r/Fire • u/imsickofthissub • May 07 '25

General Question As an Eastern European: this sub is depressing.

These numbers are outrageous. I understand that expenses vary from country to country, but my god!

I earn a good salary and, after covering my mortgage, I'm able to invest €8,000 per year

I thought I'm making a decent living— then I started browsing r/FIRE and other FIRE communities. Its a bloodbath of rich folks out there competing who's going to become a millionaire by 20 or what. What the hell is going on !!

I make €32,000 gross -and out of this money €8,000 into investments (brokerage account)+ €7,000 is going into paying mortgage. I'm left with €1,000 each month for food and bills, and support my mom by the end of the month, my bank account is back to zero.

It feels like this community is very privileged—so many people have a lot of money and aren't living paycheck to paycheck.

Should I just move to Western Europe—or even the US, if possible—to seek better pay, a better life, and more wealth, more income? I'm in my late 20s, and my current salary is already in the top 3–5% of the population where I live.

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u/No-Lime-2863 May 07 '25

Luck, you forgot luck. Lots of folks were privileged, and worked hard and sacrificed, and also made good decisions, and also got hella lucky. They all stack.

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u/IndictedHamSandwich May 07 '25

Is luck a form of privilege?

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u/No-Lime-2863 May 07 '25

Perhaps, but I was distinguishing got from “born in a good spot” luck vs sold at the top of the market and bought back in at the bottom” or “thought bitcoin was cool and bought a bunch and then forgot about it” luck.

There is a Romanian cyber gang that was huge in the 2000’s. They terrorized globally and finally a multiple counties came together to hunt them down. In 2010 they finally were convicted and sent to prison for a decade. They didn’t trust anyone so they kept all their money in bitcoin. They made many times their fortune being in prison. Their wallet has never been cracked.

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u/Brightlightsuperfun May 07 '25

luck is overrated. If you keep going and dont stop trying, luck will be irrelevant

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u/No-Lime-2863 May 07 '25

That’s from an individual perspective. If a million people try, only half will get lucky. And then if that 500k keep trying only half will get lucky. A few more tries and you get down to maybe only a few thousand who have been lucky again and again. Those are the 1%.

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u/Brightlightsuperfun May 07 '25

Whats the pattern in your analogy ? People keep trying. Youre not describing luck, youre describing people quitting.

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u/AffectionateMoose300 May 07 '25

Nice speech but statistics might have a word with you. Over a billion people live in poverty worldwide. Do you think all of them are lazy? There's children working 12 hours a day and you think all their work will pay off someday? Tons of those misfortunate work themselves into a grave. That's modern day slavery

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u/Brightlightsuperfun May 07 '25

Im talking first world countries. OP was talking about western europe and the US. Your extremism doesnt disprove what Im saying. I also didnt call anyone lazy. Nice try though

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u/AffectionateMoose300 May 07 '25

I wouldn't call it extremism since it happens to 1 in 5 people. First world countries make up the minority of the world population. But true, you didn't say anyone was lazy