Table Of Contents (Jump Links)

Introduction

I’ve always wanted a beach house! I grew near the water and spend a lot of time on the lake and Pacific Ocean in the summers. One of our good family friends even had a house on the lake with its own beach and boat dock. A lot of great summer memories were spent there. It’s time to get serous and build that dream for myself, and this is how I’m going to do it!

I’ve written on setting goals and getting specific with your plans in the past in my article about S.M.A.R.T. Goals. I thought it would be fun to actually set a big goal and show you guys what the process actually looks like first hand and why it works so well.

One of my goals is to own a beach home, or if not own at least have an investment portfolio that generates enough cash for me to rent as many beach homes as I want around the world.

That’s what this project is about 

My Goals

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:

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

The last point is a big one for me. I run a lifestyle and financial independence website. I used to do public monthly updates regarding my total NW (still track offline) but it felt like I humble bragging and that’s not the type of person I want to be.

I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to anyone to show a big number on a screen and say “Look at me!!”

What I want to do is encourage anyone who has $0 to get started, and how to start. For these reason I’m starting over at $0 by opening an entirely separate brokerage account for this goal.

This has several benefits:

Separate from my core retirement savings, that money isn’t for spending (Yet) so I wanted this to be 100% separate.
Makes tracking my goal easier
A true start from zero that others can relate to.

Why M1 Finance?

I have several brokerage accounts already with other firms.

Fidelity: Main Brokerage, IRA, ROTH IRA (98% of NW)
Robinhood: YOLO Account (2% of NW)

I’ve always liked the idea of the M1 Finance Pie’s where you set an allocation percentage for each investment and let it do the rest. I think this helps discourage active trading, and keeps your portfolio balanced while being hands off. Creating a plan isn’t the hard part. Sticking to a plan is! M1 makes it easy to set and forget letting automation take care of the details!

This is ideal for new investors or people like me who just want to focus on stacking more money and now worry too much about the investments themselves.

Speaking of Stacking money! If you want a free $100 use my link and sign up for an M1 Finance account of your own! You get to use a great product and make some free money in the process!

What Am I Investing In?

To properly set up your M1 finance account you need to pick some investments and a target allocation for each. In the article My 3 Fund Strategy I talk about the 3 buckets I use for my personal investing strategy (not personalized financial advice, just what I’m doing and works for me)

The 3 buckets I identified are

70% Total Market Fund

20% Dividend/ Bond Funds

10% Total International fund

“But what about [Insert random asset] class?!” you say! Read My 3 Fund Strategy article, I answer many of the common questions about other asset classes, how I’m either indirectly exposed to them already thru this stratagy (like real-estate) or not interested in (Crypto)

This structure provides me a well diversified portfolio that generates a bit of cashflow to buy the dips with. To be honest for your first $100,000 your contributions will make a far bigger impact than the investments themselves. If you only deposit $1,000 and got lucky picking a perfect stock like $TSLA which is up 840% since the start of 2020 you’d only have $8,400. Nice but not life changing

To make the first $100K it’s going to need to be a hard carry by YOU! Your consistent steady contributions make all the difference! And over the next 5 years I’m going to prove it!

So now that you understand the philosophy behind my strategy what am I actually investing in?

70% Total Market Fund Bucket
- 70% $VOO SP500 Fund (Not technically a total market fund but performs the same)
20% Dividend Funds Bucket
- 10% $SPHD (SP500 High Dividend Fund)
- 10% $JEPI (JPMorgan Equity Premium Income).
10% Total International Fund Bucket
- 10% $VXUS Total International Fund

What Am I Investing In?

As I pointed out above most of the first $100K is going to come from contributions, not investment returns, so that means I need to come up with it myself.

Further more this is a WANT not a NEED so I will still be investing into my retirement plans from my regular income. So I need to come up with some extra money to throw at this fund. The sources of money will likely change over time. But below are some ideas I have to get started

Credit Card Cash Back
Side hustle
X Ad Revenue
Ebay Sales
Extra income not needed for retirement funds

Ideally I’ll be setting aside around $20,000 every year into this fun, that may not happen in Year 1 as I’ll need to grow some income streams and make some changes to my lifestyle to make this happen. But I’m confident that by the end of 2028 I’ll have $100,000 locked and loaded ready to make the next step toward making a beach house a reality!

You’d be surprised how much money you can scrape up when youre motivated. I’ll be shareing monthly updates here so make sure to Subscribe!

I’ll also post regular update on contributions and small wins over on X to make sure to follow me over there @Blind__Luck

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