Case study: Ireland - help needed

[shanec2703]

Appreciate everything you guys do!

I'd love to get some insight and advice.
Previously have talked to some local 'financial advisers' but they are trying to sell particular products where they get commission and it's easy to see they are not actually looking at the client numbers or client goals.

Details:

Irish, living in Ireland so of course different taxation, social welfare system etc applies compared to the U.S. contingent.
45 years old, single, never married, no kids...better to have loved and lost yadda yadda yadda....

Employment:
Senior manager, same company for last 17 years (medical device industry, very safe)
Basic gross salary 105,000 euro (for context median salary in Ireland is 45,000)
Bonus 18,000
Car allowance 12,500 (which is essentially paid as income and taxed, I don't actually buy a car with it!!)
Employer pays for private health insurance (1,500 per year for total coverage...sorry to my Americans, that's what health insurance costs over here!!)
All above are guaranteed, also receive some ad hoc stock bonuses but not listing as not guaranteed

Savings and investments:
Retirement investment fund via employer - I contribute 25% of gross salary (not bonus or car allowance) which is the max permissible for my age in Ireland, employer pays an 8% match = 33,000 per year
Tax advantaged stock purchase - I pay 10,000 from gross salary to purchase the company shares, hold on to them for 3 years and no tax liability to the government
Net pay check is in the region of 4,000 after deductions for investments, taxes etc
From net pay, 250 goes to a credit union account for general cash coverage, I tend to drain this once or so per year to cover annual things like car insurance and then build it back up

Debt:
105,000 owed on a mortgage, approx 17 years left at 4.5%, monthly payment is 750 euro
House is a small 2 bed townhouse 1000sqft (2nd bed is acting as an office/laundry room) in an ok area of the city
No other debt apart from monthly credit card spending which gets paid in full every month

Assets:
Approx 150,000 net equity in the house (primary residence)
650,000 in retirement fund, 100% equity in broad market index fund - in Ireland I can access this when I turn 50 (200k tax free lump sum and balance is taxed dependent on the draw down, up to about 45k is @ 20% and incrementally more the higher you go)
390,000 in company stock (I know I'm heavy here but I have been taking advantage of the tax savings etc and the stock has 6x in the last 10 years)
170,000 in regular brokerage account, mix of ETFs (S&P500) and individual stocks (40 companies top weighted from S&P500, NASDAQ, DOW30). Ireland has weird tax rules on ETFs so trying to move away from these and replicate with individual stocks, I envy the U.S. investment options
90,000 in bitcoin
2,000 in credit union cash
I own a 17 year old car (Audi A4 with 100k on the clock) but it's not worth anything really, and I drive maybe 10,000km per year....so I'll drive it into the ground for now!!

Spending:
From the 4k net paycheck, minus the mortgage, life assurance, credit union saving.....estimate 3k per month spending
This comfortably covers everything I need, insurance, gas, electricity, internet, food, nights out every couple of weeks. I don't really monitor spending as such and I never feel strapped for cash
My system is to invest automatically into everything I can and what's left over is what's left over

Reason for FIRE:
My job is pretty stressful, has been since day 1 and has just become more complicated and stressful over the years as I have progressed through the organization (originally engineering and promoted a few times). I'm 45 with black bags under my eyes!!!
1st half of my career with the company was related to manufacturing in Ireland and then the 2nd half I had the opportunity to do international business acquisitions so lived abroad in Germany, Canada, California, U.K., Israel. The benefit here was the company essentially paid for my living expenses in those locations (apartments, rental car, flights, per diem etc etc) which allowed me to heavily load up on the investing side. I had ZERO money (technically negative equity) when I was 30 so it's taken 15 years to get my portfolio where it is today
1 year ago (after the war broke out in Israel) I returned home and decided that further international living just wasn't for me. I need a break...invest in myself, love life, hobbies....maybe full retirement!!

So...what would you do (I do) given the above??
My rough guesstimate -
Assume I take 100k and pay off the mortgage
Assume 48k gross per year would net about 38k post taxes in Ireland
So...that's like my current comfortable spending of around 36k + 2k to cover the health insurance my employer currently provides
Irish social insurance is about 12k per year based on my contributions (if I quit tomorrow morning) but can't claim until I'm 68. It would max out at about 14k based on current rates if I kept on working
I kinda want to spend a little more right now...have an itch for a new(er) car (but not new new) and would like to bump up discretionary spending a little for the next few years...maybe travel for the fun of it instead of work related

Help please (for my sanity)!!!!!

Kindest regards,
Shane

[reeshau]

Why would ou pay off your mortgage early?   The emotional motivation is understandable,  but it's not optimal financially, if you can leave money in stocks long term.  Of course, the mortgage situation in Ireland is very different than the US.  Are you still in the fixed rate period?  How long is the term?

I have no idea what it would be like to renew your mortgage based on assets vs. income.  It's doable in the US, but even here it isn't easy.

Have you tried Eoin McGee's firm, Prosperous Financial?  The financial industry in Ireland seems to lag the US about 30 years, both in fund fees and planning choices.  Prosperous seems to want or assume they will manage your money, but they have one-time fees for developing a plan.  It would be worth asking I'd you can engage them on the flat fee only, and continue to manage your money on our own.  I certainly liked what I saw in terms of his philosophy on How To Be Good With Money.  (Which I sadly can't get in the US)  The planning fees are cheap insurance to get a real expert opinion--and you don't have to keep it up annually.  Get set, and go back when you have a major change.  Do follow-ups annually if you will, but don't pay for annual drudgery, if it doesn't bring you new information or help you sleep at night.

Also, are you really looking to cut off work entirely?  You mention travel, but what would you do, otherwise?  If you don't have something to run to, rather than just run from, your may find early retirement boring or even depressing.  If you need time to develop other interests, consider a downshift instead; either within your industry, or something completely new.  Take a basic retail job, or so something seasonal / tourism related.  A job you can forget when you leave for the day.  You will still have some money coming in, solving your funding gap, and have more time to think about and experiment with what real early retirement will be like.

[Moonwaves]

Assuming the ask about money forum is still going, you might also get recommendations there for fee-based or at least decent financial planners.

You mention living in an ok part of your city. Is this where you really want to live? Are you close to family (if you like your family, that is) and friends and do you have a community you like there? That might be worth having a think about.

Any chance of reducing your hours and/or stress in the current job? Or taking a sabbatical?

[Fru-Gal]

Sell the bitcoin and FIRE already.

(Sell the bitcoin because why keep it)

[travel2020]

26% of your net worth is in your company stock. I’d definitely think about reducing your exposure to a single stock.

[jeroly]

I agree that there's no big incentive to pay off the mortgage when it's at 4.5%.  It does create an incentive to have readily accessible funds to pay it off quickly were the rate to skyrocket (I'm assuming it's a variable mortgage as most European ones are).

Diversifying away from most of your corporate stock ownership, as mentioned earlier, is the safe thing to do.  Even if there's a tax hit, it's better to pay taxes on the gains than to not have those gains at all, which would be the case if that stock craters.

I also agree that selling the bitcoin, or at least the lion's share of it, is a safer move than continuing to hold it.

Looking at the big picture:

Aside from your home equity, you have 1.3mm euro.  With a withdrawal rate of 4% you'd have 52k euro/yr to spend and pay taxes from.  You're currently spending 36k/yr.  Grossing that up for taxes and additional health insurance costs gets you to 48k euro per your post, so you'd more or less be spending what you could afford, without additional stuff like new cars, travel, etc.  However... at age 45, a withdrawal rate of 4% is rather risky as you don't have a 30 year retirement horizon but possibly more like 50 years.  I'd be reluctant to grab more than 3.3-3.5%/yr which would correspond to 43.3-45.5k euros.

Some other things to note:

If you're talking about spending bucks on replacing your car, I'm guessing that your 36k budget doesn't include amortization for lumpy expenses like car replacements, large ticket home maintenance items (e.g. a new water heater), etc.  It's worth reviewing that budget to see if it is truly including everything, not just what you spent in the last year.

You have no dependents.  Why have life assurance?  Seems like a completely unnecessary expense.

You talk about spending 3k/mo from your paycheck.  Does that mean you're also banking all of your bonus and car allowance? Given that you only have about 170k in your brokerage and those payments total 30k/yr (perhaps 24k/yr after taxes?) I'm guessing that you're probably spending at least part of that, which would make your required nest egg to fund expenses somewhat higher.

My back-of-the-envelope guesstimate is that, depending on how the markets do in the next few years, you'd be in a great position to quit at age 50 and each year before then would involve some level of sacrifice or additional risk.