About this blog - Fight to FIRE

I started this personal blog to put my thoughts about Financial Independence/Retire Early (FIRE) in one place while I meander through life in my home country Belgium together with my wife in our small 40m² apartment.
By putting my progress online, I hope to help myself and you, my compatriot on this journey to Financial Independence, reach 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. Even though I haven’t reached it yet, by fighting on, I wish to reach FIRE by 45 at the latest.

This is where the blog comes in. It serves two purposes:
First, 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 or fellow Belgian or European FIRE aficionados. On the other hand, you have a limited amount of European blogs. For this reason, I hope I can add something meaningful like NoMoreWaffles, Dividend Cake, and a few other blogs.

Now you know where I come from and why I’m here. You are more than welcome to keep me company 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.

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My monthly Savings Rate report: June 2020

July 9, 2020

After a live-changing May, June was a lot less crazy. That is not to say that nothing happened in June. I actually invested quite a bit in the site. These investments made my SR drop but thanks to my holiday pay, I was able to keep the damage to a minimum.

Paying too much taxes? My Belgian pay slip explained

July 7, 2020

In 2020 Belgium is still the country with the highest average income tax and tax…

Side hustling in Belgium: 6 jobs providing additional income

June 27, 2020

In recent years, the Belgian government made it easier to make an extra income through a side hustle. In 2015 it introduced a new form of unlimited untaxed income albeit with stringent measures: Flexi-jobs. Later, in 2018, it introduced another form of untaxed income with a limit of 6,340 EUR. It is this last form that the Constitutional Court has annulled. But what does this mean for people that want to still earn something extra?

Belgian REIT Cofinimmo is getting even better

June 19, 2020

My favorite individual stocks in my core-satellite portfolio are my Belgian REITs. Aedifica and Cofinimmo are solid companies that focus on a sector in real estate that is still growing: (health) care. Where Aedifica already has over 60% in care property, allowing it to reduce its withholding tax from 30% to 15%, Cofinimmo is now nearing that threshold.

Time-Weighted Return vs Money-Weighted Return

TWR vs MWR: calculating the benefits of deposit and withdrawal

June 13, 2020

A small update on my portfolio. Increasing my portfolio by 15K has impacted the performance, but how much? I want to address that now. I'm going to check out two major metrics that help determine my portfolio performance: Time-Weighted Return or TWR and Money-Weighted Return aka MWR. How did this increase impact my portfolio?

My monthly Savings Rate report: May 2020

June 7, 2020

As eluded to last month, May was a life-changing month. I even received a little surprise windfall at the end thanks to my grandmother's inheritance. With all of the preparations done in April, May was relatively calm in terms of expenses. This further improved my Savings Rate and pushed it to an all-time high.