Tag: financial freedom

It’s personal

June 23, 2017 / FFsloth / 9 Comments

Last Saturday was the third meet up of belgian/dutch people who strive for financial freedom.

It was the second I attended (missed Antwerp due to illness) and very glad I could make it. Always great to meet like mined people. contrary to my girlfriend some of those attending do not fall asleep when I am talking about options!

I also gave a presentation. I’ll make it available to download here.

Financial freedom in Belgium2

It is part a condensation and part an elaboration of ideas and numbers in these three posts on my blog:

The really short version is that instead of aiming for full financial freedom I only aim for partial financial freedom. Some work will still be necessary. My practical side limited that work to the tax free amount of 7.400 euro since that is the easiest money to earn by working. My stash will cover the remaining 12.000 euro I am going to need to live a full year.

What I did not do fully elaborate on is the reasons why I chose this path.

Some are practical:

it’s more tax efficient, swapping work that is taxed at 50% for work that is taxed at 0%

some are personal:

my age, I will already be 47 when I achieve this for both me and my partner; achieving full financial freedom would take 7 more years. I would then be 54!

But the main reason is that for me this whole financial freedom is about happiness. Trying to live life on your own terms. Having the freedom to pursue personal interests and projects.

When working full time I simply do not have enough time to do this. Hell, I should do a lot more sport to get my weight down and my general fitness up. But that would mean almost no time to relax in the evening. And I like relaxing in the evening!

But working only 3 months a year or 1.5 days a week will give me the time I need. Not only to do more sports but also to pursue my interest and passions. Having even more free time than those 9 months will not add a lot more happiness to my life. But getting those 9 months years earlier than the in the fully financial freedom scenario will.

The way I see it, is that financial freedom should not cover everything. It should only cover the basics. For the rest you can still work, put in some effort. With some luck, you might even be able to earn some money pursuing your passion thus eliminating the need to work for an employer completely.

I have seen a lot of people on the moustache forums falling prey to the ‘one more year’ syndrome. People with a big stash who still keep working ‘one more year’ because they are afraid the stash will not cover every imaginable future cost. Planning to do some work eliminates this fear. Then your buffer is not an ever larger stash but just working a bit more when unexpected costs appear. For instance: my calculations use the tax free amount of 7.400 euro a year. But due to my mortgage deduction I can actually earn 9.600 euro tax free a year. That 2.000 euro I can earn extra every year would mean 50.000 in stash I do not need to earn before ‘pulling the plug’.

A lot of people on the forums also earn money once ‘retired’. Just look at Mr. money moustaches wife making enough with her Etsy shop to cover both their basic spending. Off course this income was not predictable. But the fact that you will have SOME income is predictable. Even if you do not yet know how you will earn that income. Mr. money moustache had his carpentry skills to fall back to if some additional income was necessary.

In Belgium 7.400 euro is the easiest money you can earn. Since this will only take around 3 months to earn and thus leaves me plenty of time to pursue my own interest it is the basis for my calculations.

This basis will probably be different for everybody. Just like not everybody will plan on spending only 18.000 a year. some will be ok with only 6 months of not having to work, others will want to spend 24.000 euro a year (or more). That is what makes it personal finance. But do take some future income into account in your calculations. If done right you will still be relative young when the basics are covered by the stash. You will want to do SOMETHING. Wasting extra years at a job you do not like or postponing projects, passions until the stash is big enough to cover every imaginable and even unimaginable future expense is in my book foolish. The alternative: to plan some work after ‘retirement’ is a lot better since it will allow you to pull the plug on the full time job years earlier and will give you the flexibility to handle unexpected costs if those should ever arise.

Exit strategy

May 22, 2017 / FFsloth / 25 Comments

For some months now I have come to the conclusion that for me financial freedom in Belgium will always entail some work
The reason for this is very simple: taxes and our social system
Due to our social system we have high taxes in Belgium which means you will be building your initial stash by earning money that is taxed at 50%!

Taxbracket Income Tax level
Schijf 1 € 0 tot €10 860 25% (yes dear American readers, our taxes start at 25%!)
Schijf 2 € 10 860,01 t/m € 12 470 30%
Schijf 3 € 12 470,01 t/m € 20 780 40%
Schijf 4 € 20 780,01 t/m € 38 080 45%
Schijf 5 above 38 080,01 euro 50% (Yep, they go all the way to 50%! Did I mention the 21% sales tax?)

Dropping out completely will add costs to your retirement (since you no longer qualify for any of the social systems you paid into for many years) AND which will add to the amount you need to save, savings that you will need to get by working and being taxed at 50%!

The setup of our social system is such that you will have very little choice than to stay in it. But staying in the system means you either need to be an employee, independent or unemployed. You, per example need to be any of those three for 30 years to qualify for a pension.
Now I know this might be a bit of a bummer to some of you but it shouldn’t be!

The big benefits of working a little bit

A big plus is the tax free amount one can earn and currently sits at 7.130 euro (a mortgage will add to that, children as well, full table below). An extra is that for those earning less than 26.510 euro a year that tax free amount is pushed up to 7.420 euro!

How long would it take me to earn 7.420 with my current job if no taxes would be applied? Around 2 months and 2 weeks! Getting to the 24.000 euro mark will take a full year. So to get my earnings 3.2 times higher I need to work around 5.2 times longer. The difference between those two numbers is due to taxes.

One child will add 1.510 euro to this tax free amount, two children add 3.880 euro in total and three children 8.700 euro.

Our mortgage adds another 2.280 euro to this tax free amount so actually I could earn a total of 9.700 euro tax free! Because this will different for everybody (mortgage reduction in your taxes has become one of the most complex parts of our taxes in Belgium due to lots and lots of changes in the last few years) i will continue to work with the basic amount of 7.420 euro untaxed since this is the same for everybody.
Earning those 7.420 untaxed Euros has a few very powerful consequences.

First off, using the 4% rule it lowers the stash you need by 185 500 euro! With spending 18.000 euro a year, earning 7.400 euro a year by working, your stash only needs to be 265.000 euro. Add in some cash for the down years: 300.000 euro and you are done! You essentially exchange work taxed at 50% before financial freedom by work taxed at 0% after financial freedom. Due to the tax free nature of that last work, total time worked will be shorter than the scenario in which you keep working until the stash is big enough to quit completely. And you will have more free time when you are younger. A big plus in my book!

Second: you will remain in our social system which is always a good thing (extra security and income in the form of a pension later on, health care is also sorted!)

Third: by still working a bit you keep at the very least some employable skills up to date. A lot of people wonder about having enough stash to call it quits. Working three months a year (I’ll assume those short term jobs will pay less than my current one) eliminates this worry. If unexpected expenses do happen you can always work a bit longer until the expenses are covered.

The exit strategy

But all of this means you need a good exit strategy. Just pulling the plug is not going to do it since you will need to transit into some type of paid work. The problem is finding a job that enables this. I doubt my current employer would like the idea of me still working here but taking unpaid holidays for roughly 9 months, each and every year (i might get away with one year by using the ‘big trip in Asia’ as an excuse).
There do exist small jobs, only a few hours a week that might get you the 7.500 euro a year. But most of these are low paid and then you have to work most weeks of the year. I would like to have it done in the least possible time.

Possible solutions:

-security sector: easy to get a short time job. But since these are temporary contracts you would be unemployed for the remainder of the year. While this is free money some people might have ethical problems with this. At the very least there is a big change that after a while you will be hassled by the government agency to go to work again. Especially since the security sector is always looking for people. The extra work would mean extra money, but that isn’t the idea is it?

– find an employer who only needs people for a short duration but will need them every year. Big plus of this is that you do not need to look for a short time job every year. Personally I was thinking of the event industry as I liked working back stage at festivals when I was a student. The rest of the year you would be unemployed again, creating the same problem as with the security sector.

– find an employer who is ok with you taking 9 months unpaid leave every year. Chances for this happening are low.

-find an employer where you can work half time and add two months of unpaid leave to it. This is probably not going to fly either. Most employers apparently want their employees to work all year round. Even if you find an employer that is ok with it, you would most likely need to work half time during at least 8 months and only have 4 months you do not need to work at all. If I could find something near my house I would be ok with this.

– find a side gig now that you can transform into a ‘job’ after FIRE. The side gig would only need to bring in 7.090 euro. You would need to go the independent route for this, which will have an impact on your pension later. But it would avoid any hassle from the government. The issue remains that I would like to be done with the work in three months (untaxed you would only need to be making 2.400 a month gross) and then not have to work the remainder of the year. But to swing this you would need decent skills in a specific area. And since you would need to do this for the following 20 years, you are going to run into the issue of having to keep your skills up to date to stay relevant in your field.

These examples show that if you try to get the work done in three months or less you will always run into the same issues. Employers, or your own side gig, probably necessitate work the year round. If you do not do this as an employer you will be unemployed for 9 months, which will result in hassle from the government. If you do not do this at your side gig, you probably will not have a lot of side gig left after a few years …

The solution might be found by getting some location independent work (work you can do from a laptop from anywhere in the world). This might be the best route to go. Twelve hours a week of working but with zero commute and the possibility to travel anywhere anytime I want? Sign me up!

I welcome your input because as off now I have not yet an exit strategy in place. That is ok since I just started working at the new job and I will need to work for another 5 years. On the other hand, if I would identify a location independent side gig now, I could start implementing it as soon as next year. Thus reducing the time I need to work by a year AND have a secure exit strategy in place by the time I will be able to quit.

Life after achieving financial freedom

January 17, 2017 / FFsloth / 12 Comments

When I think about my ideal life after achieving financial freedom and there is no longer a need to work full time I imagine it to be a lot like my student years.

I am old enough to have done my studies when Belgian universities still used a yearly system. I liked that yearly system!

The university years

From October until April you had classes, May was reserved for studying and preparing for the exams and June was exam month (about 3 exams a week, so plenty of time to get some extra studying done). If you passed all your exams you had a three-month summer holiday period. I always worked one of those three months so I had some extra spending money for the remaining 2 months and during the next university year.

I only had around 20 hours of courses a week during the October – April period which left plenty of time to hang out with friends, smoke some joints (hey, I was a student and the Netherlands were only about 30km away, what can I say?) and spend time with the girlfriend (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). I found most of my classes interesting so I did not mind going to them: overall I found those 7 months very, very agreeable.

All in all I had 3 months of ‘work’ (1 month of studying, one month of exams and 1 month of summer job), 7 months of doing interesting stuff part time (going to classes, keeping notes up to date, some tasks) and 2 months off doing absolutely nothing (well there was the girlfriend and the weed …). Yes, life was nice as a student.

Now due to the social security system we have in Belgium, quitting the system completely is not really the best (or easiest) to do. You would need a bigger stash (a lot bigger, around 600.000 euro for one person) and it would make some stuff more complex. Nevertheless, our social security system does leave quite some wiggle room. Enter plan A and plan B.

Lets start with plan B

Plan B would be to go the full unemployment route. Being full time unemployed, the Belgian government will send me money each month! The first year this would be a decent amount but then it would gradually decline to about 500 euro a month.

Now our government does not like giving money to its citizens. They very much prefer it to be the other way round. So I expect to be contacted by the government agencies to get my lazy ass back to work! 20 years of full time work is apparently not enough for the Belgian government although our elected representatives are eligible for a full –and rather big- pension after only 20 years of ‘service’ in our parliament. Talking to government agencies is not high on my to do list once I have reached financial freedom. Actually, it is low on my to do list now as well. However, going job hunting and sitting at a desk for 40 hours a week is not very high on that list either.

Therefore, I started looking for a sector with a low barrier to enter and that uses lots of temporary contracts. And preferably does not involve to much hard label. Enter the security sector! In Belgium you need a license for this. Getting the license involves a one month course, which is free for the unemployed, but once you have it, it is dead simple to find a job in this field. As a student, I have worked back stage at several festivals and shows. So the plan: unemployment until the agencies start contacting me, and then a three month security contract, preferably in the summer months so I can do the festival circuit in Belgium.

A year would then consist of:

6 months of very relaxed living (more time with friends, more ahum ‘quality’ time with the girlfriend, learn a new skill – might be going back to university for three months and follow a few courses, slow travel)
3 months for a project, which might involve ‘working’: profit or pay would not be the main objective here, more for the experience. If the project involves employment, I would of course skip the security gig below.
3 month ‘summer job’ at the Belgian music festivals: paid work to get myself of the radar of our unemployment agencies

I also think that having a more busy 3 months during the year will let me appreciate the 6 to 9 lazy months during the rest of the year.

I could see myself spending 20 years of my life (until reaching the official retirement age) in the above regime.

How about plan A?

I am kind of working on plan A at the moment so we will see if I succeed or not. However, plan A would eventually involve working for 4 months and three weeks, getting paid 1.000 euro a month and not having to deal with any government agencies at all since I would still be employed.

A year would then consist of:

5 months of working
7 months very relaxed living during which I would then do a project. If the project turns out to be profitable or involve any wages, I could then ask for unpaid leave of absence at the ‘main job’ and reduce ‘working’ for the current or next year even more.

The fun thing of this approach is that it greatly reduces the size of your stash needed (reminder: the goals is to have 1.500 euro/month to live of). By working three to five months in a year a stash that normally would only sustain 1 person can then provide enough passive income for two persons (and avoid any hassle with government unemployment agencies as a bonus!)

plan B		Plan A
3 months working 1500 euro/month	4500	12 months working 1000/month	12000
9 months unemployed 500/month	4500
total income	9000	total income	12000

income necessary from stash	9000	income necessary from stash	6000
necessary stash size	225000	necessary stash size	150000

Since my current temporary job contract is done the end of this month I could launch plan B in February but my stash is only just above the amount necessary and we still need to do some renovations at our house (and in the next couple of years, we need to buy a new car as well). Those renovations will cost around 50.000 euro max so I do not have enough money yet. I also would prefer to have a steady paycheck while renovating the house. I would feel a lot better launching plan B only after these big expenses are behind me.

Plan A will take some time to get off the ground. Since it would at the very least involve 2 to 3 years of working full time before I could reduce the work time to less than 5 months/year this is something I can lay the groundwork for now! During those years of full time work at a decent wage, the stash can grow bigger and I can finish renovating our house.

With some luck, I will land that full time job in February and have it evolve into plan A after 4 years. Fingers crossed, as I apparently suck very much at this whole ‘interviewing for a job’ process.

In 4 years’ time, the stash should be big enough that the girlfriend would also be able to reduce her work time to half AND even continue to grow (be it very slowly). A few more years later, she might choose a modified version of plan B for herself and me remaining in plan A, further reducing the time she needs to work.

If you are interested in the gritty details of plan A and B, I will combine this post + my financial freedom in Belgium post into one big presentation I will give at the next Belgian Dutch blog meeting in Antwerp on 4 February. The meet up is organized by cheezy finance and Amber tree leaves. I will probably post most of the presentation on line afterwards but not everything. And a few other bloggers will also give a presentation.

It’s about the journey, not the packing of your bags

December 27, 2016 / FFsloth / 2 Comments

Originally this was going to be a post about my stash. How big it is and how I got there.

And then I read this post by 1500days.

Especially Phase 3 (What am I running to?) and Phase 4 (Figuring the rest out) spoke to me. Because, to my own surprise it has been those parts of the financial independence journey that have appealed to me the most.

I was drawn to the financial independence community because I was naturally frugal and already obsessed with investing for over 15 years, a natural fit. I thought my main interests would be frugal tips and investing ideas (and I do love reading the trading updates of financial velociraptor) but what attracted me the most, to my own surprise was the psychological journey. I especially enjoyed the experiences of the working world Livafi described.

I should not have been surprised. When you go read a travel blog or a friend will tell you about this epic world journey he has done, there will be a few bits about packing his luggage (how to fit the essentials in a back pack) of arranging passports, a place to sleep and stuff like that. But those things will not be the main content because those were not the main goal of the undertaking! They are side effects, consequences of the big travel undertaking. One does not go on a world journey just so he/she can become a bag packing expert. He/she will probably end up a bag packing expert because of the journey but it is not the point of the whole undertaking. The journey, the experience is the point.

not why we travel

And that (to my surprise and luck) is the same with this whole financial independence community. It is actually not about finance or frugal living. Those things are the practical parts. The ‘how do I get everything I need for a 1 year world trip in a backpack under 10 kg’ part. And yes, it is challenging seems challenging (but actually it is not) and I will devote some posts about it. But a Fi blog should be about the journey. And the journey is life itself. How to live and enjoy it without having to sacrifice 40+ hours a week tied to a desk in an office to pay for it.

Financial freedom in Belgium

December 23, 2016 / FFsloth / 5 Comments

The financial freedom and early retirement journey is a personal journey. Each person will have his own definition of what financial freedom means to him, the amount he needs and how he wants to achieve it. So the below will be my view on it, but I believe that most people in Belgium will be able to agree with most of it.

First thing we need to determine is how much money does a person in Belgium need to life a comfortable, albeit somewhat frugal life. This means you have enough to pay for your basic needs for food, housing, clothing, transportation and social contact. Driving a Porsche or frequent dining at a Michelin star restaurant will not be part of the package (if you do want those things I am afraid you have come to the wrong site, this site is about freedom to do whatever you want with your time, not the freedom to buy whatever you want).

Again, this number will be different for every person but I believe most people will agree that life can be pretty sweet in Belgium on budget of 1.500 euro per month, especially if you do not have to go work for it 40 hours a week.

The average after tax wage is 2.100 euro and our national lottery has a popular scratch ticket (aptly named ‘win for life’) promising a monthly sum of 2.000 euro a month. Their Deluxe version of it is 3.000 euro. So basic living for 1.500 euro a month? Seems like a safe assumption to me.

In my last post I mentioned this rule of thumb that 25x your annual expenses means you are financially independent.

So 1.500 x 12 = 18.000 a year.

18.000 x 25 = 450.000 euro

So 450.000 euro of investments (let’s call it The stash, because it does have a nice ring to it and thanks to this guy most people in the personal finance community know what is meant by The Stash) will buy you your freedom of work in Belgium. Personally I exclude the house as in most cases this does not provide you with any income to live off. A house is definitely worth something. And once it is paid off that will definitely have an impact on your annual budget (see that this stuff is personal and different for everybody?) and thus on the amount you need to accumulate. But to keep things simple we will ignore it for the time being.

What we will not ignore is the Belgian social system.

Just as taxes will play a big (negative) role in the accumulation of the Stash, the Belgian social system also plays a big (positive) role in the size of The Stash you need.

Our health system is pretty cheap and a reason why I think you can live a comfortable life with 1.500 euro a month.

But we also have unemployment benefits. If you have worked, you qualify and since everybody will have needed to have worked to get a sizeable stash (lottery winnings and inheritance aside) everybody reading this will qualify. And the thing with the Belgian unemployment benefits is that it is not means tested. So you can be a billionaire and still qualify for it. Dividend income, capital gains or option premium income are all compatible with receiving unemployment income. Extra special: there is no time limit on it. You can have it for decades upon decades. It does decrease over time but the bare minimum for a person living together with another person (single people get more) is around 500 euro/month. And although the government is now more persistent in activating the unemployed (a.k.a. getting your lazy ass back to work), 500 euro/month is something you can count on (worst case scenario is you have to go back to work for a few months to avoid losing this benefit: this basically means more money for you). Receiving unemployment benefits does prevent you from going to live abroad but the unemployed also qualify for vacation days. Stretch the rules a little bit, and there is nothing standing in your way to take a month or even two-month travel holiday (basically you have 20 official holidays and officially you need to declare to the government when you ‘take a holiday’, but everything is done on line now and you only need to declare these holidays at the end of a calendar month). It may not be complete freedom, but it is pretty close!

Since the government will give you 500 euro/month for not working, 1.000 euro income from the stash is enough to get to 1.500 euro/month income in total.

1.000 x 12 = 12.000

12.000 x 25 = 300.000 euro

Lets play it on the safe side and add in 25.000 in cash (to cover 2 years of living expenses) and the basic amount needed in Belgium to declare yourself financially independent is: 325.000 euro.

425.000 euro will make life a bit more comfortable (or assure you live on 3% return of your stash, plenty of companies paying out a 3% net dividend).

At 525.000 euro you no longer need to care about unemployment benefits or whatever. Total and complete freedom.

So there we have it. Financial freedom in Belgium is having a passive income between 1.000 euro or 1.500 euro a month from investments (depending on how you feel about pocketing unemployment benefits). This means a Stash between 300.000 euro to 500.000 euro. Add 2 years of expenses in cash as a buffer and you need 325.000 to 536.000 euro.

What’s up with this financial freedom nonsense?

December 22, 2016 / FFsloth / 1 Comment

Changes are you have stumbled upon this blog via other personal finance sites and already known the concepts of financial freedom and early retirement. If this is the case, you can skip this post. For those few who are not familiar with this little sub section of the personal finance space, I will cover the basics below.

Financial independence (I chose to go with financial freedom because financial freedom sloth had a nicer ring to it, it just sounded a little bit better 😉 is the point where your passive income covers your normal expenses. Basically you do no longer need to work. To some this is also the point that some do in fact decide to stop working altogether and decide to retire. Hence the early retirement part of it. Since a lot of people who are drawn to this concept appear to be engineers and they love abbreviations, FI and FIRE where born. With FIRE being Financial Independent Retire Early.

financial freedom sign

So one can say that financial freedom has two parts:

Generating passive income.

Of course passive income is never 100% passive. Even the most passive investment needs you to log in to your investment account now and then and transfer some money around (perhaps even sell or buy something – gasp, the horror!). Some people achieve financial freedom via real estate which does involve some (or even a lot) of work.

But the general consensus here is that you get most or all your income from other sources than having to work full time for somebody else or in your own business. In most cases the passive income comes from investments (either stocks, bonds, real estate) but we live in a strange world and other possibilities are possible (perhaps you own a patent that pays regular royalties, a company pays you well to put some windmills on a plot of land, your grumpy cat achieved internet stardom and brings in the money …). Point is, you are no longer under any obligation to get up early in the morning and go to work every day of the week, for most weeks of the year.

Covering your normal expenses

The more you spend each month, the more passive income you are going to need. Sounds simple enough but you would be surprised how many people are not aware of the link between their day to day spending and their ability to save …

How much do you need to cover your expenses? Well, this guy has a pretty good answer to it. The basis is the trinity study.

Now, if you go poking around on the internet you can find posts on forums where intense debate rages about this study. And as a non USA person you could say: does it apply to my country? But I had never heard about the trinity study and also came more or less to the same conclusions just by observing that even in Belgium we had a handful of companies paying out a net dividend (after taxes) of 3% to 4%. They even continued to pay their dividend during the biggest market storms (anybody remember 2008, or before that 2001?) and in most cases are able to increase their dividends over the years, thus giving some inflation protection. The 25x annual expenses in investments (whatever form those investments may take) is a pretty practical rule of thumb. We’ll go with it for the time being. Once you are close to that number you may want to examine more closely your assumptions, expenses, rates of return and all that stuff.

The same guy also has a pretty good post on how to get there.

Basically: the less you spend, the more you save AND the less you actually need to achieve financial independence. Being frugal is the name of the game (being smart helps).

Two other sites also cover the basics (and much more) of this whole FIRE thingy pretty well

http://earlyretirementextreme.com/

http://jlcollinsnh.com/

Any questions? Google is your friend (I am the lazy one here, so go click, click the links and read, read …)

In the next post, I will go into the details of how I view what financial freedom in Belgium specifically means.

Luckily for us, achieving freedom no longer involves painting our faces blue, having to listen to Mel Gibson going on and on about something or another and then ride into battle and die horribly. So we have that going for us!

Mission statement

December 18, 2016 / FFsloth / 8 Comments

Hello and welcome to yet another personal finance blog dedicated to financial freedom and early retirement.

I am a 42 years old guy living in Belgium (the country with the highest tax rate in the world), making an average wage, who would like to achieve financial freedom by 45. And I hope this blog will help me stay the course.

The ‘living in Belgium’ part is also the reason why I am doing this blog. The personal finance community might have grown quite a bit in the last years in the USA but in Belgium Europe even) personal finance blogs are pretty spars. I also think my perspective will be different than most. And who knows, we might be able to learn a bit from each other!

So goal number one is achieving financial freedom before I turn 46. I will go more in depth in a follow up post what financial freedom means exactly for me. But my investments will have to go up.

Goal number two, but equally important is getting back into shape. Young mr financial freedom sloth was a dashing young man 😉 in excellent shape. Current mr FFsloth is an overweight slob (1m78 height and 105 kilograms, not good by any metric). So the weight will have to go down. Achieving financial freedom without good health would be a shallow victory. Also, getting in shape might actually help becoming financially free as it will give me more energy to explore new money making side hustles.

Goal number three of the blog is to keep me on course. As you will discover in the following posts, I am a bit (ok, a lot) of a slacker: hence the average wage, hence the being fat (I am also brutally honest ;-). Being disciplined over a longer time period isn’t exactly my strongest point. My style is more that of a sloth for long periods, intersected with short bursts of intense activity and then retreat back to sloth. (Little side note: by typing the last sentence I stumbled upon the name for my blog! I was going to go for financialfreedomat45 but financialfreedomsloth is so much better. As a bonus, sloths are cool animals!!)

Being a sloth isn’t necessarily bad as it did get me a university degree. With honors even!! How I loved the old annual university system in Belgium: muck about till the first of May, then one month of intense studying, another month of exams and 1st of July I could be full on sloth till 1st of October. Sigh, the good old days.

It also got me an investment account approaching 240.000 euro. A sloth does not spend much. And value investing can be very sloth like, even Buffett loves a sloth : Lethargy bordering on sloth remains the cornerstone of our investment style.

And I am the proud owner of a charming old farm house approaching a value of 300.000 euro where the mortgage is currently around 130.000 (having a partner helped here, so only half of that is mine).

Yes, this sloth has done a few things right. But it could have been so much more had I been a bit more disciplined and focused!

So this sloth is counting on you dear readers to keep me disciplined and honest. In exchange you will get a brutally honest report on how a lazy, overweight (no it is not the waffles or the beer that got me fat), middle aged Belgian guy goes about achieving financial freedom in a country with one of the highest tax rates in the world. Trust me, it’s going to be a crazy ride.

Tag: financial freedom

It’s personal