It wasn't that long ago that I was broke. Scratch that. I was less than broke. I was worth a negative amount of money. How does that even happen? How do you become worth less than an infant? Well, typically by making bad decisions. And I had some doozies. How about wasting an inheritance? How about instead of avoiding student loan debt, taking it on with a smile? Yep, I did these things and more. Yet, I'm guaranteed to be a millionaire.
How so?
By being persistent and consistent. Over the last three years I stayed determined to climb out of my situation and build an investment portfolio of high quality companies large enough so that the passive income via dividends it generates would be large enough so that I could live off of it. I'm trying to build a dividend tree so large that the fruit grows faster than I can eat it. My dividend tree now has 37 branches of high quality companies spitting out over $4,000 in fruitful annual dividend income.
But here's the great thing.
I could stop investing right now. I could stop living below my means and start spending 100% of my available net income on living expenses and all the luxuries a middle class worker has access to. I could buy a nice pad, hit the town every weekend, trade in my time machine for a brand new car and take a couple of exotic vacations per year. And guess what?I'll still be a millionaire one day.
I'm not bragging here. What I am doing is trying to show you how powerful investing, and compound interest, really is. It doesn't take much effort on your part to guarantee yourself a millionaire. It doesn't even take a lifetime of sacrifices and delayed gratification. It actually only takes a few years of saving a good portion of your net income and investing that excess capital wisely.
I've been at this for just over three years. I built my portfolio from $5,000 to six-figures during this time. Doing this has given me a lifetime of rewards.
What if I gave up the idea of early reitrement tomorrow?
I was doing some quick math and this is what I came up with. Assuming I never invest another dollar for the rest of my life and give up the dream of early retirement I would then have to assume the average retirement age of 61 years old for myself. A daunting thought, but one I'll use for this example. I used a compound interest calculator with my current portfolio value of $125,000 and a 7% rate of return compounded over 30 years (I'm currently 31). I ended up with$1,014,562.18. That's just a shade over $1 million. And that's assuming I retire at an average age and never invest another dollar.
This is all hypothetical of course, and because of that I didn't include inflation or taxes. However, I also used a rate of return below the historical stock market's average. But this isn't meant to calculate how much money I'll have at 61 if I never invest another dollar. This exercise is meant to show you how important your decisions of today are to the you of tomorrow. And you don't even need a lifetime of good decisions. If you could carve out just a few years of your life for intense saving and investing you'll be much better off for it.
Guarantee yourself wealth.
The you of today has a great chance to guarantee the you of tomorrow great wealth. You can virtually guarantee the you of tomorrow millionaire status just by making conscious decisions with your money. Live below your means, avoid debt and invest the surplus wisely and you can almost guarantee yourself that you'll be a millionaire one day. Life changes fast. There's a lot that can happen over one's lifetime. But who better to deal with the curveballs of fate than someone who has hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of investments in wonderful companies?
If I can guarantee myself millionaire status with just three years of hard work, imagine what you can do for yourself with a lifetime of good decisions. The possibilities are almost limitless. Personally, I don't plan on stopping this journey tomorrow. My plan is to become financially independent at 40 years old and live life on my terms. I'll continue to save aggressively and invest that surplus capital as wisely as I can until then, mostly in high quality companies that pay out rising dividends. This means I have 10 years to build upon my millionaire status. Care to join me?
How about you? Are you guaranteeing yourself that you'll be a millionaire one day?
Thanks for reading.
This article was written by Dividend Mantra. If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe to my feed [RSS]
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