Hi folks,
We have been writing for a year about early retirement and financial freedom. In the meantime this blog has grown and so has our family. Thank you for engaging with us. We look forward to your comments after every blog post.
Please tell us in comments what topics you enjoy reading the most and want us to write about.
Hi savinghabit,
Great to read your blog! It’s great, really great to know that there are people like this in India as well. Many thanks for actually writing about it too! I did want to ask you guys something though.
For background, I’m 27 years old and single, and started saving money from my first salary onwards, and my savings rate keeps increasing since my spending levels have rarely risen. I still cycle to work and back, and rarely eat out because I love cooking. The monthly budget has increased about 10% since 2015 when I started working, even though I earn 4 times than I used to back then. As you can imagine, people ask me why I don’t upgrade my life. Why ride a cycle to work when you can buy a bike? Being a Mustachian myself, I rarely care about this. However! I’m not planning on staying single all my life.
What I would like to ask is this: Are both of you guys are on the same page about this kind of a lifestyle? How important is it to find a partner who has the same money script as you? I’ve heard that money is the number 1 thing couples fight about. If so, does having the same script make these kind of decisions easier? I ask you specifically because I feel like following this kind of a lifestyle is unacceptable to a lot of people, and can cause more than a few problems. If I’m looking for a partner, does this have to be an important consideration?
🙂
Hi 91sidk!
You are probably one of our youngest readers ! We are glad that you enjoy reading our blog! Thanks for sharing your background.
Great Question!
Do you mind if we answer your question as a blog-post? apparently we have a lot to share on this subject:-) We will publish it in following weeks.
meanwhile if you have already not read, feel free to read- How to convince your partner for Early retirement. It has little bit of information how my husband and I came on board to the idea of Early retirement.
Absolutely. I have time, at least until I’m 29 😉
Thanks for the link. I hadn’t actually read that post, but it’s superb and actually answered quite a few questions I had. Also, LOVED that both sides wrote about it!
I would like to know as how to invest money in Mutual fund ? how and when do you move more from equity to debt once you are nearing maturity ?
I am planning to invest online in SBI bluechip fund direct pan online . I wi still trying to know as how to decide the equity and debt percentage 🙂 . Your help in making my decision will be much appreciated .
Hello Bijoy,
Over simplified answer is minus 100 from your current age and that number should be the maximum % you should have in equity at any point.
More detailed answer is:
1. You have to first lay out all your financial goals- small, medium and long term
2. Pick a financial product based on your requirement, risk appetite, goal timeline. It could and should be mix of debt and equity instruments.
For eg: if you need money for your goal in 2 years you can only invest in debt instruments and not equity.
If you goal horizon is 10-15 years then you can invest heavily in equity, but keep in mind that few years before the goal you need to divert money from equity to debt instruments to make sure you have money when you need it.
3. After following step 1&2 you derive at your debt/equity asset allocation
Still there are many other things you must consider that we can not cover here. We are launching a Investment 101 course in next two months. If you want we will intimate you personally when the course is open for enrolments.
We are not financial advisors and we do not discuss individual financial products on our blog because we are not well informed about them.
How to invest in mutual fund? we will try and cover that in our investment 101 course. This space is not enough to cover all aspects of it and we do not want to pass you half information.
What is a good target corpus to accumulate according to you for FIRE ? I am just asking for a very rough range.
I know this is not easy to answer & would depend on a whole lot of factors. But let me add few basic ones;
1. Couple with 1 kid
2. Living in tier-1 city in India (later retire to a tier-2 city)
3. Moderate lifestyle
4. Annual domestic vacation
Hi Harish,
In our blog post https://savinghabit.com/how-much-money-i-need-to-retire-early-in-india/ and https://savinghabit.com/how-long-will-your-money-last-in-retirement/ we have shared the method and logic behind it to derive at a Retirement Corpus.
If you read these blog post you should be able to calculate a reasonable corpus number for your family based on all of the above factors you have shared with us.
After reading these blog posts if you still have some doubts or questions please feel free to leave them in comments. We will get back to you.
Dear SavingHabit,
Your website is one of the few which talks about the journey towards FIRE in the Indian context apart from the how. Please do continue with the same. One suggestion I have is to continue in the same vein as the post “Our FIRE Journey Year Zero” it seems to have the maximum user engagement as well in terms of comments. I am eagerly waiting the promised follow up 3 posts on the mistakes learnings from the next 3 years.
You have definitely gone off the beaten path and sharing your journey is something that could give others the courage to do the same.
Maybe posts like how the Frugalwoods monthly expense breakdown and how you cut down on unnecessary expenditure from an indian perspective would be fun as well.
Keep the posts coming.Eagerly waiting for more.
Thanks,
A huge fan
Yes,would up vote this if I could…the years 2-4 on your F.I.R.E journey is something that I will be very interested to see.
Thank you for your feedback AMH! We will sure get to it sooner!
Thank you for all the appreciation and your suggestions. Absolutely! We will soon share the rest of the years….Naren and I have to sit and jog our memories a bit:-]
Hi Naren,
how a person in early 30’s should start planning toward’s F.I.R.E would be something which can help people.Like an ideal plan and goals etc
Thanks
Amrut
Hi Amrut,
very good question. Lot of people have the same question. When we took our very first step towards ER journey, we started with budgeting our monthly expenses, consolidating our net worth, learning and choosing investments etc… It took us couple of months to stream line these.
We are planning to create a free course on how to start FIRE! for all young enthusiasts looking to start. give us few weeks.
Can you please help me with an answer to – What all options do I have to start my own business while simultaneously doing my job?
Hi Deepanshu,
To answer that we need to know what is your skill set and interests?