TIGHT (@antifreund) on getquin

I reached 100k$ invested on 2024-03-15 which was one of the milestones for 2024 (the new one is now 150k$).

Also March was very good to me with dividend payouts exceeding 600$ for the month, which made me revise my initial goal of 400$/month (avg.) by the end of 2024 up to >500$/month. 💲💲💲

Since this account is very new (Dec. 2023), I am very happy with sticking to the plan (so far) in hopes for #fire (Financial Independence Retire Early).🔥🔥🔥

Key take-aways so far are as follows:

1. Select your ETFs and stick with them

- Core:

$SPLG (alternatives are $SPY (+0.64%) and $VOO (+0.34%) ), chosen because of slightly lower expense ratio and lower prices (hope for more inflow), trading volume is not a concern as this was bought for looooong

- Dividend 💸:

$SCHD (alternatives are $VIG (-0.07%) and $VYM (+0.38%) ), chosen because seemed undervalued at the time of purchase, great dividend

- Growth 📈:

Not yet chosen, open to suggestions

Will probably be $QQQM (alternatives are $VGT (+0.8%) , $SCHG , $SPGP , $DGRW , $VUG (+0.39%) )

- REITs 🏠:

Not yet chosen, open to suggestions

Will probably be $SCHH (alternatives are $XLRE and $VNQ (-0.67%) )

- Misc 🗠:

$O (+0.29%) The Monthly Dividend Stock

$JEPI / $JEPQ for monthly dividends in the covered call space

$VICI (+1.37%) / $MAIN (+0%) for additional monthly dividends in the REIT space

2. Learn 🎓

Educate yourself and don't simply "trust" Youtubers. Read investment books, listen to many different voices in the investment arena. Be curious, but cautious... If it says: "100% win rate guaranteed!", it's probably best to stay away from it.

3. Don't try to time the market

As one youtuber says: "Time in the market beats timing the market." I am sure we are all guilty of trying to buy at the best price on a particular day/week... If you are in for the long haul, it doesn't matter.

4. ETF over stock picking

Of course you can have huge winners if you pick individual stocks and if you have some insights that allow you to buy before the hype, great, I am very happy for you. But that doesn't happen very often. If you invest in solid ETFs covering a wide array of markets, you will do just fine.

5. Tailored investing

We are all different and our your time horizon, risk appetite, age, income and other factors most likely vary massively. My life, 47yo, being single without kids, being in a somewhat safe and well-paid job, having paid off properties that generate a decent income stream, wanting to retire in 3-5 years and not needing much is very different to someone who just starts their investment career and/or have a family or are already retired or or or.

Make a plan of what you want the investment to do for you and work towards it. In my case, I want to achieve #fire (Financial Independence Retire Early) as soon as possible, being able to live off dividends entirely. I recon I will need about 50k/ year (lots of safety built in). So building a strong dividend portfolio is my main goal. Sprinkle in some growth opportunities and we have a party. 🥳

Let me know what your goals are and how you plan to achieve those. Also if you have some input on which other ETFs and/or stocks to pick, I am all ears.

Kevin E.@KevinE

8Mon

Thank you for your introduction. It made my realize something. I was in quite a crazy bubble. I read about FIRE a lot the past 2 years. I m currently 33 and plan to (be able to) retire by the age of 40-45. most people in blogs about that subject seem to retire between the age of 28 to 40.

When you mentioned your age of 47, my first thought was: is that still considered early retirement? 😅

I take it you are on a very good path, considering you also got real estate.

I think the most important thing for you is to decide what to do with your free time soon! That might be your biggest concern soon.

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Nico@_Harry_

Inspirational post. I hope you can achieve your #fire goal 🔥💯

Tiberiu@wealth_strategist_196

So if I am reading this right, you're targeting an overall dividend of roughly 4% per year, with a combination of relatively stable growth oriented low dividend percent assets mixed with the opposite?

Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't that mean you would need an overall investment value of 1-1.3 mil to end up at your target? If you plan to reach that in under 5 years, even assuming your investments nearly double in base value (on average) until then, that's still well over 100k cash per year invested.

That doesn't sound like a very reasonable target, so I must be missing something important here.

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We recently sold our never-occupied-by-us apartment (we moved from Romania to Germany about 6 years ago, and we reserved to buy the apartment in Romania half a year before leaving, then went ahead with it as a rental), so used the proceeds and additional savings to try and do something with it as we wait until we find a reasonably priced place to buy where we now live.

I am generally being a lot more aggressive and doing some somewhat risky investments, or cutting off initially promising positions that weren't doing so great.
Transaction costs and taxes are pretty hefty, and if you can believe it, there's even a supplemental charge with the bank of 7 Eur/quarter for each position held... Not enough to actually hurt, but enough to incentivize optimization.

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As you can see here ( https://getqu.in/qEJcXb/ ), it's been mostly going ok (with a couple of black -or should I say red- marks), and recently transitioned to mostly high dividend positions, plus a couple smaller risky short-term bets.

Then again, that makes more sense to us, as we're mostly focusing on relatively rapid growth for the time being. If we decide to become perpetual renters, it's probably going to transition back to something more akin to what you are doing... But maybe only with 7 to 10 positions tops.