Hello good people of Europe! In today’s episode Alvar talks with Maxime and Victor from France. They are both part of the French FI community, and together we’re going to dive into the nitty gritty details of how you can get to financial independence in France and how to do that in the best way. We’re covering a few actually pretty unique pension products, which you’ve never seen before in Europe and are unique to France. Hopefully this will be of value if you are living in France or of inspiration if you are not. So sit back, relax and enjoy!

We also talk about:

• Bond and stock market shares
• Real estate
• PEA, AV and others
• ETFs
• Stock market returns
• Financial education

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The FI movement in France

Victor is 31, lives in Paris and has started the FI community in France – better known as ‘frugalisme’. He finds that France has a very particular culture when it comes to money, not very open to discussion, and that the specificity of its tax and pension system is not very friendy to people who want to go that route. Maxim adds that the very high level of taxation makes it hard to accumulate money in the first place. Nevertheless the community is active and growing.

The tax and pension system in France

The situation of the pension system is very delicate now in France, because there are currently more retired people than active ones, so legislation is changing and the government seems to favour a shift for people with high revenues to start to invest in stock market and other products. Taxes are anyway very high, around 82 per cent for health system, insurance and so on: along with some limitations in the use of financial products, it makes it hard to invest significant amounts of money.

Effective strategies to invest in France

After having explained the playing field, Victor and Maxim tell us what they consider the best strategies to reach FI in France: Victor for example finds that playing around with multiple investments is particularly effective, starting with real estate and diversifying from that. Many tips and tools are reviewed and examined from an FI point of view.

Let us know what you think about the Interview in the comments or our Facebook Group!

Links

• Reddit r/vosfinances
• firefrance.io
• linkedin.com/in/victorlora
• le FIRE est-il possible en France ?
• LCI website
• The European Way of FIRE