9Mon·

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 (+0.69%) and $VOO (+0.68%) ), 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 (+0.09%) and $VYM (-0.56%) ), 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 (+2.13%) , $SCHG , $SPGP , $DGRW , $VUG (+1.58%) )

- REITs 🏠:

Not yet chosen, open to suggestions

Will probably be $SCHH (alternatives are $XLRE and $VNQ (-1.67%) )

- Misc 🗠:

$O (-2.13%) The Monthly Dividend Stock

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

$VICI (-2.92%) / $MAIN (+0.53%) 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.

13 Comments

Kevin E.@KevinE

9Mon

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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TIGHT C.@antifreund

9Mon

@KevinC hahaha, good point, retiring at 50 is probably not #fire .
Personal circumstances made things taking a little longer, but I am not complaining... Retirement at 50 gives me at least 15 more happy years than most people... I take that as a win. 😁

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Kevin E.@KevinE

9Mon

@antifreund oh, i think it definitely is still very ealy and a huge personal benefit. 15 years (in Germany even 67 years will be the „normal“ time to retire soon) of personal freedom ist a lot. I dont think there is a „perfect“ time to retire anyway. Some just want to leave work asap, others prefer a more meaningful life / job until RE. Some continue working even though they dont have to any more. I think even having all possibilities before the age of 60 is very good.

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TIGHT C.@antifreund

9Mon

@KevinC agree with you completely... (ok, now back to English) 😁

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Nico@_Harry_

9Mon

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

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Tiberiu@wealth_strategist_196

9Mon

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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Tiberiu@wealth_strategist_196

9Mon

Disclaimer: I only started actively investing reasonable amounts of money in November 2023, so take my question with a pinch of salt.

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TIGHT C.@antifreund

9Mon

@wealth_strategist_196 hi there nice to meet you. You are raising a valid point.
I should probably clarify that when I say 'invested', I literally mean the money put in the market (without dividend payments and price appreciation). If I continue to invest as I've done so far, I will end the year at about 5% dividend, which you are right, targeting 50k/year would require 1M invested.
By the end of this year I should be at around 150k 'invested' (meaning hopefully more with the price appreciation). Next year I should be able to invest roughly 10k/month, same for 2026. Just before retiring I then plan to sell off one property. This sale as well as the price appreciation (🤞🤞🤞) should bridge the gap (and hopefully then some).
I know it's slightly backwards thinking, but not relying on price appreciation will give you a good target to aim at. If then 10-15% (rough market data over a looong time) annual appreciation comes on top, even better...
I hope this somewhat answers your question!?
Happy investing and keep compounding!

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Tiberiu@wealth_strategist_196

9Mon

@antifreund oh, to have 10k/mo disposable income, I can only dream about that... Even if we would slash down any and all optional expenses (family of 3) we would maybe barely be reaching half of that. Realistically, after regular expenses and some reserve buffers, maybe about a quarter of that on average can go towards investments.

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TIGHT C.@antifreund

9Mon

@wealth_strategist_196 yeah, I try not to mention that specifically, but since you asked I wanted to make the numbers match...
I'm fully aware that I'm in a very unique position. I live and work in China with virtually no expenses, have a very good net salary (for being employed that is, lots of business owners would laugh at this...), no kids and the will to retire ASAP 😊.
I think you guys are going great and remember that steady wins the race...
Best of luck on all your investments. Looking forward to seeing your portfolio explode. 💥

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Tiberiu@wealth_strategist_196

9Mon

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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TIGHT C.@antifreund

9Mon

@wealth_strategist_196 Yeah, finding a good trading platform is not that easy in Europe. If you wanna find some that also offer additional investment tools/ products (options, futures, margin etc.). Especially when considering cost. The US is much more advanced. Depending on your portfolio size they might offer better deals as you climb the ladder. Living in China further complicate things. So far I am really happy with the international account I have with Saxo bank (Danish), as they allow for multi-currency accounts (me USD, EUR, DKK, GBP, RMB). Kepping costs low is paramount so 7EUR/ position/ quarter would bug the sh1t out of me. Also for the index funds I own I generally use the one with the lowest ER as this will make a difference at some point

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Tiberiu@wealth_strategist_196

9Mon

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.

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