Category: Mission

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Reintroduction Post!

Time for a quick reintroduction post!

It has been a minute since I have given an update for all the new followers to the account. Here we go.

My name is Travis, I am 28 years old, and I am the man behind the account @theyoungretireeby33

I started this account a little over a year and a half ago for the original purpose of holding myself accountable and documenting my journey to reach financial independence.

My original content was focused around three things. Money. Mindset. Mission. I started following the financial independence community and it was amazing to see what everyone was doing and the information they were sharing to help others. I wanted to share my story and thought if I could help at least one person then it would be worth my time.

It has been a long journey since the beginning. I have gone from my first ever home purchase (house hack of course) to now owning a profitable short term rental business that is on track to do roughly $250k in gross revenue this year.

What is my mission? To reach financial independence so I can spend my time doing what I want to do, when I want to do it, and with whomever.

How do I plan to hit financial independence? Real estate and stock investment (dollar cost averaging). For real estate, mainly short term rentals and house hacking.

How close am I to financial independence? I could technically quit my W2 today if I wanted to, but it is the main thing fueling the fire to continue purchasing more real estate.

In my free time I am an avid golfer and love to travel. I love looking at problems and figuring out how to solve them with the least amount of effort. Part of my industrial engineering background by trade I guess.

Welcome to my page and I look forward to doing my best to add value for you!

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4 Things I Did To Hit Over $100,000 In My Brokerage Account At 27

It feels amazing to see my Vanguard brokerage account hit over $100k at such a young age. I have worked hard in both the earning and expense side in my investing journey. It feels great to see the progress and growth to hit over $100k in such a short amount of time. Here are four things that were critical for me to hit this major milestone!
 
The first and most important thing I have done is ensuring my money is also making money for me. This is my first of three core principles that are fundamental to my values.
 
If you are keeping your money in a savings account earning less than .03%, your money isn’t working as hard for you as you are working for it. If you are keeping your money in cash stashed under your bed, again, your money isn’t working hard enough for you. Keep your money invested in assets so it can work as hard for you as you work for it.
 
The earlier you begin, the better off you will be in the long run. The main driver here is compound interest and how powerful it is.
 
A key to having a lot of money to invest is by saving. The largest expense for 99.9% of American’s is housing. If you house hack, there are a few things you are doing. First, you are eliminating your largest expense. This allows you to automatically save that money, if you are smart. Next, if you buy a home, you are building equity in the home by having your tenants pay your mortgage for you. Finally, there are tax advantages to owning real estate. I won’t bore you with all the details on the advantages here, but you can read this article to understand a little more on the tax advantages of investing in real estate. 
 
Item #4: I Focused On Both Sides Of The Equation
Too often, I hear people talking about cutting the small expenses. What they sometimes forget is the fact that there are two sides of the equation. The first side is expenses and the second is expenses. I have put a heavy focus on both increasing my overall income as well as decreasing my living expenses. This focus on both sides of the equation has been a critical part of being able to get to $100,000 in my Vanguard brokerage account.
 
Sometimes it is good to take a step back and celebrate how far you have come. I am often very hard on myself that I am not doing enough and need to do more. I am often slow to celebrate the amazing progress I have made in trying to do big things with my life.
 
To fully grasp this accomplishment, if I were to not touch this account for 30 years, let’s see what it could look like. If we were to use a 7% interest rate compounded yearly, in 30 years, my $101,000 would look like this.
 
What My Vanguard Account Will Look Like In 30 years
 
That’s right, if I were to not touch this account (no adding money and no removing money), it would be worth $774,000 in 30 years. Now, I don’t plan to stop here. I am going to continue automating my investments every week. At least, until I hit a number where I feel financially independent.
 
So for a very short period of time, it is time to celebrate! $100,000 let’s get it! Time to get to $200,000 and on!
Key Takeaways:
  • Ensure your money is always working as hard for you as you work for it. 
  • Invest early to realize the power of compound interest
  • House hack to eliminate your largest expense
  • Focus on both increasing your income and decreasing your overall expenses. It isn’t enough to focus on only one or the other. 

Don’t forget @TheYoungRetireeBy33’s 3 Core Principles:

1 – Your money should make money for you⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
2 – Start early to realize the power of compound interest⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
3 – Eliminate your largest expense by house hacking

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Want To Become More Productive? Remove Notifications From Your Phone!

Inspired by a recent book I finished, Deep Work, comes this weeks challenge!

Remove all notifications from your cell phone! If you have kids you communicate with, ask them to call you instead of texting. Emails, turn off notifications. Social media platforms, turn off notifications.

Don’t know how to do this? It is simple, go to Settings in your phone. Go to notifications. Under notifications style select off for all apps. This exercise will take you less than 5 minutes. I bet you won’t. Stop finding excuses on why this won’t work for you. You can live for a week without notifications on your cell. What will end up amazing you is the amount of time you will get back in your day from doing this.

Technology Is Taking Over Our Lives

The day and age we live in involves us having many devices pinging us left and right. We are being trained to have our attention bounce between different things. Don’t believe me? There is a good chance you scrolled up to update your feed which is why you are now seeing this post.

Our devices are being designed with the thought in mind to give us constant hits of dopamine. Each time I get another like on a post, hit of dopamine. Each time I get an Airbnb notification, hit of dopamine. Each of these hits keeps us wanting to come back to the source. The source in this instance is the technology we are living with in our pockets.

Back In The Stone Ages

I remember in middle school when cell phones had become a thing. Before cell phones were a hit you had hefty phone books where you would write down all your friends numbers. That is right, you had to remember these 10 digit strings of numbers. The crazy thing was, I remembered upwards of 15-20 10 digit numbers because that was what you had to do. The crazier thing was you had to pick up the phone to call someone if you wanted to speak with them.

Now cell phones were a hit. You now had this mobile device you could take with you and call friends from. Not long after cell phones became a thing, texting was invented! I still remember to this day my thoughts on texting at the time.

My Thoughts On Texting

Why would I text someone when I could pick up the phone and call them!? There was no reason to text someone. If I wanted to talk to them, I would call. Six months after developing this thought process, the common thought was ‘why would I call someone if I can text them’?

Holy crap…how the world has changed even more with apps, social media, machine learning and artificial intelligence. We now live in a world where our technology own our life. They dictate when we wake up, how we interact with others and for a lot of people how they make money.

How times have changed. In this weeks challenge, challenge yourself to remove the constant distractions of technology.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Technology designs focus around providing dopamine hits. The hits you get when your phone sends you a notification is what keeps you coming back.
  2. Removing notifications on your phone allow you to get into a deeper sense of work and focus.
  3. Stop opening your dang phone!!!! Getting a lot of notifications isn’t a good thing!