I think my path can be described like this:
1: Born with a bronze spoon in my mouth, in a country that sponsors much of my education and parents that pay for the rest. Starting adult life without debt and without money. Having a voice in my head telling me that one doesn't go into debt for other things than a mortgage or an education. And even the education only if that education generates a good income.
2: Living on my own in a rental room. Feeling responsibility to not live off my parents when finished with full time study. Continued the second half of my study which was part time, working a low paid intern job beside it and an additional job in the evenings/weekends.
Being a little worried about money, because there was only just enough to make ends meet, even while living quite frugally. Thinking life would be easier living together with a partner.
3: Getting a boyfriend and after some time, moving in together. This does make life easier. Boyfriend has a job with reasonable payment, I still do part time study, low paid intern work and additional job. Sharing household cost 60%(BH)/40% (me). Moving into a rental apartment. We have some money to increase lifestyle habits, but never have much left. Eventually I get to work fulltime. We don't worry about money.
4: Emigrating to the most expensive country in Europe. Getting 1 job before moving there. Future boss finds a rental apartment for us. Before going there worrying whether we can make ends meet one one salary. Then DH finds a job as well just before emigrating. Having to pay the rent for the apartment in advance and having to pay 3 months rent as a deposit. There go most of our savings. Still we have a little left over to move. MIL discovers the cheapest option, using a sea container. Our saved stash are now very low.
5: Starting in a new country with 2 jobs, but very little cash. First payments will come later this month. Choosing the cheapest food in the chops, like only buying frozen vegetables. By the time my salary had to be paid, we still didn't have a personal number, which means that you can't get a bank card. I got my salary on a bank account from which I could pay the bills, like the rent. But we still needed to pay groceries with our foreign visa card. Some worrying to get this in place soon, as the money is running low on this foreign account.
6: Getting everything in order, having control over cash flow in and out, still paying bills manually with a checks. Without noticing much, we manage to save quite well. After half a year we can afford to buy a car for 135K crowns. Later thinking about how nice it would be to own a place. Talking to a bank that says we can only get 80% mortgage. Just go and save up 20% yourself. Finding out that an apartment comparable to what we lived in cost approx 1 mil Nor. crowns, so we need to save 200K crowns. By the time we have saved that up, that same apartment now costs 1,5 mil crowns, so we need 300K in our own share. Fuck it, we need to save more. Since saving for a house we don't worry about the daily finances, but we worry about missing out on not owning a house. Feeling that renting equals throwing money away. We are not actively saving a lot to obtain that 300K, as living like we do saves automatically, we obviously have a LCOL lifestyle. High interest is good for our savings.
7: Having saved up enough to buy a place. Ended up buying a big house with nice view 0,5 hour by train outside the city, instead of an apartment in the city for the same price. Get a mortgage for maximum 2,5 our combined brutto salary with an non-fixed interest of 7,5%. The interest is high because we need 80% financing. We thought we could pay for a much higher mortgage, but the bank wouldn't give it. While having a mortgage, there is always this worry whenever I read the paper to see what the mortgage interest is doing. At some point it goes up to 8,5%. It varies a bit through the years. We we can easily pay the monthly payments. I often notice that there is a lot of money left on the bank account. I think about paying down the high interest mortgage, because if you only need 60% financing, you can get a whole percentage lower interest. I don't worry about money, but pay down extra on the mortgage twice a year with whatever I have leftover. Refinance the mortgage after a while to get into the 60% bracket.
8: Having paid down the 30 year mortgage in 5,5 years. Not worrying anymore about interest going up. Higher interest is now good for our savings. Just by living our normal lifestyle we save up 0,5 mil crowns. Dreaming about buying a cabin. Looking at several cabins and ending up buying one for 1,1 mil crowns. Need to take up a 0,7 mil crowns mortgage on the house again. No worries about money. The new mortgage can be paid off again after 1,5 year.
9: Owning the house and the cabin, how saving is even easier, as we don't have that mortgage. I try to invest in the stock market. I buy some random stocks from single companies or maybe even a fund. Have no idea what I am doing, but they don't go so well. I worry about my stocks. Then I read in a financial magazine that it is smart to invest in low cost index funds. Sounds like a good idea to me. I sell my stocks and buy low cost index funds. They do well and I stop worrying. They actually do very well and after many years I have 4,5 mil crowns invested and 0,5 mil crowns in profit. Nice. In the meantime we have fallen for some lifestyle inflation. We purchase a brand new car, a Subaru Legacy. Only 7 years and 100.000 km later we change it for another new Subaru Outback. We also improve parts of the house, install a new bathroom ourselves, install a warmth pump, install a new kitchen, improve some ceilings and walls ourselves. We talk a bit about becoming rich as we seem to be saving 0,5 mil crowns per year on average. Maybe we could early retire at 50? How much do you need for that? 25 mil crowns (3 mil USD) ??? I have no idea. We continue our life as usual.
But the house needs some big upgrades, like new windows, a new central heating kettle. We are not so motivated to implement it. We also have an issue for the neighbouring house below us which is causing smell.
10: Most payments now go automatically. We have now so much money, that we start dreaming about buying a new modern house. For the value of our current house + our savings, we can buy a nice high-end house. We look around for some time and then buy a house in almost the same neighbourhood in June. It has an even better view than our old house. We put our old house up for sale in August. Selling it takes forever and the real estate broker is a disaster. We are very stressed, because this house needs to be sold before the winter, because of the steep and difficult road. Eventually we decide to break contract with the broker. Turns out he agrees he has done a bad job and we don't have to pay him for him used hours. 13K crowns saved. We find a new broker, lower the price of the house to a different bracket to find a new customer group. Still very nervous about the sale. Eventually the house gets sold. One of my colleagues says he can see my shoulders being lower now, because I am so relieved. But new buyer doesn't want to overtake the house until January. We don't get the money until he takes over. I take up a mortgage, costing me 13K crowns a month. We still have 800K left in the bank. In the meantime, we make the new house livable, buy a new enormous TV, a new refrigerator, a wine refrigerator, many cupboard shelves and drawers, 1/3 of a big snow blower that is owned together with 2 neighbours. I buy 2 telescopes and DH buys a fancy new bicycle. The train company stops stopping at our local train station. We need to buy a second car to reach the station further away.
11: I discover the MMM site. The American calculators don't apply exactly to my case, but I do get the general point. I create my own FIRE spreadsheet with a conservative value for the house and make the calculation flexible for every year, from 2023 when I am 50 and out rolls a FIRE number. It is so low that I extrapolate it to 2019. I realize that if we hadn't bought this house, we would have been able to FIRE in 2020. Shit, how stupid, but there is nothing to do about it, other than save like a maniac to get there as soon as possible. I become really frugal now and save a lot more than earlier. We start selling some stuff, like excess bicycles. Still owning 2 cars. We are getting excited about being so close to early retirement. We realize that we need to downsize and cash in the high end house. Last year was very stressful for many reasons. I think retirement would benefit DH's and my health a lot. Now it looks like FIRE in 2020. 2020 feels very far away.
12: Autumn 2018. Two brokers have given a price estimate of our house. It means the estimate in my FIRE spreadsheet was too conservative, I updated it. We are almost there and seem to be able to FIRE in 2019. This is coming very close. As our FIRE requires downsizing and moving to a LCOL country, we need to make a lot of changes in our life. And we need to make a plan to sell the house for a good price without having such a long process as with the previous house. Sometimes I wake up at night worrying a little about the future. How will it work out with the relocation? Will we get lonely? Moneywise everything is okay, I start working 80% to ease my way into FIRE. I feel pretty anxious about what the house prices will do in the next year when we plan to sell.