Dear DTA,
I’m looking to travel around while making money.
-Sam S.
Hi, Sam.
Appreciate you writing in. And your readership is also much appreciated.
You have a very straightforward, but equally exciting, idea in mind for yourself.
I’d like to think I’m the perfect guy to write back to you today and provide a few high-value ideas and resources.
Why?
Well, I’m essentially already doing what you’re interested in doing.
I live abroad, able to travel freely, all while making enough income (much of which is totally passive) to fully support my lifestyle without being tethered to either a job or a physical location.
And there are some important concepts to learn about if you’re looking for the same kind of lifestyle.
First, there’s an important foundation to keep in mind.
This is the base upon which the whole lifestyle is built upon.
It’s all underpinned by financial independence.
Let me explain something very quickly…
If you’re financially independent, you’re also location independent.
Once you set yourself up with an income source that will follow you around everywhere, you can go anywhere you like.
And I can’t think of such an income source better than growing dividend income.
Just imagine getting paid to wake up. You earn money just to exist.
You don’t have to call anyone, fill out paperwork, or show up to work.
Wake up, get paid.
That’s the dream, right?
I can tell you for sure, it was my dream.
Perhaps an audacious dream, considering I was a broke, unemployed, college dropout a few years back.
But once I was determined to turn my life around, it then became all about persistence, patience, and perseverance. It became about execution. Willpower. A can-do attitude through thick and thin.
You just have to have a plan, then execute.
For the plan, check out my Early Retirement Blueprint.
In it, I shared all of the details on how to go about achieving financial independence and early retirement.
You’ll read about how I went about building my FIRE Fund, which is my real-life, real-money, six-figure stock portfolio that allowed me to become financially independent and retire early.
The Fund generates the five-figure and growing passive dividend income I need to cover my basic expenses in life (housing, food, transportation, etc.).
I built all of that on a very middle-class income, so it’s not like this is anything crazy I’m talking about here.
But the journey to FIRE involved living below my means, for sure.
Once you build the habits to save money, you have to intelligently invest that capital.
If you want to be able to travel and make money, it behooves you to strongly think about creating a durable, reliable, and growing source of totally passive income.
And that’s where dividends come in. More specifically, growing dividends.
Passive income is great, but growing passive income is far better.
You have to protect yourself against inflation. And you also want to give yourself additional flexibility and opportunities down the road.
Well, this is why the investment strategy of dividend growth investing is so fantastic for what you’re looking to accomplish.
It’s exactly what I’ve taken advantage of to become financially independent, retire in my 30s, and become a global citizen who’s free to live and/or travel pretty much anywhere.
This investment strategy simply involves being a long-term, intelligent, and prudent investor who focuses on high-quality companies that send their shareholders reliable and growing cash dividend payments – payments that are funded by the growing profit these high-quality companies produce.
Fellow contributor Dave Van Knapp laid out the A-Z of this strategy via his Dividend Growth Investing Lessons, which takes a high-level look at what the strategy is, how it works, and how to successfully implement it.
Once you’re familiar with what it is, you’ll have to get busy saving and investing.
Fortunately, you’ll never be short on ideas.
The Dividend Champions, Contenders, and Challengers list is a compilation of almost 900 US-listed stocks that have raised their dividends each year for at least the last five consecutive years.
You’ll notice, after perusing the list a bit, many blue-chip stocks on that list. These are household names.
That shouldn’t be a surprise.
In order to fund growing cash payments to shareholders, you need to produce the growing profit necessary to sustain those payments.
And in order to produce growing profit, you need to be selling products and/or services the world demands. Not only that, you need to be selling more products and/or services over time, all at higher prices.
Of course, an intelligent investor will analyze any potential company for investment by looking over fundamentals, competitive advantages, and risks.
They’ll also take time to value a stock before buying it, for separating price and value is imperative to long-term investment success.
This is why I personally helm a longstanding series that takes time every Sunday to highlight what appears to be an undervalued high-quality dividend growth stock.
These are compelling long-term ideas for the investment community, provided free of charge.
These articles, published every Sunday, make up the Undervalued Dividend Growth Stock of the Week series.
I hope some of these resources and concepts helped you today, Sam.
They’re coming from a guy who had the same dream as you, and executed his way toward achieving that dream.
But don’t let today pass you by. Today will quickly be tomorrow. And tomorrow will soon be a memory.
Take advantage of every opportunity and start working your way toward your dream.
I wish you luck and success.
Jason Fieber
Dividend Expert Reveals His Biggest Income Secrets... Free of Charge [sponsor]Marc Lichtenfeld - Author of the best-selling book Get Rich With Dividends – is giving away his Ultimate Dividend Package... Free of charge! Click Here to Get His #1 Dividend Stock... The Safest 8% Dividend in the World... Top Three "Extreme Dividend" Stocks, And Much, Much More.
Disclaimer: Jason Fieber is not a licensed financial advisor, tax professional, or stock broker. Please consult with a licensed investment professional before investing any of your money. If your money is not FDIC insured, it may decline in value. To protect the privacy of our readers, any names published in this article are under aliases. In addition, text may be edited, omitted or paraphrased for grammar or length.