The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Case Studies => Topic started by: africano on May 09, 2020, 09:18:31 PM
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I just posted in the 'Ask a mustachian' forum but would love some advice on our families case study!
-We are a teaching couple who work internationally - We are from Europe and currently live in ASIA.
-We have been overseas for around 6 years
-Third year in our current job earning what for us is good money
I will convert from local currency to euro, I know things might be slightly different:
Income:
Wife: 3,700 eur a month
Me: 3,300 eur a month
Taxes are paid by our school, the money above is what we receive every month in our accounts.
Expenses:
We don't track our expenses (I know huge mistake) but we pay rent for our flat -1,350 eur a month for rent/water and electricity
We use my salary to pay for this and for the expenses for the rest of the month plus a salary for our nanny who we pay 500 eur a month.
At the end of the month we have around 280 euro left in my account.
Savings:
We save all of my wife salary every month - This we use for our ETFs to invest and some of it for our mortgage for the house we own in Europe.
So out of my wife salary we put around 1500 eur and send that to our bank in Europe - There we have like 12,000 eur and our mortgage payments come out of that plus the water and electricity and other payments related to our house there.
And we put the rest around 2000 to our ETFs investment.
Investment:
We have 17000 eur in low cost index funds through our broker Internnax in Luxembourg - We plan for this to be our pension when we retire. WE HAVE NO OTHER PENSION SCHEME.
Debt:
Mortgage - we Bought a house a year ago and now have a mortgage - I think we have 120,000 eur left and our mortgage is a fixed one so we pay 615 eur every month for the entirety of the mortgage.
Following an online video I made some calculations and it seems like 1,2 million euros is the number we would need to retire comfortably - This to me seems like an impossible number. I would simply like for us to have enough to live on or to at least save for our pension as we have no pension scheme from the government of our home country.
Can I please have some advice - What is our situation like? What can we do to make it better?
What should we be doing?
Around what age would we be able to retire and how much money should we be trying to save to make that happen!
Thanks! Any questions, please ask!
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Hello and welcome @africano from Hong Kong! Like you, I work in the education industry in Asia and plan to move back to Europe eventually (though I've only lived in Europe for short periods). Do you mind sharing where in Asia you're working? Feel free to DM. Are you happy with what you're saving at this time, or are you looking more for investment advice?
Are you in Luxembourg? Since so much about retirement can be country-specific I think there may be others here who may have more expertise in your region. There was a Luxembourg-based poster here, will look for her profile and tag her if I find it.
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Was thinking of @havregryn
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/journals/chasing-fi-across-europe-and-a-lot-of-anxiety/
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Hello and welcome @africano from Hong Kong! Like you, I work in the education industry in Asia and plan to move back to Europe eventually (though I've only lived in Europe for short periods). Do you mind sharing where in Asia you're working? Feel free to DM. Are you happy with what you're saving at this time, or are you looking more for investment advice?
Are you in Luxembourg? Since so much about retirement can be country-specific I think there may be others here who may have more expertise in your region. There was a Luxembourg-based poster here, will look for her profile and tag her if I find it.
Hi, we are based in Thailand - Happy with what we are saving but would like some advice on how we are doing and what we need to do to be able to retire at a reasonable age. We have no pension from our home country, so our investments are our future.
We are not from Luxembourg, we just have our investment bank there. We have a house in Spain which is where we will retire to and will be our base.
Looking for advice in general as to how we are doing, how much we should be looking to save, what number we will need to be able to retire and by what age would we possibly be able to retire.
Again, we are young and working happily, however, because we have no home pension we want to get things right so that we can retire and be comfortable and not struggle for money.
Looking for advice from people on this forum as to how we are doing and what we should be doing!
Thanks
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How much you need to save and how much you need to retire depends on your expenses during FIRE. Check out FIREcalc to help you sort that out. And if you haven’t already done so, start reading the MMM blog posts, especially the one on the shockingly simple math to FIRE.
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On the assumption that you have EU nationality, have you looked at the possibility of making voluntary contributions to the social security system of the country in which you have nationality? You may not want to retire there, but in the EU a record of making social security contributions in one state can in some circumstances be transferred to taking a pension in another, or at least having your pension paid to an address in another. It may not be a big amount but still good value, plus it is guaranteed and inflation-proofed, which would make it a good basis for then only needing a top-up income from your investments.
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On the assumption that you have EU nationality, have you looked at the possibility of making voluntary contributions to the social security system of the country in which you have nationality? You may not want to retire there, but in the EU a record of making social security contributions in one state can in some circumstances be transferred to taking a pension in another, or at least having your pension paid to an address in another. It may not be a big amount but still good value, plus it is guaranteed and inflation-proofed, which would make it a good basis for then only needing a top-up income from your investments.
Hi thanks, we have and plan for one of us to do it. Like you mention it is not a big amount as we are only allowed to contribute the smallest amount.
Does anyone else have any advice for us?
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How soon do you plan to move back to your house in Spain? If it's more than a few months you could hire a property management company to rent it out for you.
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Does anyone else have any advice for us?
How much you need to save and how much you need to retire depends on your expenses during FIRE. Check out FIREcalc to help you sort that out. And if you haven’t already done so, start reading the MMM blog posts, especially the one on the shockingly simple math to FIRE.
Are you looking for quantity of responses or quality? Because you've just been given excellent advice.
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I just ran a simulation through one of the Bankrate simulators and it seems like you're looking at around 20 years to get to $1.1-$1.3M by investing $2k per month with 7% annual returns.
My recommendation would be to track expenses in detail for 2-3 months, it seems like you are spending quite lavishly for Thailand. I don't have personal experience with life in Thailand but with the total lack of information it's tough to provide quality perspective. There is a reason a template for case studies was created ... I would use that