere than the bank...

FBeyer
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by FBeyer »

This is not a journal update per se, I just wanted a snapshot of how fucking miserable my existence is right now. Some day I'm going to look back at this and either realize that all of life pretty much looks like this or that I survived in spite of everything.

It's nothing but a long whine so by all accounts ignore this post, it's for me, not for you.

- I'm taking Advanced Data Analysis on Generalized linear modelling and mixed effects as well as a course in computational data analysis, AKA statistical learning AKA machine learning (supervised as well as unsupervised). I'm out of my comfort zone and slightly into my panic zone and all three of my PhD advisors want me to spend LESS time on this and learn more, faster. They'd rather than I focused on maintaining a software suite that a former Master student, turned PhD, turned PostDoc wrote almost single handedly. The PostDoc has now left the group and I'm left with managing and rewriting it so be system independent, documented and easily usable without the need to contact the original author. I was hired to do math for my PhD, in spite of my almost complete lack of math skill, and now I'm doing software consultant work, all the while all three advisors can't understand why I'm not already in the process of publishing something (one year into my PhD) on statistics. I'm being sabotaged from the inside and it's pissing me off to no extent.
- I work days, I work evenings, I work weekends, and it's not enough.
- My 2 year old is very much in the Terrible Two's. It's screaming, whining, crying and hysteria as soon as the tiniest thing ticks her off.
- GF got rushed to hospital with mother f**** heart issues a week ago. 39 years old; heart issues...
- We're buying a new house. That means ridiculous amounts of paperwork. Calling the bank, mails back and forth. Red tape associated with home owners association we're moving from and red tape associated with the home owners association we're moving to.
- I'm selling tons of old stuff that we don't need now that we've down sized our possessions (and are moving into a much smaller house). Dealing with retarded people who think that if something is cheap they are allowed to waste my time by setting up meeting and not showing up. People who haggle about 2 dollars worth of goods at a time in life where I'm working days, nights and weekends... If I don't sell it now, I'll have to deal with it in the new smaller home.
- 80 minutes commute every day.
- My mother has a ridiculously bad back and a psychopathic boss, so my mother is at work way to often, strongly medicated. She spends most of her time sleeping, because she is so worn out from the medicine.
- Mondays and Tuesdays I'm home so late that I only see my daughter during dinner, then we put her to bed and that was it for that day...
- I steal every available moment to visit these forums, 'cause there are never more than 10 minutes at a time to do anything meaningful in. Which is a complete waste of time.
- my study partner in Advanced data analysis got pissy and decided she didn't want to work together with me any more, like real old-school pissy-bitch-pissed in the most destructive manner possible. So I'm now doing the major assignment all alone and there is plenty of work for 2-3 people (I can't team up with anyone else, everyone else in the course is already in a max-sized group).
- My advisors have demanded that the second exam case for my machine learning course has to be strictly research related, so I'm not allowed to work with two others on the default second case, I'm forced to work alone there as well.
- and now my grandmother died...

I'm working all the time, I'm working alone, I'm working on things that very difficult for me right now, I commute for too long, I'm being sabotaged by my superiors, strangers waste my time, my daughter is hysterical, my GF is too worn to be of any help and her health is already failing, we're buying a house...

I'm not running on fumes, those are all gone; I'm chopping of small bits of my soul every single fucking day throwing it in the furnace to fuel the rest of the day in the vain hope that it'll all work out for the better in the end.
Image
Last edited by FBeyer on Mon Jun 13, 2016 12:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

7Wannabe5
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Based on your description of your situation, it seems to me that you have a great number of responsibilities and current stresses. You can't delegate any of your studies or work and you need some time to exercise/relax, so you are going to have to do more delegation on the home front. My suggestion would be that you hire a young, competent Mother's Helper and delegate all of the clutter control/household goods sales, whatever strictly necessary housework is now being done my you or your GF, and some of the childcare to this person. Since the baby is throwing tantrums, you may be able to serve two purposes if you combine time for exercise with childcare. Throw her in a pack or stroller and go as fast as you can for an hour in the morning or evening. If she starts throwing a tantrum, go faster. Briskly going about your business will reassure her that she has no power. If it makes you feel any better, you should know that you are suffering from one of the known problems of modern egalitarian "marriage" which is that both you and your "wife" currently need a "wife."

Tyler9000
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by Tyler9000 »

That's a lot of stress. I'm very sorry to hear about your grandmother. Hang in there, FBeyer.

Try not to get too frustrated with your GF. She sounds just as stressed but handles it in a different way. I'd recommend doing whatever you can to make her life easier. It may not seem "fair" at first, but eventually she will feel better and will be able to do the same for you. Take the initiative to get things off of center, and it will pay dividends later. As an old pastor used to say, a strong relationship is not 50/50, but 100/100.

FWIW, my DW also had a heart scare at a very young age that ended up being completely attributable to stress. Address the root cause, and the symptoms get better.

JL13
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by JL13 »

Any one of those things would have my stress level very high. You've got a lot on your plate! Can you cut-away or postpone or delegate any of those things?

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

I'm selling tons of old stuff that we don't need now
If you have to get rid of the stuff now and don't need top dollar for everything try a one day rummage sale and donate everything that didn't sell to goodwill. Or hire an auction service or similar to take care of it. Or rent a storage unit when you move and keep the stuff there until you have more time to deal with it.
I steal every available moment to visit these forums
Block ERE for awhile and see if you really need it. You would probably be better off meditating or doing some other stress reduction exercise in your free 10 minutes.

Good luck. It will pass one way or another.

Dragline
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Re: FI or bust; FBeyer.

Post by Dragline »

I am sorry about your situation. I feel like you know you can power through it and would be disappointed in yourself if you didn't.

I can only offer you Shakespeare's advice on pressing forward, from Henry V:

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'"

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