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The joys of DIY - replaced thermostat with a bit of trial and error and R300 - ouch. Seems to work, but lately I have found stoves are one of the few electrical items that can sort of work, anywhere between 40 - 70% . Whereas other things ether work, or they don't. Oh well, will find something to chuck in the oven in the next few days.

But it did make me think. One of the many great things about retiring early are the little achievements(read jobs) you have time to do -small, not very important maybe, but after doing them you can give yourself a mental high five and have a slight grin on your face when going to bed.

I wish you all the best MrDivie. And me of course. I don't totally agree on that 4% rule as it is in a low return investment with a portion in cash and bonds. I don't need cash and bonds to reign in my portfolio performance.

Historically, equities in the form of ETF's outperform all pension funds and the like by a large margin. The FSB has realised this and has increased the percentage of equities allowed in retirement funds.

This brings me to the point of saying that this 4% thingy is not applicable to all investors and only applies to managed retirement funds.

If you had invested in the INDI ETF your 4% would increase to 8% at least. Now you might say "what if the INDI crashes". When has it ever crashed outside of a normal market crash? Never.
Now you might also say "cash and bonds don't crash". Not correct. A 5 year low return is a protracted crash in my view.

I unfortunately cannot live on divies and need capital growth. At this stage, I get about R80k divies pa and I need R140k to live pa.

As to property, here is an example of an apartment here in Viana.  http://www.custojusto.pt/viana-do-castelo/apartamentos/apartamento-t2-11702632

€35k is rather cheap plus it has all the main appliances and furnishings. I pay €375.00 pm rent but have no garden to keep myself busy.

I unfortunately cannot live on divies and need capital growth. At this stage, I get about R80k divies pa and I need R140k to live pa.

As to property, here is an example of an apartment here in Viana.  http://www.custojusto.pt/viana-do-castelo/apartamentos/apartamento-t2-11702632

€35k is rather cheap plus it has all the main appliances and furnishings. I pay €375.00 pm rent but have no garden to keep myself busy.

Ok, so draw down in capital is not too large - pretty manageable. Flat wise looks quite similar to what you get for similar money in the Cape hey? Although you normally get around 80m2 for a two bed. Is buying still part of the picture? Did you learn Portuguese before going/ or having lesson now? Personally, I find new languages extremely hard to learn. After umpteen years learning Afrikaans at school, Afrikaans father and now living in an Afrikaans dorpie - I can barely string two words together.

This is such a fun thread. Firstly @jaDEB I always thought you were in your thirties, now I hear you've got a 21yr old daughter 

@Mr_D, I love the storytelling, really excellent! I'm amazed to find someone who spends even less than I do per month, though I do live in Joburg and have a child.

@Moneypenny, believe it or not, my plans for early retirement are similar, though possibly more expensive. I'd like to sail around the world, stopping wherever it takes my fancy. And Monaco does take my fancy, as long as I'm not paying for a hotel room. While I would be able to go on a cheaper boat, my SO has other ideas and wouldn't settle for anything under the R1.5m mark, so I need a far bigger nest egg to maintain that 

@Orca, do you pay dividends tax as a non-resident?

I believe that mathematically it makes very little difference if you take a percentage from selling shares, or the same percentage from dividends. I can see how psychologically with dividends it feels safer, but on the whole studies show it's identical. In South Africa there is a difference though. We tax dividends at 15% regardless of how small they are, while selling shares goes for capital gains tax which is a max of 13.3% but will often mean you pay no tax.

For example:
If you only have share sales and dividends as income, and you needed R120k income from a share which over time made 100%, you could sell the R120k, your capital gains would be R60k, less R30k for the exclusion, then divide by 3 to see how much applies to your income tax statement and you get just R10k. With the tax exclusion being up to R70 700 you would pay no tax at all.

In fact, to begin paying income tax if you're living on just share sales, and again assuming the share made 100% growth over time, you would need to sell:

R70700x3 +100% of that amount + R30000 + in shares, for a total of R454 200

That means if you we're selling shares you could live on R37 850 before you had to pay any income tax! If you earned the same in dividens, you'd only be left with R386 070 to live on, or R32 172.50 per month.

Quite an incentive to buy low dividend growth shares!

*Admittedly I've recently started buying the RAFIND which pays R2.6% dividends over the STXIND which pays 1.4%. The dividends weren't the real reason though, as I want to pay the least amount in fees. The STXIND has 0.45% fees while the RAFIND has just 0.12%, and the performance has been very close. However, now that I'm just reading my calculations above, I'm wondering if that was the right choice.

Almost there Mr D. CGT is calculated at 33.3% of your total gains after deducting the exclusion amount of R30k. This is then added to all other income. The effective tax on the CGT then becomes 13.3% if you are on the top tax bracket.
Pension tax vs CGT? On the same amount, I would think CGT wins hands down.

Dividend tax is generally taxed at source in most countries so I will still pay the tax in SA but the Double Tax Treaty caps it at 15% so should SA increase this tax, it would not affect me.

Camper vans are very popular in Europe. Here in Portugal there are many beautiful parks catering for this and it is free for as long as you like. Here in Viana there are a few such parks along the river and sea. Kids pitch tents there over weekends and school holidays. Looks like great fun.

Ja, at my low income level it's pretty small, at most 6% - how depressingly, er, nice.  I am not a fan of giving the ruling party money for first class flight and tires for their BMW SUV's no matter how many I save from their "cardboard palaces".

Orca, I think I read you fished - have you tried wetting a line in that part of the Atlantic?

Free campsites? Just give me a sec to find a stick and an extra large handkerchief...for money I'll introduce car guards - setting myself up to eventually  becoming The Don of car guards - I like it!

Car guards? No car guards here. In fact you don't even need to lock your car or even close the windows for that matter.