I find it interesting to chat with readers about their own journey towards financial independence.
Today, Florence has stopped by the blog to update us on where she’s up to with her FIRE journey. In 2023, she shared details with us about her FIRE journey and goals in this article.
At the time, her life plans were moving along well: a well-established job and a predicted retirement age of 40 in 2028.
But life often has surprises in store for us…
I’ll let Flo take over to tell us more.
Small changes at work… with a big impact
As you’ll know from my first blog post on my FIRE journey, having an aversion to risk, I’ve always based the calculations for my FIRE number on a safe withdrawal rate of 2% (living in Switzerland, that seemed more reasonable to me). However, I monitored my FIRE figures in line with the usual withdrawal rate of 4% as a “FU money” objective and I achieved this goal in January.
This appeared to be a great success, but as I don’t use this rate for my objective, I hadn’t really planned to do anything on this basis…
Until changes in my team and my partner’s job at Google made us unhappy — nothing too dramatic, but enough that we continued complaining about it for several days…
Until Valentine’s Day when, while holding a glass of champagne, I said to my partner: “Why don’t we stop and take a break?”
And boom, the decision was half made!
After spending a few days playing around with the calculations, we made the decision.
We both left our jobs at Google!
On March 28, we both handed in our resignations, and on April 30, we left Google! We haven’t hesitated at all since February, especially after a month of hiking, etc.
We both feel like a big weight has been lifted!
For him, it means true early retirement. He’ll turn 52 this year, and he’s in a position to not have to work again at all.
For me, who’ll be 36 in June, it’s a year’s career break, as I don’t think I can take full early retirement yet — at least not in Switzerland.
After that, I’ll re-evaluate my work options. But for now, we’re simply going to enjoy our new-found freedom, go hiking, visit family, travel, etc., and not worry about anything else.
The dream!
So, I wanted to share / celebrate this change with you because your blog is part of my FIRE journey and still helps me enormously!
And I also wanted to thank you for the blog post last year. Quite many people got in contact with me after it was published, and that was a great way to expand my network in Switzerland!
How did you calculate your figures to pull the plug?
Good question!
In January of this year, I got to the level of 1.3MCHF, which represented my 4% FIRE objective, and my “FU money” target.
I’ll share the breakdown of my January figures, which is 1.3MCHF net assets (and not the 1.5MCHF today), and in brackets the percentage that represents:
- Cash: 121k (9.2%)
- Investment portfolio: 907k (68.5%)
- Pension/retirement funds: 295k (22.3%)
In my portfolio:
- SWX:IGLO: 1.5% (bond ETF)
- SWX:VWRL: 44% (global equity ETF)
- SWX:VUSA: 24.5% (US S&P500 ETF)
- GOOG: 30% (I was still heavily invested in Google shares as part of my salary, which I’m now selling in order to reinvest in ETF instead)
And then for my expenses (those actually made in 2023, and those predicted in 2024):
| 2023 Expenses | 2024 Predicted | Comments | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local travel | 798.49 | 800.00 | SBB/CFF (incl. fun) |
| Presents | 1'595.53 | 1'500.00 | Christmas, birthdays, etc. |
| Meals out | 1'466.09 | 1'400.00 | Restaurants |
| Activities | 413.73 | 500.00 | Spas, paragliding, museums, etc. |
| Sport | N/A | N/A | Exercise at home |
| Services | 1'330.00 | 1'300.00 | Apartment cleaning |
| Personal things | 864.03 | 800.00 | Clothes, beauty, books |
| Holidays | 3'584.17 | 3'500.00 | Flights and hotels |
| Meals | 3'549.21 | 3'600.00 | Food shopping |
| Health | 8'775.73 | 6'000.00 | Health insurance + medicine (I had an operation in 2023) |
| Furnishings | 759.10 | 760.00 | Decorations, furniture, plants (I love plants!) |
| Car | 867.45 | 860.00 | Maintenance + fuel (car insurance is taken care of by my partner) |
| Rent | 20'565.00 | 22'800.00 | My share of the rent |
| Total | 44'569.00 | 43'820.00 | |
| Additional expenses | 8'180.00 | Estimate of tax on assets excluding income | |
| Grand total | 52'000 |
Although I’ve planned to be able to maintain the same level of expenses during this mini-retirement, there are some categories that could change. I could see my expenses on personal things go down (I’m setting myself the challenge of not buying anything during this mini-retirement!!), while the holiday budget could go up a bit (as we’ll have more opportunity to travel). Overall, I think that the total expenses will remain about the same or increase slightly, but they will be split differently.
So I started to plan my career break / mini-retirement in mid-February, and from this date onwards, I kept my wages (including the bonus) in my current account so that I wouldn’t have to sell my ETFs or withdraw money from my portfolio for this break.
Including my savings, that came to ~180k in cash when I left Google on April 30 (a net wealth of 1.5 million at that time).
According to my calculations, that could fund a career break until September 2026.
However, I’m still planning to re-evaluate my professional options and income needs in one year’s time (in May 2025).
My idea would be to become “Coast FIRE”, which means earning just enough to pay my annual expenditure for several more years, as I no longer really need to save or invest for early retirement.
Given that my expenses will only be around 50'000 euros per year, that opens the door to numerous new work opportunities (part-time, contract, freelance, side hustles, etc.) that I’m eager to explore.
Next stage: we’ll get back in touch in May 2025!
Florence and I decided we’d chat again in May 2025 to see how her life is going after one year of early retirement.
I’m really looking forward to it!
And how about you? What inspiration do you take from Flo’s FIRE journey?
