Mr RIP story: Italian expat, high income late in life, always been frugal, 50% FI

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Hi Swiss FI seekers,
It seems I’m the first to share my story here :slight_smile:

As the title says, I’m Italian, I earn a good salary as Software Engineer since end of 2012. I grew up very frugal and I saved even when I was earning an italian salary. Even when I was earning an Italian PhD salary (800 euro per month)!

So this windfall salary plus my natural frugality allowed me to achieve savings rate in the range 60-80% and aim to FI in few years. My saving rate is lying though! Can’t use our friendly shockingly simple math behind ER formula because I won’t spend as much as I’m spending these days once FI. Why? Because I’ll probably move back to Italy.

Anyway, you wanna see my numbers? Here’s my publicly shared Net Worth document, with incomes, spending, savings, saving rate, forecasts.

I update it monthly and post progresses on my blog, category finances.

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Hey MrRip,

thank you for sharing. I love the historical Net Worth development. You really went into overdrive in 2012! Good for you.

Keep pushing, you are halfway there!

:smiley:

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Thank you makkeboome :slight_smile:
I’m pushing! I’m kind of both tired and impatient though.
I’m thinking about asking 80%.

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Hey mate,

Thanks for being the first to share your story and numbers in the Community!
I’d kind of the same reaction as @makkeboome — i.e. thanks god for your wallet that you moved to Switzerland at Hooli in 2012 :smiley:

Where do you plan to live when back in Italy? Sunny South? North?

About your 80%, I’m thinking about the same thing although not having your Savings Rate.
Did you compute how many years of work this would imply?

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Yeah, I totally need to thanks Hooli for that, but my saving rate and absolute savings (and salary) were awesome in the 2 years before Hooli too :slight_smile:

For Italian standard, I was earning double a normal salary and spending probably half of a normal person. I didn’t track my expenses back then but I assume I was saving >70% of my salary. Given the Simple Shocking Math it seems that with current saving rate at 67% (trending slightly down in October) I did a WRONG move, but that’s not true. Absolute savings matter, since you may choose to retire in a cheaper place.

Italy. I didn’t start investigating where we would live once back in Italy. Surely not in Milan or Rome. Probably somewhere in centre-north. Maybe Marche or Abruzzo or Tuscany. Or maybe far south, like Sicily. We, the RIPs, didn’t discuss that yet.

80% of time doesn’t mean 80% of take home pay.

  • Stocks granted in the past would keep vesting at the same pace (and they are ~30% of my salary)
  • Benefits will stay the same (Health Insurance contribution, Accident insurance, other benefits)
  • the 20% gross loss is within the highest tax bracket, so the average tax percentage will be lower

I guess in the end I’d lose something like 10% of my take home pay. Deal!

Didn’t run the numbers though. Don’t know how slower would I reach FIRE.

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In case you’re interested of hearing @MrRIP taking about himself, here’s a podcast episode with him:
https://financial-independence.eu/podcast/fire-yourself-to-switzerland/ :smiley:

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haha yeah, maybe more will come :slight_smile:

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Hi @MrRIP!

I looked at your blog today and what surprises me is that your budget in Switzerland (~63K CHF) is not much more than your budget in Italy (42000 EUR which is ~48000 CHF.)

Have you written a detailed breakdown of your estimated FIRE costs in Italy somewhere? I would have expected the costs to be half compared with Switzerland.

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