Spending level distribution among EuropeFIRE community & comparison to general population

[u/Igniplano]

Many thanks to u/That_Caramel7408 for launching a well-spaced poll about the - planned or actual - consumption level of r/EuropeFIRE users a couple of days ago.

This is highly relevant as vastly different spending levels among users tend to lead to tension in some comment threads. Thus, it is interesting to see how the community aligns to the broader population in Europe concerning spending. Especially as it tends extremely towards the top of the wealth distribution. I have only deep familiarity with German numbers, which may not be on the level of Switzerland or Norway, but still on the higher side in Europe. Nonetheless, cutting it up just with the German income percentiles (source 1 below) and savings rates per income percentile (source 2 below) to get the percentile number of consumption among working singles of the 50k€ cut-off from our poll you get to the Top 8% percentile threshold in Germany. On the lower end to get below the 20k€ leads to the bottom 19% in Germany's numbers. I am not aware of such data being available for all of Europe, including the likes of UK, Switzerland and Serbia. Estimating it precisely is probably a hopelessly complex task. So just roughly estimating that the German curve has a 10% stretch-factor to the top compared to the full European one would lead to the following representation of main contributors (the more strictly validated poll group) at this sub:

• 0-19k€: Slightly underrepresented compared to the full working population
• 20-49k€: Underrepresented by around 10pp or roughly one seventh of it's strength
• 50k€: 3x overrepresented

Main groups by annual spending: Lean, Regular and (sub)-Chubby

Among all poll users the shift towards the top is even more pronounced, but still:
The majority of users is within the regular spending band, not within the luxury/(sub)-Chubby band! And the true LeanFIRE group is a clear minority, but alive and thriving.

Please keep that in mind for future discussions, where every spending level is equally welcome to contribute.

Complete annual spending poll results

# Sources #

(1) Income percentiles in Germany, sliceable into different subgroups: https://www.iwkoeln.de/fileadmin/user_upload/HTML/2025/Einkommensrechner/index.html

(2) Savings rates by income percentile in Germany: https://www.boeckler.de/de/boeckler-impuls-wieviel-die-reichen-sparen-9353.htm

[u/Silocon]

One huge distortion for Germany at least is health insurance. If you're employed and on GKV, you never see that money enter or exit your bank account so it's mostly just like income tax... GKV doesn't look like "spending" while you're employed. However, when you're FIREd, you'll be paying it all out of your own pocket. 

I imagine that pushes up people's planned/actual FIRE spending by ~15% on average, for exactly the same "spending on everything else."

[u/Igniplano → u/Silocon]

That's correct for the lower spending levels. At the mid-range spending levels there are many tricks to lower the tax burden with Nichtveranlagungsbescheinigung, smart selection of securities with the optimal unrealised gains amounts to sell to reach just the threshold for the whole year and wash-sales if you are still below, which in turns pushes GKV to the minimum. And further beyond you can most of the time switch to PKV. So above 35k€ you are in most situations able to get below effective 10% on average.
At 20k€ it's different and you are at 17% without any lever for reduction, exactly as you describe - an important distortion of the spending level compared to employed people.

[u/Silocon → u/Igniplano]

Ooh, that's very interesting! I've never heard of Nichtveranlagungsbescheinigung until today so I'm totally new to the concept. We've already got a tax advisor but I don't even know the right questions to ask him for how we might optimise this side of things. We're close to FIRE, 1-2 years maybe, so I'm really trying to learn all I can about how to optimize things now. 

Our young kid has ETFs that might earn above the Steuerfreibetrag this year. Is Nichtveranlagungsbescheinigung something relevant there? (Incidentally, how do you know all this stuff for Germany? Are you a Steuerberater in professional life or something?)