I am in my mid 40s and I just crossed 3M CHF (over 4M USD!!) and I still don’t think I can retire even though when I first found out about FIRE my number was 1.5M.
I wonder if someone here feels like reading and sharing opinions on my rough plan.
Assets:
~35% stocks (well diversified low cost ETFs, roughly 40% US and 60% rest, including 3rd pillar)
~45% RE (place I live in - about 50% of the total - plus 3 rentals, one CH and two in two different EU countries)
~18% 2nd pillar
~2% cash
a small amount of REITs and a loan to a family member
at some point sadly not too far in the future I will inherit a few hundred Ks worth of real estate in my home EU country
I have 1.4M CHF in total mortgage (some fix, some Saron, 600k on the house I live in), all up for renewal in the next couple years
Cash flow:
I still work 100% and take home some 400k/year post AHV/2nd pillar contributions but pre-tax (lots of it is RSU vesting - so market sensitive). I have no plan (nor path) to get promoted again or work hard to get larger bonuses, but also I don’t want to reduce the % (2 days WFH and AI tools makes it feel like 80% these days already)
spouse is currently taking a break, but could/should go back to work within 1-2 years and take home at least 100k
rentals bring in something like 35/40k year pre-tax, net of mortgage interests
dividends from the ~1M in ETFs produce currently around 20K/year
as a family of 4, with kids still in primary school, we spend ~100k/year. In 2025 the biggest categories where traveling (24k), health (17.5k), mortgage interests (9k), groceries (7k), small generic house maintenance (5k), cleaner (5k), kids camps/hort (5k). I am not tracking things well mainly due to the mess of bank accounts/cards I have accumulated over the years to gtet some peanuts cashbacks…
My current, very vague plan is to work 2/3 more years (AI might give me a push sooner TBH) to let some recent larger RSU grants vest and in the meantime finish renovating my house (heating system, some minor things, maybe solar panels) while it’s still tax-deductible, buy aggressively into 2nd pillar, renew mortgages, get swiss nationality, then quit.
WDYT? Is this a reasonable plan? Working a few more years would make me feel much safer but at the same time the amount of wealth I already have should be sufficient if we just could lower our expenses a bit. I am very confident that, if I lose/quit my current job, I would not be able to find one paying similar numbers.
My main financial uncertainty is what to do about the mortgages: I have already too much RE in my portfolio (I’d like 40% stocks, 30% RE, 25% bonds/2nd pillar, 5% cash) so repaying feels wrong but then I am afraid banks won’t be there for me if I have to renew when not working anymore. I was quoted 2k from VZ to make some sort of plan, but it sounds expensive to me, maybe you people here have wisdom to offer for free
I wouldn’t retire before I had at least 25 times yearly expenses invested in stocks.
I’d include taxes and AHV contributions (“nichterwerbstätig”, based on wealth) in my projected post-retirement expenses, those would be 20k+ positions each in most cases.
I’d include 2nd and 3rd pillar as invested in stocks, if they are.
But I wouldn’t include RE, except indirectly through lower expenses (-rent, +maintenance).
Actually, if I take away the equity in my house from the total, then I am basically there: ~2.5M and 100k/year expenses. But yes, those 100k don’t include future taxes and AHV contributions, which I never bothered to calculate but I don’t think they should be that high as 40k+/year. An option on the table to save a few years of AHV contributions is to spend some time travelling around after FIRE, to lower cost of living while health is still good enough. Another option is that my spouse does go back to work and covers my AHV.
Why wouldn’t you include cash flow from investment RE in the picture?
I think keeping RE is a good diversification. You may not be able to subscribe to more debt for another opportunity so I will keep yours.
Refinancing your Home while unemployed was discussed in another thread. There is not much experience post RE but interested. The irdea will be to take the longest fixed mortgage available to you (e.g. 10 years).
In your position, I will work 3 extra years if you can handle it and do a mix of 2nd pillar buyback and ETF investments with your savings.
Worst case scenario, you can already retire in an EU country but your kids may not get the same opportunities as studying in Switzerland.
Yes, 35% is in stocks, plus some 18% in 2nd pillar and the RE is mainly investment properties, the equity in my house is around 500k CHF if I use a conservative market value - in reality it’s likely more but I am trying to keep the % of RE down in any way I can, even deluding myself
But if I retire let’s say at 48, I’d need more than 10. I have heard of 25 years fixed, but I dislike this pushing the bucket further and further, I mean I’d hate to be dealing with a mortgage expiring when I am old and sick, so a part of me would like to repay it all at some point. Maybe I’d feel ok if/when my 2nd pillar would be more than what I owe, so I could always cash that out to repay.
Well, I was hinting that life is full of surprizes, and might go not as you have planned. This is especially the case if you are responsible for others, like with small children. So I think that you need some income, which can also be much less. You are all set for Coast FI(RE), just need to have enough to cover expected and some unexpected expenses.
I started thinking about mortgages and housing in retirement. Now mu situation is a bit special because my wife recently passed away thus my children will inherit 25% of teh house. I am assuming the Child services will be happy for me to keep the house until the children are 18+ but then i might be forced to sell in order to pay them out.
Initially i was a bit disappointed on this because i had a traditional UK/US concept of housing with the goal to be mortage free by retirement, and that my current home would be a forever home.
However, thinking about things, downsizing or renting has dome benefits. Namely, one the children have left the nest i wont need a house so big. I might also have different priorities , perhaps nearer shops and public transport, or conversely somewhere even more rural and thus cheaper. The released capital might be more useful to cover living costs. While renting is more expensive, not worrying about maintenance makes financial planning much easier. I live in a large, older (70s) house that is great for families next to a school, with a big garden. But in retirement maybe i want a modern 2bed apartment and don’t mind a cheaper location.
House appreciation does absolutely zero while ypu live in the house. So the only way to benefit is to buy early and then sell to realize the gains. And you only gain when downsizing really since the whole market has moved. E.g., my 1.4m house i purchased 7 years ago is supposedly worth 1.8m at a minimum, so my 300k + down payment has given great returns on paper but until that is in an ETF it is meaningless. Likewise, mortgage is ~1000chf a month which is far under rental costs (3.5-4.5k) but paying off the mortgage wont help retirement much more than selling znd renting a small apartment at 1500chf a month
Sorry for your loss. I would be in the same situation if my spouse dies, and for this reason I have in my todo list to change the house from miteigentum to the other option (forgot the german term) which would mean the kids only inherit once both parents pass away. It’s really hard to find the motivation to do such tasks though.
I do understand the reasoning behind selling and renting a smaller place once the kids moved out. At least I understand it now, but maybe once I am old I’ll also be stubborn and wouldn’t want to leave my home and my neighbours, which took years (decades at that point) to become friends with. Also, renting always comes with the risk of being kicked out by the landlord with only a 3 months’ notice. Thankfully I already live in a place that most consider “too small” at under 100mq.
@CanIRetireYet the gap between your original number (1.5M) and where you are now (3M) and still not feeling ready is honestly the most interesting part of your post to me. Because its almost never the number that shifts. Its what you learned about your life in between.
with kids still in primary school your expenses arent at their peak yet. Secondary school, possibly uni, health stuff, maybe supporting parents at some point. 100k a year is probably a lower bound, not an upper one. So the question isnt really “do I have enough to cover todays expenses for 40 years”, its more “how much runway do I have against versions of my life I cant fully see yet”.
what helped me stop the goalpost thing was splitting the question into three levels. How long could I coast tomorrow, no lifestyle change. How long if we needed to scale back to essentials. And what would real independence look like where earning is fully optional. Having three separate numbers instead of one big one made it way less anxiety inducing. Your RE point is real btw, locking up nearly half your net worth in a home you live in makes the math a lot less flexible than raw 3M would suggest.
@CanIRetireYet , 5 cents from me. Coming back to your split of assets - exclude RE you live in, and discount heavily Pillar 2 amount (it won’t be available until you’re 60+ unless you leave CH or use it to repay mortgage). Just focusing on what remains, it’s 35% stock +2% cash + 22% RE, which out of 3m leave you with 1.8m available assets. Adding 400k for inheritance (sorry for your expected loss, number is a wild guess) leaves you with 2.2m. Great situation to be, but with 100k spend annually and your plan to live in CH - quite risky as your withdrawal rate would be over 4%. But if I read it well you can save annually 200k (excl your wife’s potential salary), which brings you to much safer situation in 2-3 years time, even assuming flat markets.
AHV post retirement is a big question in FIRE time, should you or your wife have a PT job/contracting gig earning you sth like 40k annually even for a few years then your FIRE is 2028 will be quite safe, otherwise you need to account for it.
Why discount heavily? Even if I access it at 60+ years old, I plan to still need money then (i.e., be alive), it only means I’d use the rest of the portfolio before then.
Good question, I wasn’t clear. I think that for your net value today you cannot take into account full amount of Pillar 2 which will be available in 20 years or so. By discounting I meant a process of calculating Present Value of money (I work in financial services, as you might see). Assuming 20 years and 5% discount rate you end up with PV being equal to about 38% of future value (which in safest form is equal to value today, but obviously you can try to estimate its growth).
@road_less_travelled The present value math is technically right but I think it overshoots the actual decision. Discounting pillar 2 to 38% of FV makes sense if you treat it as a portfolio asset you could deploy today. But @CanIRetireYet wont need that money today, he will need it from 60 onwards. By then the discounting reverses itself.
The more useful framing for me has been: dont add pillar 2 to your “available now” pile, but also dont strip it out. Carve it out as a separate runway that starts at 60. Then the question becomes how do the assets you can actually touch (RE excluded, pillar 2 carved out) bridge from today to 60. Thats a much smaller number with a much clearer answer.
@CanIRetireYet For your situation that bridge would need to cover roughly 25 years times whatever you actually spend, minus whatever your wife earns part time, minus AHV from 65. Once you size that gap the 3m headline matters less than how the pieces sequence.
Does anyone here split it that way, or do you all just look at one total number?
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