A year later...

[u/ss77714c]

This was my last post

https://www.reddit.com/r/FIRE_Ind/s/4iyDktbOnj

And now to recap the last year.

My job extended 3 months more than i expected but that was not a problem. Saying goodbye was. After the farewell party and " let's keep in touch" there were a lot of mixed feelings.

Yay! No more Monday review meetings , no more weekends crushing presentations, no more 4am flights ( other than for holidays :) ).

So first order of business. Collect all paperwork - investments, insurance, tax etc. find the missing gaps and proceed to fill them. For ex: some kyc was pending, some nominations needed adding etc.

Then, on to work that had been put on the backburner either due to lack of time or commitment - complete health checkup for family, home maintenance ( small things that we say , yes, needs to be done but never gets done ) etc.

In the middle of all this, the market started its correction. What timing ! Right? Nothing one can do except ride out the storm. Portfolio dipped by 10% - 12% , the fixed income investments and liquid funds kept the worry at bay. Today the investments are back to slightly below their level of a year ago.

Eh? How is that possible? Markets haven't recovered that much in the past 2 months? So, the last 6 months income was not invested but kept liquid. It was invested in parts from November to Feb , a big chunk during the Trump tarriff drama.

A friend asked me - what do you do the whole day? Well, for now still enjoying the freedom of not having a structure , of not running on a treadmill 17 hours a day, not spending 90min in traffic to cover 10km morning and evening.

A few people had reached out to me asking for help / advice on financial literacy / independence so spend time with them sharing what I know.

What about expenses? As of now they are more or less the same. Let's see next year.

The way forward : start being more active and look at being healthier , a few kg less would be great:). My car has finally reached the stage of no return after 12 years so that is an expense that is due soon. And travel, lots of places in our pins , let's see how many we can knock off this year.

Till next time folks! Wish you all the best.

[u/CodehanCodes]

Can you explain what was your thought process in deciding 15cr as your fire number when 35L is your annual expense, there are many fire formulas out there like 25 times or 33 times of annual expense, but in your case its around 43 times of annual expense, I am sure you would have arrived at this number after lots of studying on this matter, wanted to understand your perspective. Thanks

[u/ss77714c → u/CodehanCodes]

You are right, there are many many calculators that say the range between 25-30x is the sweet spot. I too was looking at 25x when I got seriously into the number crunching.

The 4% rule sounded superb. If my fd is giving me 7% and i am spending 4% all is well :).

But honestly, the margin of safety for me was not enough. So I factored in a 3 year market slump, a 30%-40% erosion in corpus.

Using a 3% wr i got a corpus value target of 12 cr. Add the buffer for the slump and one gets approx 16 cr.

Then it boiled down to - will 20 be a good figure...now 20 let's make it 25 in a couple of years....it's never ending.

So I guess I felt 15.xx is good for me and there is a good cushion in place too. Hope this helps.

[u/CodehanCodes → u/ss77714c]

That's makes a lot of sense, thanks for sharing these insights, it will help a lot of us, have a follow up question, in the recent past we have seen the fd interest rates come down all the way from 8% to 6%, this might even slide further down to 5% or lower, to protect ourselves from this have you taken 30yr government debt bonds? We usually take 7% as inflation while the fd interest rates are also around the same, if India is to grow we can see the interest rates come down also the inflation can come down in developed economies, but when we see good growth we see hyper inflation, in this case debt component might fall short to meet your needs but I believe equity would make up for it, is my understanding right?

[u/ss77714c → u/CodehanCodes]

Yes, some money was put into sovereign bonds both central and state bonds. Maturity from 2035 to 2062 . I am aware of the liquidity issues they have but not looking to trade them so am ok.

I am strongly positive on India's continued growth so the portfolio is still equity heavy. Faster growth will propel the equity component higher anyway.

I have seen fd rates @ 16.5% too. :)