This is a question about saving potentially €2,50/month, which might be a ridiculously low number, but hey, the small bits add up.
We have signed/agreed to a mortgage with KBC. One of the conditions for a 0,05% discount on the yearly interest rate was "Je beroepsinkomsten (loon, inkomensvervangende uitkeringen, ...) doen toekomen op een betaalrekening bij KBC Bank." (= ~have your salary deposited to KBC).
I already have an account with KBC.
Will my gf (also named as kredietaanvrager) have to do the same?
KBC doesn't offer free bank accounts for 24+ y.o.'s.
If someone has experience with this, kindly share it. Thank you!
Hi all! I have seen some interesting posts about the net wealth trajectory in Belgium, and so I would like to show mine. This is mostly an encouragement post to show that IMO it's possible to reach FIRE in belgium at early 30s without a very high income, as long as you make the right budgeting decisions and are frugal.
Short story
I am 29yo working as an employed software engineer in Belgium. I only came to Belgium 3 years ago; I came from another country (where my income was half as is now). I already had a frugal lifestyle and I kept it. I live with my girlfriend, in a rented apartment, no kids or pets. Gross wealth and costs are separate from my girlfriend, who is also chasing FIRE with her own portfolio. My net employment income is 3.6k€.
Gross Wealth
Current value: ~265k
Yearly balance (2025)
Purely from a mathematical perspective, given that my costs were 14538.98€ (14538.98 x 25 = ~365k€), if I continue to invest at this rate, I could retire early in two years at 31.
However, I will probably continue working at least for one or two more years besides 31 to have more financial margin. My real target is 530k, which results in a SWR of ~2.5%, or a higher SWR with a higher spending, to account for if we change for a more expensive city/country in the future.
Most costs are shared with my girlfriend. I achieved last year a savings rate of around 69%. The biggest cost is the rent, which is around 930€ for a 2-bedroom fully furnished apartment in a medium-sized city in Flanders (not Antwerp or Ghent). We don't have a car, as I work remotely, we live near her workplace and we also live near a train station. We are happy with renting and we don't see the need of buying a house/apartment in the future, more on that decision below.
The second biggest cost is related with travels (which is a big part of Leisure + Transportation + Travel acommodation + Restaurants categories). We travel around 3 times a year to our own country and around 3 more times to european countries.
Decision log
Stock allocation
Right now my stock allocation is around 96% World Stock ETFs and around 4% Crypto (Bitcoin and Ethereum).
At early retirement I will probably reallocate 20% of portfolio to Bonds (maybe Bond ETFs or individual bonds), but with such a high savings rate, I will only do it 2 years before I am 100% sure that I will retire. That should give me enough of a buffer to cover 6 years of retirement spending. I am also totally OK with delaying early retirement for 1, two or three years if a big drop in the stock market happens.
ETFs
I used to have IWDA+EMIM until this year, when I started to buy SPYY. I prefer SPYY instead of SPYI because I don't see the need of to pay an additional 0.05% in TER to invest in small cap stocks, which is not proven to be beneficial (with the exception of small-cap value stocks); it's hard for larger funds to properly capture the small-cap market, so I decided to leave them out and reduce TER. Crypto is a shot in the dark: currently I already realized gains equal to my full initial investment, and I am not too worried if it disappears overnight.
Buy vs Rent
This is a very debated topic everywhere, and also in Belgium, which is typically a country with a buyers' market. After running through the numbers, we are comfortable with renting forever, for different reasons.
Financially for us it makes no sense to buy: the city in which we live in has low-ish rents when compared with house prices, and over the long-term the difference between renting and buying (mainly when we are 100% in stocks) comes down to chance.
Emotionally, also given that we are in Belgium not for long, we would like to keep the flexibility of moving in the future if we need to. Her job is very location-specific, so it's probable that we need to move in the future.
Personally, I also like that we don't need to take care of any house expense and we don't have to budget for house renovations, so we can have a lower emergency fund and have a predictable rent every month. I guess it gives us some stability knowing that if anything changes (job loss, great opportunity in another country, etc.), we can just pack our things and move without being worried with a house. Even inside Belgium, being within a walking distance from our jobs is something that we value a lot.
Brokers
Currently I am using Interactive Brokers and Degiro as my main brokers. As I said above, for me flexibility is important, so I want to stay with brokers that operate in various countries, preferably that are big players in Europe, and that have low costs. Interactive Brokers is a no-brainer, as it's the biggest broker in the world and the one with a longer track record. I also like Degiro because it operates in many countries in Europe and has a very high number of clients and assets under management, which gives me some safety. All other brokers for me are more expensive or don't have the safety that any of these two has.
I don't mind handling my own Belgian tax reporting, so broker tax-support features aren't a priority for me.
Also, I like to have more than one broker because of safety. Not because I am afraid that the broker will fail and lose all my money, but in a worst-case scenario, it's not impossible that I am hacked or the broker goes bankrupt and I am left several months without being able to withdraw from my account.
Employment vs Freelancing
Probably the biggest lever for me as a software engineer right now is to change from employment to freelancing, which would probably boost my savings rate to 80% or more. It's something to consider for the future, mainly if I want to quickly get to a higher net worth.
Tax harvesting
I have been debating if I should use tax harvesting or not (sell and rebuy 10k of gains every year), but I am probably not going to do it. For me, the advantage is really low and the risks are real: the risk of an increase in the stock market between the sell and buy price could make me lose more than the 1k gain every year. Probably not worth the effort, considering that I could do that 1k just by waiting some days with my current portfolio.
UPDATE:
I didn't know this would be so controversial :) Thanks for the feedback. Many of you didn't read the whole post, so let me write it again:
I will probably continue working at least for one or two more years besides 31 to have more financial margin. My real target is 530k, which results in a SWR of ~2.5%, or a higher SWR with a higher spending, to account for if we change for a more expensive city/country in the future.
This question is specifically for the stock pickers among us.
Have any of you managed to spot companies like SanDisk, AMD, Micron, Nvidia, etc. before they really took off? If yes, how did you identify them early?
I'm not looking for generic advice like "just buy index funds" (my portfolio is already diversified enough, and this would only be for a small amount of YOLO money). I'm more interested in understanding the actual process that successful stock pickers follow.
Some questions:
- What made you bullish on these companies before the broader market caught on?
- Do you follow certain YouTubers, newsletters, analysts, podcasts, or subreddits?
- How do you do your own research? Do you read annual reports, earnings calls, industry news, semiconductor roadmaps, etc.?
- Were there any specific indicators that convinced you that AI, semiconductors, cloud computing, or data centers were about to explode?
- How do you distinguish between genuine long-term opportunities and hype?
- Have you had more successes or failures with this approach?
Also, looking ahead, which sectors are currently on your radar?
- Quantum computing?
- Robotics and automation?
- Nuclear energy?
- AI infrastructure?
- Biotech?
- Something else entirely?
I'd be particularly interested in hearing from people who have consistently outperformed the market over several years and can explain their investment process rather than just sharing their biggest winners.
Hello, I'm new to investing and am looking into individual stocks. Does anyone invest in SPA? Utilities like Engie? Any semiconductor or biotech you would recommend?
Ik lees al een tijdje mee en dacht een goed plan te hebben, maar ik ben daar nu niet zo zeker meer van.
Recent van mijn eenmanszaak naar een vennootschap gegaan en ik wou dus met de vennootschap investeren in ETF’s.
Nu lees ik dat het eigenlijk beter is om privé in ETF’s te investeren en met de vennootschap 3 jaar te wachten, dividenden uit te keren en ook die dan verder te beleggen?
Wat ik dan nu zou doen is om een 15K van de eenmanszaak al meteen in ETF te steken als zijnde privé geld en daar dan verder op te bouwen.
Die 15K is een deel van het bedrag dat nu nog stilstaat op de rekening, wachtende op een berekening van de personenbelasting. De overschot betaald normaal alle onkosten daarvan dus die 15K kan “gemist” worden.
Kan iemand mij hierin volgen of ben ik volledig mis met mijn gedachtengang?
Hallo iedereen,
Ik ben een man van 25 jaar met een netto-inkomen van ongeveer €2.300 per maand.
Momenteel heb ik ongeveer €40.000 op een spaarrekening staan. Daarnaast heb ik nog een moto die ik waarschijnlijk voor ongeveer €15.000 zou kunnen verkopen, aangezien ik nog twee andere motoren heb en deze eigenlijk niet nodig heb.
Mijn probleem is dat ik mijn spaargeld niet langer op een spaarrekening wil laten staan. Ik wil het graag investeren zodat het op lange termijn meer opbrengt.
Tegelijk zit ik met een dilemma. Ik ben nog niet zeker hoe mijn toekomst eruit zal zien. Op termijn zou ik België, en mogelijk zelfs Europa, willen verlaten. Dat kan binnen enkele jaren zijn, maar evengoed pas veel later. Daardoor wil ik vermijden dat mijn geld vastzit in investeringen waar ik moeilijk uit kan stappen als mijn plannen veranderen. Mijn vraag is dus:
Hoe zouden jullie in mijn situatie €40.000 investeren als flexibiliteit belangrijk is? Welke investeringen laten toe om relatief eenvoudig aan je geld te kunnen als mijn plannen wijzigen, zonder dat ik alles gewoon op een spaarrekening laat staan?
2 months ago I finally reached my first financial goal of a 100K net worth, which is according to the rich the hardest to get. Now that I reached it, I am thinking about the "why" question. "why do I do this"? The conclusion is that I get happy by making money, but I hate spending it on "non-assets".
Is this a healthy mindset? If not, how can I fix this? I would love you guys' input!
Is the beginners guide still completely effective? Just it being 6 years old feels like it's outdated.
Is there anything a student should know before investing? Like from a tax perspective or anything else that might be different for a student?
Is keytrade enough to start investing or should I immediatly use a platform dedicated to investing? I saw that you can't buy etfs on keytrade, only stocks.
Long time lurker and just made an account to make this post.
First of all, I want to thank this community for changing my life.
I started investing when I was 22 years old in May 2023 in IWDA. Back then I was still a student, so I couldn't invest a lot. I started from €0 because I fell for a "get rich quick" scam, almost resulting in losing all my friends because I dragged them along with me. I learned then, that getting rich quick doesn't exist and that you have to invest long term. Started working full time in october 2023 for a market vendor (same job I've been doing as a student since I was 16) after I quit my studies. Once I started working, I started tracking my income/expenses and started living more frugally. My starting salary was 2600 net per month and I could invest around 2k each month.
End of 2023:
ETF: €4000
Bank account: €400
Fast forward to 2026. 25 years old now and I really turned my life around. I still keep track of all my income and expenses. Still work at the same company. My salary is now at 3200 net per month and I invest 2500 per month on average. I also found a good balance between investing, living frugally and enjoying life. I have travelled a lot the last few years and my friendships have never been better. I also work out 3 times a week (not that it's important information, but i guess it shows that I really try to improve my life). I still live at home and I'm not planning on leaving in the next 5 years. (You never know what will happen, but this is how I see it at the moment)
Current financial situation:
ETF: €91 500 (This is including profit, I invested €72 500 myself)
Emergency fund: €5000
Bank account: €2300
It's absolutely insane that I will probably reach 100k net worth next month. If you would have told me in 2023 that I would be in this situation in 2026, I would have never believed you.
I just wanted to share my story with this community and maybe encourage and show people that a lot can happen in 3 years and that you can really achieve something if you put your mind to it.
Thanks in advance for reading and thanks again for changing my life.
If you have any questions, I will gladly answer them.
I (25M) am a young Belgian worker living with my partner. I started working in early 2026 after finishing my studies. I earn around €2,100 net per month, excluding benefits (meal vouchers, eco-vouchers, hospitalisation insurance, pension savings, and commute reimbursement—all provided by my employer). My partner earns slightly more than I do, but doesn't really have extralegal benefits.
Together, we’d like to start saving to buy a home, ideally in about 3 years. On a personal level, I currently have around €24,000 in savings (nearly 1 year of salary).
However, we are both well aware of how crucial investing is these days, given the very low yields on savings accounts, rising inflation, and the uncertainty surrounding our future state pension. Because of this, we are becoming increasingly interested in investing (and incidentally, in the FIRE movement).
The issue is that we are complete beginners, although a family member has started walking me through the basics. He began investing in ETFs when he was over 50 and regrets not starting earlier. That’s why he strongly encourages me to get in as early as possible. In his view, over a very long horizon (investing over 30 to 40 years), time is a far more powerful driver of returns than the actual amounts invested.
He personally uses "Easyvest", a broker based in Brussels. He felt it was ideal for his situation, mainly because:
It’s based in Belgium (so they handle all the tax declarations and TOB automatically),
It allows for an "autopilot" setup, and
Unless I'm mistaken, he believes the fees are relatively low.
However, he pointed out that one downside of Easyvest for me is the €5,000 minimum initial deposit required to open an account. Considering my age and our goal to buy a house in the coming years, he thinks locking away that amount right away might hinder our home-buying objective.
After doing some research and taking his input into account, I’m considering Saxo to get started. I’m particularly interested in their "Saxo AutoInvest" feature, which allows you to invest automatically in ETFs for €2/month. Having an automated, "set-it-and-forget-it" system is a major requirement for me as a beginner right now.
My family member also advised me against investing in bonds due to the 30% Reynders tax.
Another point worth mentioning: as I noted above, my employer contributes to a group insurance/pension plan for my future retirement. My partner’s employer does not, so she recently started contributing around €85/month to a personal pension savings plan (épargne-pension / pensioensparen) with BNP Paribas Fortis. Is it worth it for me to open a second personal pension savings plan on my own? And for my partner, is it actually worth continuing with hers?
Given my young age and my intention to invest for 30–40 years (assuming that's indeed the most profitable and reasonably safe long-term approach), I feel comfortable taking on a higher risk profile.
Based on my profile and all these details:
Which platforms or brokers would you recommend?
Should I use a single broker or split between multiple brokers for diversification?
Given my income, savings, and situation, roughly how much should I invest per month? Should I also invest an initial lump sum?
Which ETF(s) should I invest in?
...
Any advice, suggestions, or feedback would be greatly appreciated! I’ve been reading up on FIRE and browsing this subreddit, and I really want to avoid making typical beginner mistakes.
I recently started using Bolero and found the game called Bolero stock sprint where you choose a few stocks and over a period of 2 weeks compete with others with respect to overall returns.
While this game relies on short term gains, I found this very interesting because it allows me to see how I am doing or where do I stand with respect to others or in general test my knowledge of current market.
What have you guys learnt from this using Bolero(I reckon not many use it) or other similar games?
Ik heb in mei 2026 aandelen op naam geruild naar andere maar beursgenoteerde aandelen.
Deze nieuwe aandelen zijn op de effectenrekening gestort.
Volgens mijn interpretatie van de wetgeving mag ik de meerwaarde laten bepalen door een valuatie van de initiele aandelen op naam , gebaseerd op de indicatieve waarde per aandeel van het jaarverslag (waarde 31/12/25).
Ter illustratie waarde jaarverslag : 100 Eur per aandeel.
Huidige beurswaarde nieuw aandeel : 80 Eur per aandeel.
Conclusie :
Als ik de nieuwe aandelen verkoop mag ik minwaarde boeken van 20 Eur per aandeel, en dit blijft voor 2026 geldig.
Probleem :
Mijn bank wil de waarde niet op basis van het jaarverslag aanvaarden maar eist een "financiele overdrachtswaarde bepaald door een erkend financieel instutuut".
Aangezien het een ruil is, en deze niet beursgenoteerd waren is er geen waardebepaling via een broker of andere bank. Zolang zij dit niet krijgen, hanteren zij de nulwaarde, wat wil zeggen dat ik 100% meerwaarde zou moeten slikken. Dit is uiteraard niet aanvaardbaar.
Vraag
Heeft iemand hier al ervaring mee gehad, of heeft iemand advies hoe dit te weerleggen/op te lossen ?
Me and my girlfriend just bought a house and we are struggeling to figure out how much to save and how much to invest from now on. We obviously want to invest as much as possible, but we also want to save enough so we can buy a new kitchen, furniture, bathroom, car, etc. when we need it.
Deciding how much to save for a holiday, gifts, ... is straightforward, but how do you decide how much to save for those major expenses that will come in 10+ years?
I'm married with one kid, and we're immigrants from Poland, living in Belgium for about 4 years now.
Our combined income is around €70-80k net a year.
Here is where we currently stand:
Debt: €450/month car payment (about €10k left to pay). No other debt.
Cash/Emergency: €20k (sitting in a MeDirect savings account at ~2.5%).
Investments: ~€10k in Saxo Bank, all in ETFs (75% WEBN, 15% AVWS, 10% ETC Gold). I DCA €1,000 every month.
Crypto: €10k in Bitcoin.
Real Estate: 2 building plots in Poland (valued at around €70k).
Lump sum to invest: €70k in cash.
I could easily spare €1,600 or even €1,800 a month, but we don't want to invest every penny and live super frugally (we have an 11-month-old baby). That's why we decided to stick to investing at least €1k/month.
Please rate my portfolio and let me know what you would change or adjust.
The main question is: what should I do with that €70k? Dump it into the market?
I thought about buying an apartment to rent out (I already have some experience being a landlord), but the Belgian system seems pretty harsh on small owners. My second thought was to just pay off the car loan but it's still a hefty sum left.
I’m 22 years old and originally from Ukraine. I currently live and work in Belgium for a fast-growing Belgian B2B company in the used car industry.
My net salary is around €2,300 per month, plus meal vouchers. I’ve managed to save about €18,000 in cash, and I’ve also invested around €3,000–3,500 in an accumulating ETF(VWCE). My goal is to continue investing €300 every month while building my savings.
I’m trying to build my future in Belgium. I recently completed English level 2.4 and will continue with level 3.1. Starting in September, I’ll begin learning Dutch because I want to integrate fully and stay here long-term.
One of my biggest goals is to buy a home in Belgium. I currently pay quite a lot in rent, and sometimes it feels like I’m paying for someone else’s property instead of building my own future. I’d much rather put that money toward my own mortgage.
I’ve also been thinking about buying an older house that needs renovation. I studied to become an electrician in Ukraine and have practical construction experience. I can do a complete electrical installation in a house from scratch and I’m comfortable with many renovation tasks, so I believe I could save a lot of money by doing much of the work myself.
I’m also considering getting my Ukrainian electrician qualification officially recognized in Belgium. Although it’s a vocational qualification rather than a university degree, I have real hands-on experience. I’m wondering if changing careers and working as an electrician would be a smart decision, especially if it offers better long-term salary and career opportunities than my current job.
Another idea I’ve been considering is starting a small mobile detailing business on the side while keeping my full-time job. I worked professionally as a car detailer for quite a while, so I already have the skills. Of course, I would need to invest in equipment and eventually buy a suitable vehicle, so I’m trying to figure out whether that would be a smart move.
The only thing that makes me hesitate about buying property is my residence status. I’m Ukrainian and currently have an A card, so I’m not sure how that affects long-term plans such as getting a mortgage.
If you were in my position at 22 years old, what would you do? Would you focus on buying a fixer-upper and renovating it yourself? Would you get your electrician qualification recognized and switch careers? Would you start the detailing business as a side hustle? Or would you focus on something completely different?
I’d really appreciate advice from people who have experience with property, renovations, investing, skilled trades, side businesses, or building a long-term future in Belgium.
I'm a Belgian expat living in UAE since 6 months. Until now, I have transferred my monthly savings via Remitly to Belgium to then invest in ETF's via Bolero & Degiro.
Then I realized, why am I doing this? Can't I invest via a broker here and avoid the tax in Belgium? And do I even have to pay taxes in Belgium?
I tried to find the answer to my questions but it's hard to find so I hope one of you has a similar experience.
ETF's
- Do I keep my current portfolio in Belgium and continue to invest in UAE?
- Will I pay capital gains tax on my portfolio in Belgium?
- If I open a broker account in UAE, do I have to register this with the CAP?
Real estate
I own 2 apartments in Belgium. I found that I will still have to pay the 'onroerende voorheffing' in Belgium. Other than that, there is no impact I think.
I hope this fits here: we just found tenants for our apartment, but they're not interested in the garage. That means tjat we have to rent that out separately.
The law says that, when you rent out a garage, you need to register the contract AND get a VAT number. That seems like a lot of hassle, though we'll be exempt from paying VAT, because of the low yearly revenue. So, I don't even see the point.
What would you do? Strictly follow the law or do it 'the Belgian way'?
