lovegod033
New member
Hey everyone, I turned 30 this year and am looking for some help and advice on planning my financial future out. I am an Indian citizen living and working in Austria (currently have a Rot-Weiß-Rot Plus Karte, will hopefully have a Daueraufenthaltstitel from 2022). I “worked” here from 2015 to 2018 (PhD students count as employees), was unemployed for about a year (who’d have thought finding a job after getting a PhD in comparative cognition would be hard?), found a job in mid-2019, and now have a permanent contract. Fortunately, I am currently 100% debt-free and have no financial dependents.
I plan to settle here with my partner (she is Austrian) and the only “family” we plan to have pets (we've already taken measures to ensure mini humans aren't a possibility).
I will take a 5-year loan for €35,000 at 0% interest (it’s part of the push for more EVs) to finance the car, meaning I will need to pay €31,000 upfront (I anticipate having to do this 11 to 14 months from now) and €584 a month for 60 months.
I currently make €1,850 a month after taxes. My monthly expenses are under €900 so I end up putting anywhere between €300 and €1,000 away each month. I have approx. €20,000 already put away and should be able to do another €10,000 by next summer. About €9,600 of this amount is invested across 43 different Indian mutual funds (accounting for COVID-19 market crashes, currency conversion, transfer fees, and 31.25% Indian TDS - taxes deducted at source). The rest is sitting in our savings accounts. The MF gains range from -20% (aren’t pandemics just lovely?) to +23% (healthcare funds during pandemics = STONKS). Overall, my portfolio is currently down about 5%.
I have been so focussed on the car that I haven’t made significant progress towards the other two goals. I have a total of about ₹220k (€2,000-ish) invested across 32 Indian mutual funds (also down about 5%). Henceforth, I want to reduce my reliance on Indian mutual funds as I lose money in currency conversion and exchange fees. Now that I have access to degiro (and eventually flatex, whenever they get around to verifying me), how can I optimize my investments to meet my financial goals?
I have been thinking of buying some Tesla and AMD stock (partly because they’re companies I’d like to support), but I’m not sure how big of a chunk of my savings should go there and what all I should be aware of when buying. I’ve been reading up on ETFs and I gather that they are somewhat similar to MFs and are also quite frequently recommended. Would investing any of my car savings here make sense?
My company recently had a broker as a client and I worked on that project; I learned a plethora of new words – knockouts, derivatives, options, calls, puts, stop-loss, etc. I never knew any of this existed and am curious what of it is worth looking into with my goals in mind. My only investment experience is with mutual funds.
Any advice from y’all would be appreciated! Please let me know if there are any details I should provide, and I’ll update this post with them. Finally, one small detail – while I can communicate in German, I am still at somewhere around B1-B2. I absolutely cannot decipher financial or legal lingo (heck navigating this stuff in English is tricky!). I’ve made an account on degero IE so that I can do everything in English.
I plan to settle here with my partner (she is Austrian) and the only “family” we plan to have pets (we've already taken measures to ensure mini humans aren't a possibility).
- Our short-term goal is to buy an electric car. Specifically, we would like to buy a Tesla Model Y. I sold my petrol car off as it made no sense throwing money at a sinking ship (I spent more than the car’s buying price on driving and maintaining it, it didn’t sit well with our sustainability priorities nor with our plans of having pets). We currently use public transport, but this is hella inconvenient (and expensive) when leaving the city (we travel to my partner’s family’s house every weekend and driving would certainly be more convenient and economical). All holiday and travel plans have been postponed till after we have the Tesla. We intend to drive the car to its death.
EDIT: Most comments are about how I cannot afford this car on my salary. While I'm sure this comes from a good place, an excellent addition would be helping me understand what I should aim for if I want to afford it. Ultimately, it IS a goal I want to meet, and the reason I'm posting here is to find out how to meet my goals. - Our mid- to long-term goal is to buy or build our own house. We’re tending towards building as we want to put together something that’s as self-sustaining, ecologically responsible and technologically thought-out as possible; as these things don’t seem to be priorities for people building houses here, it’s unlikely we could buy a house that would fit our priorities. Since we cannot move from our rented flat in the city (for various reasons), this goal is slated for between 4 and 10 years from now (ideally after the car is paid off). Unfortunately, I have no idea what a reasonable target should be.
- The long-term goal is naturally having some sort of a steady income to supplement whatever retirement income comes in from social security. Again, no idea what a reasonable target should be for this.
I will take a 5-year loan for €35,000 at 0% interest (it’s part of the push for more EVs) to finance the car, meaning I will need to pay €31,000 upfront (I anticipate having to do this 11 to 14 months from now) and €584 a month for 60 months.
I currently make €1,850 a month after taxes. My monthly expenses are under €900 so I end up putting anywhere between €300 and €1,000 away each month. I have approx. €20,000 already put away and should be able to do another €10,000 by next summer. About €9,600 of this amount is invested across 43 different Indian mutual funds (accounting for COVID-19 market crashes, currency conversion, transfer fees, and 31.25% Indian TDS - taxes deducted at source). The rest is sitting in our savings accounts. The MF gains range from -20% (aren’t pandemics just lovely?) to +23% (healthcare funds during pandemics = STONKS). Overall, my portfolio is currently down about 5%.
I have been so focussed on the car that I haven’t made significant progress towards the other two goals. I have a total of about ₹220k (€2,000-ish) invested across 32 Indian mutual funds (also down about 5%). Henceforth, I want to reduce my reliance on Indian mutual funds as I lose money in currency conversion and exchange fees. Now that I have access to degiro (and eventually flatex, whenever they get around to verifying me), how can I optimize my investments to meet my financial goals?
I have been thinking of buying some Tesla and AMD stock (partly because they’re companies I’d like to support), but I’m not sure how big of a chunk of my savings should go there and what all I should be aware of when buying. I’ve been reading up on ETFs and I gather that they are somewhat similar to MFs and are also quite frequently recommended. Would investing any of my car savings here make sense?
My company recently had a broker as a client and I worked on that project; I learned a plethora of new words – knockouts, derivatives, options, calls, puts, stop-loss, etc. I never knew any of this existed and am curious what of it is worth looking into with my goals in mind. My only investment experience is with mutual funds.
Any advice from y’all would be appreciated! Please let me know if there are any details I should provide, and I’ll update this post with them. Finally, one small detail – while I can communicate in German, I am still at somewhere around B1-B2. I absolutely cannot decipher financial or legal lingo (heck navigating this stuff in English is tricky!). I’ve made an account on degero IE so that I can do everything in English.
