About this blog - Fight to FIRE

About Mr.FightToFIRE

Who am I? I’m a 30-year-old Belgian IT professional working for a large European retail bank in Brussels for over 8 years. I work on IT projects of various sizes where I develop customer-facing apps to support our clients in requesting banking products such as credit cards, loans, insurances, etc.

For now, I live in Belgium together with my wife in a cozy 40m² apartment. I have traveled around, seen various parts of India and the Americas but will always enjoy being cozy with the misses.

Me looking out towards the Taj Mahal — Me during my visit to the Taj Mahal in January 2018.

About the blog

Fight To FIRE is Belgian personal finance blog about the struggle to find the right path and how to reach the ultimate goal: Financial Independence/Retire Early (FIRE).

Ever since I started my professional carrier in 2012, I dreamed of being able to become financially independent at an early age. But unfortunately, I have yet to achieve Financial Independence and Retire Early. Over the course of many years, I tried different things to reach financial independence. One of them was Forex. This unfortunately yields the desired results. After over 6 years of trying, I decided to stop and focus on keeping it simple through stocks.

My forex journey left me financially scarred. I needed a place to write down my thoughts and to prevent making the same mistakes in the future. Together with my experience in IT and working in a bank I kickstarted this blog in September 2018.

FightToFIRE is a place I can call my own. A place where I can put my progress online; progress that I hope can help myself but also you, my reader, on this journey to Financial Independence, reach FIRE. It allows me to put my thoughts and (investments) goals in writing which should help me with decision making.
The second purpose is to provide a different view on how to achieve FI in Europe. There are already amazing sites available such as Mr. Money Mustache, Think Save Retire or Root of Good.
These blogs give excellent advice on FIRE and how to approach it, but they have an American point of view that doesn’t always apply to me, fellow Belgians, or European FIRE aficionados. For this reason, I hope I can add something meaningful to the Belgian fire movement just like NoMoreWaffles, Dividend Cake, and many other blogs.

So, there you have it, my story. And even though I haven’t reached it yet, by fighting on, I wish to reach FIRE by 45 at the latest.

Now that you know where I come from, I invite you to join me and see where we end up.
Don’t hesitate to contact me to help me broaden my horizon on FIRE, provide improvements on how I should write something or just anything you think can help me.

Featered on

Firehub.eu - Financial Independence hub of Europe

Continue reading

My monthly Savings Rate report: March 2021

April 10, 2021

March turned out to be a good month for my Savings Rate. While on the expenses side I spend a lot on the home and ownership part and again on food, I also received a nice extra on the income side thanks to evening deployments for work. I ended up doing a bit of nightly work between 1 am and 3 am.

Apartment progress: 30%; finally above ground!

April 3, 2021

Delays are normal in life. A train that's delayed because the machinist overslept, bad weather causing you to get stuck in traffic and arrive late at work. A lot of them are due to circumstance and you can't do much about them. However, my apartment that only now has reached ground level, clearly didn't just have delays due to Force Majeure from Corona.

Startling Extra Costs To Get A Better Turnkey Apartment

March 21, 2021

While we are crawling closer to the delivery date of our baby girl (27 May), there is another delivery that is causing more headaches: my heavily delayed turnkey apartment. Progress is being made of course, but at the current speed, I shouldn't expect a delivery sooner than March 2022. Given these delays, I was startled when I recently received a mail about the fit and finish of my delayed turnkey apartment. My shock continued when I saw the standard finish and how much they charge for extras.

Buying And Selling Second-hand Online In Belgium

March 15, 2021

With a baby on the way, there is a lot of clothes, furniture, and stuff we have to get to properly prepare for her arrival in May. While this could be an endeavor that goes into the thousands of euros, there is a way to keep it manageable. Here is how we bought and sold our stuff online, not only for the baby but also the microwave or washing machine we didn't need anymore after moving into my grandmother's house.

My monthly Savings Rate report: February 2021

March 7, 2021

2021 really kicked into high gear this month. While we didn't go on holiday due to Corona, we did make rather large expenses for something life-changing. I'm talking about the baby of course.

shaking hands over the purchase of a house

Moving out of our first rental appartment, also our last?

March 2, 2021

It all started in November 2020 when we had to decide where to stay after I learned that my apartment in Brussels would face a 10 to 12 month (!) delay due to corona -although I'm very doubtful it's just because of that- and that my wife would deliver the end of May 2021.