My Investing Strategy and Full Financial Picture

It’s been a minute since I went over my personal investment approach in full, so let’s revisit that. My very first article on this site noted that I could become a millionaire at 60 years old. Five years later, and that number is, uh, a little different! Here, I’ll reveal my investment strategy and full financial picture to help understand how all of my previously-written guidelines got me to where I am right now.

Basic Information

My name is Darcy! At the time of this writing, I am 31 years old and living in Los Angeles (near the Hollywood Walk of Fame!) I grew up in rural Illinois until 2012, when I moved to Boston for college. I also studied abroad in Madrid for four months, my first time out of the country. After graduating, I stayed in the Boston area after that until late 2023, when I moved to LA for a lifestyle adjustment. I love reading and writing, which you may have figured out by seeing 5+ years of articles on this site 😉

Today, I work as a marketing manager for a healthtech company, where I first began making six-figure compensation in 2021. I first learned about the FIRE movement after graduating college in 2016, and I’ve been working towards financial independence ever since.

My Financial Goals

In my early 20s, my plans were intentionally vague to keep ‘em flexible for my future self. Back then, the goal was to sock away enough money to pursue work in the film and TV industries without worrying about survival jobs. The more money I stacked, the more appealing it was to start in entertainment once I had some hefty wealth behind me. That leads us to today, where my financial goals and other information are outlined in the sections below.

With the benefit of financial data, specifying my life goals, and informed research and monetary analysis, I have nailed down what I want my money to do for me.

What’s the Point of All This Money?

My investments will be used to fund my living expenses. My current cost of living (COL) in my high COL area is $42k. I got this number from tallying my total spending for all of last year. More than half of this spend goes to rent (roughly $2,000 a month for a one bedroom apartment). Moving somewhere with cheaper rent would dramatically lower my COL. Thanks, geographic arbitrage!

I plan to withdraw a small amount from my investment portfolio every year in order to fund my lifestyle. I am happy to live in areas that have a lower COL. I’m also excited at the thought of slow travel, where I live in different places for a few months outside of peak tourist season. Thanks to having EU citizenship, I can potentially supplement my investment withdrawals with earned wages if I need a backup plan. Unless I need to exercise that, I’ll stick with Plan A of not needing to work for pay again.

Current Numbers

My net worth at this time is $650k. This is more than 20x the amount of yearly pay I began earning at 22 years old. Thanks to the safe withdrawal rate guidance (also known as the 4% rule) I can safely withdraw $26,000 a year from that amount.

I’m expecting to end the year with over $120,000 in total work compensation, including a 5% match on my 401(k) contributions (maxed out to the limit).

My FI Number

Now the good stuff: how much money I should have to declare myself Financially Independent!!! I tend to needlessly complicate things, so I actually have three FI numbers. At this point, given the general state of the world, I’m going to pin the following goals:

• Minimum FI number: $700k
• Sweet spot FI number: $723k
• Genuine FI number: $800k

$800k is the largest FIRE number because that gives me a safe spend of $2,500 per month at 3.8% or $30k yearly (actually $790k, but we like round numbers). I am currently 81% of the way to that number, which is going to be VERY safe to withdraw $30k from.

According to Bill Bengen, who led the premier study about safe withdrawal rates, taking out 4.15% is also very safe. Using that percentage gets me to $723k; I am 90% of the way to that one. As for $700k? I’d like to keep my options open; if I can walk away from working forever with a 4.28% withdrawal rate, I’m gonna at least try it out.

Can I Retire Yet?

Yes, as long as I keep my spending lower than I’d like to. I am at leanFI now, which means I can cover my absolute minimums with my investment portfolio already. This means I can realistically stop working at any time as long as I move somewhere cheap. While I would delay reaching this if I started drawing down from my portfolio now, I should still reach it eventually. The best retirement investments are ones that grow faster than your withdrawals.

My Spending

I keep track of my yearly spending, and have detailed writeups of each year since 2021. Last year, I spent about $42k total while living in Los Angeles, CA; since 2021, I have seen my spend hover between $40k and $45k while living in cities known for their high costs of living (LA and Boston). Were I to keep my spending at these amounts, my FI number would be $1.1 million instead of $800k.

That said, my $800k number is very much doable as long as I stick to areas with a lower cost of living. This includes several destinations not only in the United States, but all over the world – including several vacation destinations. I plan for my expenses to lower once I’m in places with a more reasonable cost of living.

What I Invest In

Almost all of my money is invested in index funds. They’re an easy peasy investment choice because the value will never go to zero. Best reason: investing in it automatically means I’ll get a better return than 80% of investment managers who do this for a living. There’s a lot of analysis on index funds I’ve read about and can talk more in-depth about, but this is the gist of it.

How do I have money left to invest in the first place

I’m able to have so much disposable income after scoring a high-paying job. Through optimizing my LinkedIn profile and connecting with good recruiters, I snagged a wonderful role at a company doing good in the world. This saved me from toiling in applicant portal hell. I work in a niche of marketing that pays highly given my skillset (marketing analytics, campaign development, and knowing HTML, which is not hard to learn). Last year, my compensation was a little over $120k before taxes.

How I Invest

First, I choose what accounts I use as my investment vehicles. 401(k), IRA, taxable accounts are my main ones I actively contribute to. Then, I decide how much of my cash I will use for investments and how much I will keep in cash for ongoing expenses and/or any unexpected emergency.

Tools in My Toolbox

I’ve got a lot going for me; quite a bit of my tools were ones I had to go out of my way to acquire, but others came my way due to luck and privilege.

• Financial acumen. Took me a long time to learn this stuff, but I got there thanks to finding accurate and helpful resources.
• My health! Although I have a serious diagnosis, I continue to enjoy a level of high functioning. This is really important with the state of American healthcare.
• American citizenship, which means big salary potential compared to the rest of the world
• Irish citizenship – in other words, the right to live anywhere in the EU (including low COL areas) with subsidized health care. There is more ease of travel with an Irish passport as well (Europe is the best example due to the EU Charter, but for other places too – as of the time of this writing, Irish citizens can travel visa-free to China for up to 30 days (!!) unlike American plebs who need to apply for a visa).
• Diversified job skills that will net me a good salary in developed countries without requiring hard physical labor or hard excessive time
• General understanding of how life in the 21st century works
• Critical thinking, to optimize how life in the 21st century works
• Friends who are smarter than me in areas I struggle with, who steer me in better directions with a smile. They make up my community and make my life a good one by spending time with me.
• Political rights. I am a bisexual woman with majority Irish ancestry. Historically speaking, any one of these characteristics would have stopped me from being hired for a good job, invest in the stock market, or have laws to help me should I be targeted for any of the above. I just so happened to become an adult in a time and nation that grants me the chance to live peacefully and independently.
• Literacy; learning to read is the greatest skill I have ever learned as it is what made the best parts of my life possible.
• Libraries. No, I am not kidding. I’m actually typing this right now from my local library because of how fantastic they are.

How I Currently Leverage This

This is a section because your money is a tool and should be useful at every stage of life, not just your retirement. Previously, I have used my strong financial position to:

• Rent a two-bed apartment in Boston
• Purchase a car with no car loan
• Travel to Europe for a month
• Travel to Europe for a month for a second time
• Shift to 100% remote work instead of commuting into the city
• Move across the country to Los Angeles
• Maintain my job that pays great, offers an excellent work-life balance, and makes me feel good about what I do
• Donate not-insignificant amounts of money to charities doing great work (shoutout First Nations Development Institute and my local libraries!)
• Getting a handle on a serious health issue to get to an unusually high level of function living with it

Before the end of the year, there are three more bullet points I will add to that list:

• Make a short film that is shown in film festivals
• Start a scholarship fund in my hometown, and
• Go on a weeklong cruise for the first time to Mexico

Current holdings as of Q3 2025:

• Index funds: 92%
• Cash: 3.3%
• Bonds: 1.7%
• Crypto: 3% (usually it’s 1.5% but there’s a current surge in the market)

I’d like my cash holdings to be at least 5% of my overall net worth. I’ve never actually had more than $20k in cash before, and I’ve never had $10k in cash before last year. Now that my investments are large enough to accelerate mightily on their own, I feel better about keeping more money in my regular savings account instead. I’d like to begin using those cash reserves for the day in the future when I quit my job to go live on the road for a while. That just might be sooner than I originally thought, but I’m happy with however life shakes out to be either way.

Anything I missed above or that I should devote more attention to? Let me know what else you’d like me to be transparent about!

Cover image credit: Resume Genius via Unsplash