Goal - Financial Independence In Ten Years

[onlyroadtoheaven]

Having just read "Rich Dad Poor Dad", I am now half way through "From zero to financial independence in less than 10 years". I love the idea of cumulative interest and money working for me so It has inspired me to attempt my own financial independence within 10 years - and what better time to start than the beginning of a new year ... so I need an investment plan!

Currently I am lightly invested in PMs, a couple of Mining and Potash shares. Although I don't spend much anyway I plan to cut back even further to reach my goal.

Property has done well for many people in the past but my view is that this won't continue ... although I might be wrong as I need to research property investment further. I am also a bit cautious of PMs at the moment as I really wasn't expecting them to drop as much as they have recently, especially with all the debt around and the printing of money.

1) I assume most people on here are pretty economically clued up and financially savvy so was wondering what other people see as good areas to invest in for the coming couple of years???

2) Does anyone else have one of these plans in place?

[Roy]

The best idea is to write a book telling people how to be financially independent. 

I still believe in property. My parents sold a house in Jumpers Avenue in 1980 for £19,995. You understand 

I'll look up some links I have and PM you.

It is certainly possible. Mr Vand has some good ideas on this very forum.

 

[jayboat]

My plan is pedal to the metal

I'll figure out to do with it when i have it. 

Im pretty much all in for silver for the next 3 years. I have a 5 year stacking plan where i buy a certain amount of the yearly releases of around 12 coins that i plan to flip over every 5 years. In 2020 i will flip over 2015 stuff and buy 2020 stuff with that money, hopefully more oz's. Basically making a self sustaining stack which only requires my time. I will continue to flip until the silver to gold ratio is around 40-1, then flip the lot into gold. 

In 3 years time when i start flipping, i have no plan where to save. Thats too far away to plan, i'll see what the craic is when that time comes  

[Roy]

I'm going to attract haters.

You'll never achieve financial independence through PMs. Sorry.

[onlyroadtoheaven]

3 minutes ago, Roy said:

I'm going to attract haters.

You'll never achieve financial independence through PMs. Sorry.

OMG, that be fighting talk and will get you banned from the forum  

Thank you for the links on your PM. The 2nd one seems particularly interesting and I clearly need to revisit property.

[Roy]

I had to say it.

You're welcome. It's my favourite platform too.

 

Edited December 18, 2016 by Roy

[sovereignsteve]

50 minutes ago, Roy said:

I'm going to attract haters.

You'll never achieve financial independence through PMs. Sorry.

depends what you mean by "financial independence".

you can earn a living buying and selling PMs, if you sell enough

[Roy]

 True. Financial indépendance means not having to work for money.

 

 

Edited December 18, 2016 by Roy

[GoldenAtlantis]

13 hours ago, jayboat said:

My plan is pedal to the metal

I'll figure out to do with it when i have it. 

Im pretty much all in for silver for the next 3 years. I have a 5 year stacking plan where i buy a certain amount of the yearly releases of around 12 coins that i plan to flip over every 5 years. In 2020 i will flip over 2015 stuff and buy 2020 stuff with that money, hopefully more oz's. Basically making a self sustaining stack which only requires my time. I will continue to flip until the silver to gold ratio is around 40-1, then flip the lot into gold. 

In 3 years time when i start flipping, i have no plan where to save. Thats too far away to plan, i'll see what the craic is when that time comes  

Nice strategy. You can get a lot of silver and gold for free if you switch at the right time. Even if you convert your silver to gold when it reaches 50:1 then back to silver when it's at 75:1 and do that several times over 20 years, you will do very nicely out of it, whatever stack size you have. People say that you can't earn interest when you stack PMs but I would argue this is the PM equivalent of interest. 

 

[Kman]

^ I've made good money with domains which I wrote a full long thread about linked above

I've also done well with making information websites on wordpress that earn passive income from adsense each month

I will say though that I had to learn a lot to be able to the above, there was no easy "I will just put my money here and wait for the profits"

^ I suppose there are ways to do that, if I had put a lot of money into bitcoin when it was close to £200 id have made a lot now, but that would have been a total gamble

Maybe that's the takeaway, the only way to make a good return without learning is by taking big risks; there probably aren't any big return, no knowledge needed, safe investments out there

 

[Clens92]

31 minutes ago, Kman said:

I've also done well with making information websites on wordpress that earn passive income from adsense each month

Hi Kman, was there a particular resource that helped you out with this??  I've looked into it before, and made semi-committed attempts, but have never really grasped the keyword necessities.

[Kman]

20 minutes ago, Clens92 said:

Hi Kman, was there a particular resource that helped you out with this??  I've looked into it before, and made semi-committed attempts, but have never really grasped the keyword necessities.

Well I cheat somewhat, when catching domains some drop with good links so the hard work is done, I just put up some info about whatever the site was about and it ranks on google to get traffic

I had a background in SEO prior, so that was an advantage and I learned about wordpress, html, small amount of PHP and photoshop so I could make a nice enough looking basic site

Loads of places you can pay for people to write the content for you

But yeah the pre-existing links really is where the advantage

You can buy dropped seo domains places but obviously you would need to know what you're looking for 

I've always thought it would probably be a good idea to trawl through somewhere like DMOZ, try buying some preexisting information sites that get traffic and aren't monetized. Obviously you would need be able to guesstimate potential earnings so know how much it's worth offering.

[sovereignsteve]

Does DMOZ still exist? I would have thought Google would have made it redundant.

[SilverTanner]

Interesting thread, my target is 15 years - that way my personal pension and any investments should just cover the gap until my work and state pension kicks in (assuming everything goes as planned - fat chance, but you have to start somewhere!)

I get cross with myself everytime I buy another coin when I know I should buy income generating assets but I get over it ?

The Heritage NewYork auction in January is probably going to mean it will now be 20 years - never mind?

ST

[Kman]

13 hours ago, sovereignsteve said:

Does DMOZ still exist? I would have thought Google would have made it redundant.

Of course

Not that I imagine anyone is using it or submitting to it nowadays 

It used to be quite rare/prestigious to get a listing years ago, people thought it was excellent for SEO - which maybe it was a long time ago but I don't think that's been the case for a long time

Yahoo directory also used to be quite popular for links, but expensive   

[sovereignsteve]

Yes it was important in the early days for SEO. I was involved as a reviewer for a completely different hobby at least 15 years ago, but it got a bit tedious and it's importance was starting to decline by then.

[vand]

Great thread. Everyone wants financial independence and I have a similar goal, but that doesn't mean I won't continue to work as I believe work fulfills an important human requirement.

Firstly, I agree with your views on property. That goose is dead, and when (not if) the crash comes, many overleveraged people will be wiped out and the accompanying economic recession will be much worse than 2008-09. That said, I do believe that eventually owning your own home at a sensible price (ideally around x200 gross rent) is an important part of becoming financially independent, but those sort of prices wont return until there is a violent price reset.

 

I also agree that, unless you are VERY savvy, PMs are likely not the way to future prosperity. Of course, some of many of us discussing this are trying to get to that "very savvy" pointy end, but you have to be very contrarian to do so, and I'm not sure that we are at that stage of the commodities market these days as we were in 2000-2002. PMs main role is to preserve purchasing power, which is not the same as building wealth. There may be, indeed surely will be, a time where PMs have their moment in the sun and offer the chance of a big return, but for the most part it is "insurance".

The rules of building wealth are simple (but not easy):

-maximize your earnings
-minimize your expenditures
-invest wisely in proven sustainable, wealth-building assets when they are attractively priced
-diversify to spread your risk around, but only as much as you need and only invest in what you understand
-avoid chasing a fast buck and making mistakes which can wipe out your capital. A 10% loss just needs a 11% rise to recover, a 90% loss needs a 1000% rise to return.

Most of the time none of this comes easy or quickly, and in today's environment cheap money has inflated every asset price (except commodities) so your choices are limited. But if making money was easy then more people would be rich!

I also think that setting a time frame for such "blue sky" goals is not a good idea. Maximize your own potential and focus on smaller deliverables. See where you are in 2 years time. Most of us are seeking the same goals and working a lifetime to get there!

Edited January 12, 2017 by vand

[vand]

I don't know how many people here have a company pension, but I've paid into one every year for the last 17 years since I started working, and now every year I get my annual statement I look at the size of my pension pot and it is quite impressive to see how much it has been built up to.. but that didn't come about overnight or even over a few years. I got plenty of years left to add to it and watch it grow more.

It just shows that with steady application over many years you can achieve a lot more than most people think is possible and not really even have to suffer much hardship.

[Danny-boy]

I don't know how many people here have a company pension, but I've paid into one every year for the last 17 years since I started working, and now every year I get my annual statement I look at the size of my pension pot and it is quite impressive to see how much it has been built up to.. but that didn't come about overnight or even over a few years. I got plenty of years left to add to it and watch it grow more.

It just shows that with steady application over many years you can achieve a lot more than most people think is possible and not really even have to suffer much hardship.

Yes, I have been paying into mine for 23 years now.

Since I have more expendable money lately, I have been increasing my contribution by 1% each year and am now at 5% with a 2% employer contribution.

I'll continue increasing until I'm at 8% which will be 3 years.

I believe in 2019, my employer will be required to increase to 3%, giving me an 11% overall contribution plus government money.

We are also currently costing up buying a property in Eastern Europe to diversify.

And my metals will just sit there too now, I'm unlikely to add to them unless there is a significant downturn in price.

[Roy]

'We are also currently costing up buying a property in Eastern Europe to diversify.'

Fantastic idea. Your wife's country?

Makes perfect sense. I guess there are still family there, you'll have access to local banking and no language barriers.

I'd certainly take advantage of that Dan!

For rental purposes, a holiday home or future retirement? Or too far in the future for that yet!

advantage is not the right word but you know what I mean  

 

Edited January 12, 2017 by Roy

[Danny-boy]

Fantastic idea. Your wife's country?

Makes perfect sense. I guess there are still family there, you'll have access to local banking and no language barriers.

I'd certainly take advantage of that Dan!

For rental purposes, a holiday home or future retirement? Or too far in the future for that yet!

Hiya Roy,

Yes, in my wife's homeland.

We have mom & dad there along with a huge family. Luckily, dad is a plumber / handyman/ ex policeman who knows everybody and is very good at building etc.

The house would be for our & family use only, and her mom & dad have already agreed to look after it.

Plan is to buy close to the national park, so family can use as a hiking base or weekend getaway.

£50K should buy a decent 3 bed with land, probably need work but we have that covered.

Just need to crunch the numbers and start saving!!!!

£ being weak against the euro doesn't help matters [emoji1]

[Roy]

Brilliant. It ticks all the boxes!

Perhaps you could buy some land then build a house? That would spread the cost if you weren't in a rush to finish?

Particularly some fertile land....

Can you get budget flights to that destination?

 

[Danny-boy]

Brilliant. It ticks all the boxes!

Perhaps you could buy some land then build a house? That would spread the cost if you weren't in a rush to finish?

Particularly some fertile land....

Can you get budget flights to that destination?

We would, but it actually works out cheaper to buy a built house [emoji15]

Flights aren't as budget as they used to be, but still reasonable, not cheap at Christmas though. Ugh.

But we have to go back to see family anyway, so it is whatever it is.

[Heisenberg]

Might i ask which country?

 

Understand if you dont want to post on open forum, im looking at this myself at the moment, no familly in Europe but as a second/holiday home.

[Danny-boy]

Might i ask which country?

 

Understand if you dont want to post on open forum, im looking at this myself at the moment, no familly in Europe but as a second/holiday home.

No problem at all, it's Slovakia.

I truly believe that tourism is going to take off in north Slovakia over the next 10 years.

Great hiking, superb skiing, €1 half litre beers etc etc.

We'll be buying in Slovak Paradise (Slovensky Raj) which is stunning.