Financially free at 32 – My 10 year property journey

Yep. Having a higher salary is useless unless you have the right mindset conducive to building wealth behind it.

 

I'll share the domain article when it gets published, it'll have all the figures in there. Please hold tight!

 

Congratulations @Jack Chen. You're done really well, great to read your investment journey. Just goes to show what can be achieved in 10 years through smart choices, patience and consistency.

 

fantastic story! well done!

 

Thanks for sharing your story Jack.

It's encouraging to see how you got to where you are today, and seeing the build up and transition into other investment types. @Michael_X's been a major help for me as well to say the least (thanks mate

 

Great job!

Questions:

1. When you first started out, were your goals based on a single income rather than a dual one?
2. How much longer do you think this would've taken if you had done this using a single income?
3. Did you factor children into your financial goals?

As a young person, I have no idea when the SO will come along, so all my planning is based on my income alone.

 

Absolute legend @Jack Chen. Now anybody looking at you on the street would not have any idea you built all that up....
Kudos. Thankyou for sharing your story.

 

To be honest when I first started out I didn't really set myself any specific goals. I just knew I had to do something different if I wanted any chance of exiting the rat race. I had a vision for what my life would look like (I was naive at the time and thought lying on the beach all day would bring me happiness). So I just decided to take action and kept going at it for a number of years, never looking back.

We've been DINK's for 7 years now so this has definitely helped. 3 out of 4 of Sydney units were borrowed in my name only. All other properties we were in her name or as joint borrowers. So without my wife's serviceability I would've hit my serviceability wall much earlier on and as a result, would've ended up with a much smaller portfolio. Hard to quantify really.

Yes we plan on having children so they are definitely part of the picture. Our goal was to pay down our PPOR aggressively enough before starting a family so that a solo income would be enough to support the family. This was so that my wife could be a full-time stay-at-home-mum until the kids hit school age. We've now far exceeded that target, so we have even more flexibility now. We are now planning to travel around the world with our kids for at least a couple of years.

 

Mark Zuckerberg is also 32.

Millionaires are made in buying properties in Sydney at the right cycle.

Congrats on the achievement catcafe.

 

Great read! Well done Jack

 

As others have mentioned huge thanks for sharing your journey thus far..

 

amazing @Jack Chen, such a great achievement at such a young age ( now I want to go back 10 years and start over again, )

 

Congrats Jack and your wife - what an amazing and inspirational story! You're the quiet achiever type but we all know you work twice or three times as hard behind the scenes to get to where you are today! Well done buddy really happy for you and I'm sure the new chapter is just about to begin!

 

Great stuff Jack! I always love reading these type of stories because it definitely gives me plenty of motivation to do the same. Kudos for sharing your story and providing inspiration to others.

 

Firstly, I'm kinda surprised the ladies amongst us haven't picked up on this.

I say well done to both of you, neither would be in this position without each others support and strength.

 

What an inspiring story @Jack Chen. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Stories like yours are what drive me to work even harder towards financial freedom. I've come a long way in the space of just 2 years buying a PPOR and an investment property but I know I've still got a long way to go on this journey.

Well done mate.

 

Thanks @Jack Chen you have sure achieved a lot over the past decade.

At 32 this is more the start of your journey - your most expensive years are ahead of you but you have got yourself well placed for them.

How will you pay your PPOR of in 3 months ? Is it just drawing out the equity from the IPs ?

It reads like you purchased it for $658K in 2010 but it is now worth $1.3M with $1.2M of debt against it.

I can see private school fees, single income and a PPOR upgrade keeping you in the workforce for quite a few more years.

 

I think this is key. Obviously a big part of Jack's incredible success is timing. He took advantage of a window when property was doing nothing in Sydney, and was therefore able to capitalise on those magic years of growth between 2012-2017. Imagine how different a heavily geared Sydney portfolio would have looked in 2012 if most of the purchasing was done around 2002. Not pretty!

I similarly started saving and investing at a very young age. Unfortunately my timing was all out. I bought a property in Sydney in 2002 at the peak of the boom and sold three years later. I then leveraged into shares just before the GFC hit in 2007. It kills me to think of all that time and money I lost. Plenty of lessons learned though and now at 35 I'm not doing too badly. Jack well and truly leaves me in the dust however!

 

Thanks for sharing! I really needed some inspiration right now and your achievements certainly are inspiring. Well done!!

 

@Jack Chen Congrats on your efforts to date!

How do you intend to proceed from here in terms of dumping more $ into ETF's (by extracting equity from your IPs)?

Are you finding that you've hit or are about to hit a serviceability wall and thus, unable to use that equity?