Highlights:
- How 2 parents with “regular” jobs will retire early so they can spend more time together as a family
- Favourite podcasts for learning how to self-invest
- “A financial planner said the only problem with our plan is that we may die with too much money - we’ll take it!”
Jace and his wife are 30 years old, and are well on their way to reaching their goal of retiring early.
They live in a low-cost rural area with their two children.
Their net worth just crossed the million-dollar mark, and they have a clear plan to retire in their late 30s or early 40s.
Jace shares how he taught himself how to invest, how they accumulated their wealth on a police officer and teacher’s salary, and their plan to retire early and spend more time with their kids!
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Let’s look at the numbers
Our net worth officially crossed over a million-dollar mark in September, ending the month with $1,007,995.39!
Here’s how it breaks down:
- Investments: 604k
- Equity in house: 143k
- 2 Vehicles: 44k
- Pensions: 175k
- Cash: 42.6k
How did you start investing?
At 22 years old, a coworker told me I needed to invest.
I started by going to one of the big banks.
When they asked about my risk tolerance I said, “I don’t want to lose my money.”
So they put me in mutual funds and GICs.
I was 23 at the time, and they put me in medium-to-low risk investments… at an age I didn’t need to be so conservative with my money!
Then I moved to a wealth management firm and got “a guy”.
Between this and the bank, my investments severely underperformed and I paid high fees for quite a few years.
I started tracking my returns and they were brutal
Due to my love for finance, I kept researching, reading books, listening to podcasts - and came to the conclusion that low-cost index funds were the way to go.
We then started to DIY everything.
We’re 30 years old, with a net worth of over a million!! All thanks to a few simple steps!
That’s amazing! What helped you get to this point?
All the hard work has paid off.
Looking back, 4 main categories got us to where we are today:
Career
- We started working when we were 22 years old
- Worked lots of overtime to make more money, and saved and invested it all
Personal finances
- We created a budget and stuck to it
- Lived in a rural area with a low cost of living
- Had a high savings rate: 83% savings rate in 2020, average 47% now
Investing
- Learned to DIY our investments
- Invested in low-cost index funds
- Took advantage of the market downturn
Lifestyle
- We valued time together as a family above all else
- Lived well below our means
- Drove older vehicles
- Didn’t chase material things
The best advice you ever got about investing was…
Live on less than you make, invest the rest, and do so for a very long time.
That's the key to wealth!
What resources did you use to learn about self-investing?
The one book that I've enjoyed is Simple Path to Wealth. It helped me focus on my FIRE path.
Here are a few podcasts that helped me:
Want to get started with self-investing?
Click here for our easy-to-understand guide that explains the kind of funds to invest in!
What’s your investing process and strategy?
I invest every single month.
Whatever extra we have left over goes into the markets. We contribute between $3,500–$4,000 a month.
I focus mainly on ETFs. My portfolio is 90% ETFs, and 10% individual stocks.
Do you have a favorite ETF?
It’s got to be VFV.
It follows the S&P 500, what’s not to love? 🙂
How has Passiv helped you?
Passiv helps me track dividends. I enjoy seeing monthly contributions and across the different accounts.
It's been helpful with tracking my investments, especially since we have them in different places with so many accounts.
Click here to find out more about Passiv!
How do you deal with the ups-and-downs of investing?
I don't care about it.
I believe that human nature will prosper, and those companies will become more valuable over time.
Did you ever make a mistake with investing? What did you learn from it?
I tried chasing too many individual stocks which underperformed against the general market.
And before that, I paid way too much in fees for severely underperforming mutual funds and GICs.
You’re planning to retire early. What does that look like?
Yes, we’ve been working towards FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) for over 8 years now.
My wife and I plan to retire in our late 30s or early 40s, and look forward to having more time together as a family.
Once I retire I’ll be a full-time stay-at-home dad. I already cook all the meals and enjoy cleaning, and I’ll get to be there for our kids even more.
My wife loves teaching, so she may continue to substitute teach here and there.
We’ll be spending each summer travelling as a family when the kids are out for summer vacation!
This sounds incredible! What will your finances look like in retirement?
I’ve run our scenario with Certified Financial Planners from Wealthsimple, and the biggest issue we ran into was potentially dying with too much money left unspent… so we’ll take that!
At that point, our investment portfolio will be at around $2.5–$2.8 million (assuming 8–9%).
We’ll be mortgage-free by the time we retire.
We’ll be strategic with income to minimize taxes, aim to maximize the Canada Child Benefit, and continue maximizing our TFSAs while drawing from RRSPs.
Plus, our kids will have fully funded RRSPs by this point - just as our oldest becomes a teenager!
Our retirement income will be about $101k–$135k (being conservative).
There are a few ways we get to that number:
- I’ll have a pension for life, which will come to $36.6k–$40k a year in today’s dollars
- Dividends will bring in about $39k yearly
- Portfolio drawdown will add another $25k–$56k annually. Instead of following the traditional 4% rule, we plan to sell just 1–2% of the portfolio each year
So we’re on the right track, it’s just a matter of time and sticking to the plan.
In the meantime, we’re continuing to max out all our accounts each year and keep accumulating!
The advice I’d give to someone who wants to build wealth through investing is…
Learn to do it yourself, buy good ETFs, look for low-cost funds to save on fees, and buy every month for a long time!
Passiv makes managing your portfolio a breeze.
Buy all your ETFs in a couple clicks, get notified of cash to invest, & see clear reports that show all your investments in one place!
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* Names have been changed for privacy. The thoughts and opinions in this post are from the individual and their own experience.
