Updated: 2025
I grew up in Country Victoria—a quiet town, not too far from the coast.
When I was younger, I always thought I’d end up with a trade and stay at home as long as possible. Honestly, it seemed like the smartest option for many young guys in my area.
And since living at home is basically free, that meant I could spend my money however I wanted.
The plan was simple: stick around town, save up, and eventually buy a house. At least, that’s what I thought would happen.
While still in school, I worked part-time for a few years at Big W. I remember thinking, “$10 an hour? This is awesome!”
It felt like money was just raining down from the sky. I spent a lot of it at first, but then quickly began saving nearly all of it for one thing—my dream car (which at the time was a black Holden Commodore with big chrome wheels).
I stopped going out to parties, worked a lot of hours, and imagined that car sitting in my driveway. At 17, I bought it! That was a big moment and something I was really proud of.
I think because in a way, the car symbolised freedom. But it was also a symbol of achievement. The first big thing I’d done by myself. Maybe you had that feeling too.
Looking back, it was clear that I could get obsessed with hitting goals if they really mattered to me. Around this time, something else started to change.
I started losing interest in school. I didn’t feel like I was learning anything useful anymore.
Working felt more rewarding. I could earn money, learn skills, and buy the things I wanted. That just made more sense, and I certainly didn’t have any big career plans where I needed to be a whiz at school. So I dropped out after Year 11.
After my 18th birthday, I decided to head to Perth for better job opportunities.
Within two weeks, I had a decent-paying factory job. And it was close to where I was living, so things were pretty easy in the beginning.
A few months later, I moved in with a mate and a couple of his friends. Life was good. My bank account was growing with hardly any effort, even though I still enjoyed a few nights out, and buying the usual random stuff like clothes and takeaway food.
But after just over a year of work, I started feeling bored and unsatisfied. Everyone around me seemed to be stuck in the same cycle: working hard, buying stuff, but not really living. In fact, nobody in their 40s, 50s, and 60s seemed happy at all.
That’s when it hit me: I didn’t want to waste my life working just to pay bills.
I wanted more freedom, more enjoyment, and more options in life. At that point, I knew that I had to be wealthy. Somehow. I didn’t know how, but I just had to do it. I’d figure it out somehow.
It wasn’t long after that I met my partner. We both worked full-time—me as a storeman/forklift driver, and her in admin. I’d got a new job at this point, which paid a lot better but included night shifts and weekend work.
The work was more enjoyable, but the people (for the most part) weren’t any happier. Anyway, we both got interested in property investing, so we started saving and learning more about it. Now with the goal of being wealthy in my mind, I started doing overtime at work.
I bought my first investment property using the savings I had at the time, and a year later, I bought another one, both with a 5% deposit. My partner also bought an investment property using some equity from her house.
Over time, we learned how to save even more, and use the equity from our properties to invest further. Things were starting to work out pretty well. I could see progress.
After maxing out our borrowing capacity, we started looking for other ways to invest our money. The stock market always seemed a bit intimidating, but the idea of investing for dividends caught my attention.
I didn’t realise shares paid such a decent income stream (in Australia anyway). At the same time, it was becoming clear just how many expenses came with the properties. It was sucking up so much cashflow just to hold onto these things.
It stood out so much that I realised even if we’d paid off a few properties, the income after expenses would actually be pretty poor. So we focused on building a share portfolio.
Over the next 18 months, we built a decent portfolio and used the dividends and our monthly savings to buy more shares. Eventually something clicked in my mind. Shares were producing pretty good income, with franking credits, no bills and no headaches. The contrast to the properties became clear.
I then realised we didn’t need to wait another 10 years to accumulate a massive amount of property equity, or chip away slowly at paying them off. We could just use our savings to build a portfolio that spat out some nice dividends and live off that.
Not long after, I sat down and ran the numbers. How much do we really need to live off? It turned out, that number wasn’t super high.
Then I realised. If all our money was in shares instead of property, we could actually retire. When I figured that out, it was a lightbulb moment. Then it became a decision of how badly we want to keep the properties. Do we want to own property, or do we want freedom?
Frankly, I don’t really care what I own, as long as that asset is providing me freedom. That was the whole point of all this effort in the first place.
We then decided to start selling down our property portfolio. Some of that money has gone towards paying for our living expenses, but the rest was getting poured into shares, growing the income further.
The whole plan was to sell down the properties slowly, over say a 10 year period. At the end of the 10 year period, we’d have no properties and a fully built share portfolio which produces enough income to live off.
We’re getting towards the end of that now, with just a few years to go, and it’s worked out pretty well. And here’s the thing: while we were saving, we still made sure we enjoyed life.
We took some overseas holidays, enjoyed the occasional dinner out, got an expensive dog, and still visited family. We just made sure we prioritized what mattered most to us.
The mentality was simple: “We can pretty much do anything, but we can’t do everything.” Then, In 2017, we left our jobs. And it felt like the greatest thing ever.
Since leaving work, my partner works part-time in her old government job. She enjoys the social side of it and has gotten really into gardening. We’ve moved further out from Perth to a greener suburb with lots of open space, and we live a slower paced life.
Some people might find it boring, but it suits us a lot better – I love it.
As for me, I started a blog that eventually turned into podcasting and even a book. But I try to keep it in balance and make sure it doesn’t take up too much of my time. After all, the whole point was to live with more free time and flexibility, not to build a big business!
I love sharing what I’ve learned along the way, and hopefully, it’s helping other people, so I find what I’m doing to be very satisfying and it brings me a sense of meaning.
We also do a bit of local volunteering —planting trees and helping out with the local turtles. We love heading out for a coffee, going for lots of walks, and until last year spending time with our dog (until he passed away).
Now that our dog’s not with us anymore, we’ll probably travel a bit more now, since I’ve only been to a few countries, and the finances are going well so we have a bit of extra spending money.
Having said that, I try to live by the idea of building a regular life that you enjoy so much you don’t need a holiday from it.
This reader story is from a family who has taken a radical approach from the norm. They’ve prioritised freedom and adventure and time with their kids over home ownership, and are much wealthier and happier for it.
My thoughts on a behavioural trap I see in the FI community, how to recognise it and how to fix it. Far more common than you might think, and it can prevent you from enjoying the wonderful wealth you’re building.
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Are you going to post monthly income/expense reports? will be very interesting to see how the day-to-day money works for you seeing as you’re so new to the retired status, very curious to see how the nitty gritty works in the reality of early retirement!
Mrs DDU
Thanks for the comment Mrs DDU. I will definitely be writing about our spending and investing in more detail soon! But I don’t think I’ll be posting specific monthly income/expense reports because I’m not sure they’d be very interesting lol. Currently we just have increasing dividend payments and p2p lending payments coming in (we also put a lump into p2p lending). After bills are paid we combine with cash in bank and allocate monthly to lic’s/shares. Might be a bit messy and confusing to share with folks 🙂
Edited: On second thoughts, maybe that’s a good article idea. Living off and investing from a lump sum of cash at the same time. Will work on that one, thanks again!
Sorry I am a bit late to the party with this comment. I just discovered your blog today. I can really relate to this. We are in the changing directions stage.
We have built a decent net wealth with 4 properties and we are about to start selling some of them down.
We want to own a place mortgage free so the money we have left over won’t be enough to retire yet, but by 2025 is the plan.
All good, thanks for stopping by! Just checked out your blog, you’re in a great position so far, but it’s definitely not much fun being equity rich and income poor.
In Australia this type of situation is super widespread and it’s a bit sad.
Our net worth is actually similar to yours, with more debt though.
I wouldn’t go the leveraged property route if I started again. It can work out well for some but it’s not necessary for financial independence.
All the best in creating income from your equity 🙂
Great Blog SM
Have read a number of artciles within
Are there many Financial Freedom Fighters in the FIRE space with kids also?
Thanks Bazza!
In Australia, I know that the couple at DividendsDownUnder just had a little one. Of course over in the US, the man himself Mr Money Mustache has a son. I’m not too sure of many others though. Sorry mate, I tend to lose track of which bloggers have kids and which don’t.
Hi, great blog! Question for you. You mentioned in one of the above comments that if you could start over, that you would not go down the property investing route and just start off with investing in shares. From your above article, you mentioned that your properties have grown and provided you with the equity to allow you to move those funds into shares now to provide you with the dividends giving you the financial independence. I’m curious as to if we did rewind the clock, and you had started off investing your savings straight into shares instead of buying your investment properties, would you still be in the same financial position you are as of right or do you think the growth in your properties provided you with the boost to get you to where you are today?
Reason I’m asking is that I’m at a crossroads. I’ve got 3 investment properties valued at $1.6mil and currently have $600k debt. I am in a position where I can go and buy another investment property but after stumbling upon your blog as well as Peter Thornhill’s Motivated Money book, I’ve started shifting my interest towards shares now. However, I’m not sure of the best way to proceed. I still not feel 100% confident that I could sell down my property portfolio and divert all the funds into shares. I still feel like I’d like invest in both property and shares at the same time. Do you think this is possible? Or do you think this would be counter productive? I am interested to see whether investing in shares could provide the same level equity growth compared to property (especially since I can leverage the banks money for property so I assumed that the growth/my dollar would be higher in property when compared the growth/my dollar in shares). If my assumption is correct, wouldn’t it make sense for me to continue investing in property to keep accelerating my equity growth so that when the time comes for me to consider retiring, I can sell down then and divert all the funds into shares for the dividends? Trouble with continuing to buy investment properties though, is that it would limit the amount I’d be able to DCA into my share portfolio each month.. Sorry for such a long post. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Unfortunately, I didn’t make squillions in a recent property boom. Half our properties are in Perth, which haven’t done much in terms of growth.
After the cash we saved, the negative cashflow we paid for, and the deposits/stamp duty etc. we put cash towards, our savings done most of the heavy lifting in getting us to where we are. I covered this in the article about our savings rate/journey here… https://strongmoneyaustralia.com/savings-rate-revisited/
Re your situation – It depends a lot on what your goals are. If all your equity was in shares, would you have enough income to retire? Or was your plan for a much larger amount of income?
Rather than having a massive discussion in the comments section, I’ll shoot an email out to you 🙂
Correction – I tried to email you, it says email doesn’t exist? Perhaps connect through my contact page so I can send the full email reply through to you. Cheers
Hi. Thanks for your response! I’ve sent you my email in the contact page. Look forward to hearing from you!
I’m in a very similar situation to SMA in terms of converting our property into shares and I can definitely say if you want to retire early, share is the best option for stable income.
The reason why people invest in property is the perception of risk in that they believe property is a tangible asset and a block of land/building cannot disappear or bankrupt, however, property also comes in a lot of expected and unexpected expenses and definitely not a stable income investment(just look at Perth and how many vacancies)
If I have the knowledge that I have now 10 years ago, I will be fully retired and live a very comfortable lifestyle, however, having believed that property will double every 7-10 years got me into a lot of S$#$t.
I have done a lot of research into Lics and am very comfortable in holding the majority of our asset in Lics, true, they can crash 50% in a market crash, but I believe the income will remain stable or drop a fraction of the price drop. This is because while price can crash, the earnings will be less affected and also most importantly, unlike REIT, most Lics pay out less than 100% of their earnings and have sufficient money in their reserves to cover the “turbulent” periods, this give me great confidence in riding out the crash.
Most people will consider shares risky and properties safe, I say “well done to them” because they can keep on working til they’re 80 and help the banks boost their earnings and benefit shareholders like us.
Thanks for sharing your story here Jack!
I agree with many of your sentiments. Leveraged property can work well but I no longer believe it’s the best option, or the most reliable. The majority of investors turn to shares later on for the income they provide. Usually the message is to use leveraged property to build net worth and then sell down into better income assets. I don’t agree with this anymore – I believe the best way to approach it is to save and invest in shares from the start.
If folks want to build their net worth faster, they need to save more money. That’s not what people want to hear, and it doesn’t sell anything so nobody is out there saying it. The pure simplicity and reliability of saving and dividend investing means your journey to FI is much more predictable, and for those with a reasonably short time-frame such as 10 years or less, the benefit of any leveraged property is diluted by the massive costs such as stamp duty, agents fees and ongoing negative cashflow.
Think we could summarise by saying, we aren’t ‘sharemarket guys’, just some investors who’ve seen both sides of the coin and have adjusted their view accordingly.
Agreed
The problem is when you invest in property, you are “investing” for capital growth which may or may not happen and uncertainty over when it will happen, over the very long term, property will up in value due to inflation but can you afford to hold on to a losing investment for so long ? it can be 20 -30 years before you see any benefit.
also, when discussing property, most people tend to only talk about capital gains but not expenses incurred, which can be very significant. One greatest downside to property is the unexpected cash flow and it seems everyone wants a piece of your asset, tradies wants to rip you off, government running out of money will raise landtax and other taxes, property managers charging you fees and yet does not do a proper job…the list is endless…… plus, relying on rent to live on is super unreliable as unexpected things can and do happen which can drain your cash flow instantly.
Investing in shares is so much easier once you can ignore the volatility, cash flow much more predictable and you can see where you are now and where you will be in 10 years time.
If you love to repair things, do renovations and spend your weekends cleaning up gutters, then yes, maybe property is for you….but I rather sit on my couch watching youtube…
Haha, I’d rather sit back and collect the cash too, than rely on future capital gains.
The big thing I think is looking at just the big numbers – “my investment property went from 500k to 600k over the last few years”. No mention of the fact it’s cost tens of thousands in negative cashflow and tens of thousands to buy it. And it’s still probably generating negative or no income. Does nothing for early retirement unless you cash out, which means more agents fees and CGT.
In the end, building paper wealth only gets you so far, but at first glance the figures look impressive and it sounds good.
I’ll definitely do an article (or two) on this at some point. I’m not anti-property at all, I just think there’s not much balance in the conversation, and not many examples where the all the figures are reported, instead of just price movement. There’s generally too much emotion involved in comparisons between property and shares.
Dave, if you are a financial advisor and give people advise such as “This share will go up”, “this company is a good business and will provide you with capital gain” “This share will give you yield of 6% +”, without disclosing the risks, you will be subject to fines and penalties.
Yet, Real estate agents do this all the time “This property will go up in value because its high demand, close to beach etc” “This property yields 6%” without telling you all the expenses/net yield and risks behind it, “this property bought 5 years ago for $500K is now worth $700K” without telling you the stamp duty, agent cost, rates and taxes……you see them getting away with all these things….
That’s a fair point – it’s a much less regulated industry. There should probably be much stricter protections in place for investors and home-owners, especially since the agents have such substantial commissions at stake – making them unlikely to give an appropriately balanced view with enough details for the buyer to make an educated decision.
That said, how many people really want to know all this stuff? It would seem like information overload. I think perhaps many are happy believing what they want to believe…
I’ve always been obsessed with goals too, and always been an entrepreneur so I can relate to your story. Lovely to read about your realisation that you were both already FI equity wise, what a nice way to discover it! For us we are waiting for properties to do the heavy lifting. It’s taking a while. Completely understand you when you say you would do things differently if you could do over 😉
Thanks Lin 🙂
It was a bit of a surprise! Haha yeah I know what you mean, turns out it’s much easier to have the saving to the heavy lifting, much more controllable!
Hi Dave?
Us it possible to ask a question through my email to you people?
Thankyou
Andrew
It’s just me here, just one simple blogger 🙂
And yes, you can ask a specific question through my contact page or anywhere on the blog if it is more general.
Cheers, Dave.