Introduction

Welcome to the 5th Monthly update of the Beach House Project!! Where I walk you thru starting with ZERO to making your first $100K

They say making your first $100K is the hardest and once you’ve done it you’re 1/3 the way to a million because the compounding effect of just getting started is huge!!

My Goals

it’s always good to be specific when you set out on a new project or journey so you know what success looks like, so lets refresh ourselves on what my goals are here. I outlined this in my S.M.A.R.T. Goals What They Are & How To Use Them post. You can also find a good example of goal setting in my 2024 New Years Goals update where I write down and break down the details for my top 5 goals for 2024. (Which include this The Beach House of course!)

So lets revisit the Beach House goal

Goal - High Level

Buy a beach house or have enough invested I can rent a beach house whenever I want anywhere I want without thinking about money

Specific Goals (The How):

$100,000
5 years (by end of 2028)
Monthly Updates for accountability
Show others how to start from $0 and become financially independent

What I want to do is encourage anyone who has $0 to get started, and make a life changing amount of money

In 2024 the main focus is going to be to save $10,000 by the end of the year.

Now you might be scratching your head. $100,000/ 5 years is $20,000/ per year. why isn’t that my number? well 2 reasons

I have other investing goals too
I need to grow my income or cut expenses somewhere. That will be part of the journey that these monthly updates share. This may come in the form or selling things on eBay, increasing business income, or other revenue sources. I’m trying a couple things right now, we’ll have to see what works out!

Progress Update

In January 2024 I made the usual contributions.

But you’ll notice in the charts, while the markets certainly helped us the biggest gains were seen by our actual cold hard cash we contributed. This just goes to show how much of the first $100K is a hard carry by you! After $100K it gets a bit easier but that first chunk it going to be a bit of a grind.

January 2024 Contributions:

$200.00 Regular Income
$200.00 New Credit Card Bonus
$33.46 X Revenue
$485.63 January 2024 Total

Solid Month! so how are we doing so far?

Chart showing a star step progression over 5 months — Total progress todate!

The Details

Over all the first 5 months of the Beach House Fund Have been fantastic! Lets review the numbers for 2023

$1,668.65 Total Cash Contributions

$107.72 Market Gains

$9.10 Dividends Received

Portfolio Total $1,776.37

For only 5 months I’m very happy with these numbers! as the account continues to get bigger, and we have a full 12 months to work with in 2024 I’m looking forward to the progress we can make!

Investment Allocations

In my original post for this project I outline the strategy behind my allocations, you can use whatever you’re comfortable with. Personally I feel safest with a well diversified index portfolio. I talk about what risks I’m trying to manage in My Simple 3 Fund Strategy article. Do your own research everyone’s life situation and finances are different. I’m a slow and steady kind of guy when it comes to investing but I also have healthy emergency fund reserves so I can tolerate some volatility.

As a quick reminder here are my target allocations.

70% $VOO SP500 Fund (S&P500 fund)
10% $SPHD (SP500 High Dividend Fund)
10% $JEPI (JPMorgan Equity Premium
10% $VXUS Total International Fund

That’s it for this update! it’s only ben about 4 months (Started in September) but I’m happy to see progress! If we can keep these numbers up we’ll be in a beach house in no time.

I Invite you to follow along on my journey so we can encourage each other! below are my socials, and a link to my newsletter! Catch you next time!