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 country here. The fact remains that the Belgians have always had huge savings accounts (on average that is, of course), being the champions of the European Union until 2012 in saving almost 15 % of their income (averages again). But this has sadly enough been going down since 1995 (with a peak of >20 % savings on average). On top of this we have never been good investers (only in the primary house: 78% is house owner/mortgager). So yes, when I talk about ERE and REAL FI eyes are rolling and friends don't really believe us when we say that we are saving >60% of our income now, aiming at 75% in the near future...
Our goal is reaching full FI in about 7 years. In figures: we would like to have a revenue on our investments of about 20000 euro/year, not touching principal. I don't think that we will actually retire at that point because we have "luxury" jobs (my wife is a teacher, I am a librarian): good earnings, little stress, interesting work and still some options -even in this crisis- to work less without losing much revenue. We do want to go travelling - on a shoestring budget!- a lot more, so parttime work will be the logical choice in the coming years.
Anyway: last year we have been busy with a massive cost cutting operation and financial behaviour changes, and that has taken up most of 2014. This has led to a net worth to start 2015 with of 220000 euro. Early this year I have opened an investing account and this month our first two investments have been placed for a total of 13000 euro. We have chosen for an EFT (American index tracker) and a mixed European fund. The plan is to add about 2500 euro/month to these (and possibly other) products.
In a couple of days we are leaving on our first holiday "new financial style": 2 weeks in Florida & New Orleans. Our goal is to do this on a total budget of 3500 euro, sun and beach included
I f we manage to do this for less, my wife gets extra Easter chocolate eggs!Will report on this at our return. Greetings from windy and very rainy Belgium.
