The Next Chapter – Figuring Out How to Make $3,000/month (Online)

We all need goals in life… Otherwise, what are we really doing with our time? From around 2012-2016, my main focus and pretty much sole reason for existence was to get to early FI… In February 2012, I launched this blog, and well, that was the start of so many things…

Back then, what used to fuel me was the incessant desire to obtain a better life… As the years wore on, you could easily say that just having more $$$ became increasingly less important to me because although I was earning a very nice payday from my corporate day job, I seldom had any free time (or energy) to enjoy…

For me and anyone else in the late stages of their own early FI journey, this becomes the inevitable conclusion:

Time > Money

Where I am today, I never really could envision getting to because my vision could just never peer that far off into the distance. No, for me back then, the journey to early FI reached a climatic conclusion as soon as I quit my job and hopped onto a plane to “happily ever after.”

LOL, hey, I never said I was a sophisticated and insightful being! In my mind, it was kind of always, “Let’s just get to early FI first, and then we’ll figure out the rest later…”

And that’s sort of what happened…

The First Years of Early FI

As readers may recall, towards the end of June 2016, I indeed did hop onto a plane and made my way to Hong Kong… for the first time in my life.

Yes, you could say that 2016-2017 were years spent “splurging”, “living it up”, and trying my best to indulge in wanderlust… which had built up over the course of many years.

As for this year?

Wow, talk about interrupting my blissful utopian dream and instead grinding everything to a screeching halt…

Cut!!!

Now we’re gonna introduce some vicious zombies to my story who are hell-bent on ruining my life and draining my… precious blood… and wallet… and soul… uggggghhhhhhh.

About -$3,000 in freekin water bills (due to a leak)…. and a buncha other stuff…

And that was only the beginning of the Shitcago nightmare!

Things got progressively worse and worse…

And not just for me, even a good buddy was going through hell at the same time…

Totally not cool, Shitcago! Trying to ruin our lives here!

A most despicable monster…

Anyway, long story short… Although it took awhile, with those blood/money/soul-sucking zombies now vanquished (hopefully FOREVER), it’s time to move on with my life, yet again…

But you can say that the original script needs to be altered now…

Don’t get me wrong, I still immensely enjoy traveling, sunshine, tropical beaches, and all that jazz… but the desire to just loaf around all day by the pool and do little else, well, after so many experiences, you could say that my once strong desire to live out my days doing nothing at all have fizzled a bit…

Don’t get me wrong, I still love all that good stuff, but like, I almost feel like I need to do something extra to “earn” another trip out to tropical paradise… You know, it was funny, when I was in Manila, all my Filipino friends kept recommending me visit Palawan, and they told me it was so drop dead gorgeous and that I would have the time of my life…

Yup, I’ve seen pictures of Palawan, and it does indeed look AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL!

Here’s a photo of El Nido, taken by my good friend Mets (Hi Mets!).

Hot Daaaayyymmmnnnn!

Drop dead gorgeous…

Right!?!

But I never made it out there… I resisted the urge to go and felt like it was almost “too much”, and I was undeserving…

Perhaps, someday… later… I’ll have earned a trip to visit.

For now, I gotta lock in again and figure out what I want to do next with my life!

And usually when I’m in doubt, I turn to my past (upbringing) and the crystal ball starts to become a little clearer…

Revisiting the Past for Guidance

As readers may know, my family is from Ho Chi Minh City, and I was lucky enough to visit for the first time in late 2016, arriving with my family.

Although I had heard plenty of stories of what life was like in that part of the world, yup, it’s one of those things where you almost kinda need to just see for yourself to really know what the deal is…

I’m not gonna sugarcoat things, it’s a damn tough life out in Vietnam for most common folks… I mean, I already knew that going in since my mom has told me countless stories of her own childhood growing up…

But no kidding, this type of life really is “the school of hard knocks”.

Many people don’t make much money, and they have to work extra hard just to put some measly food on the table…

Knowing everything that I know, and now having seen so many things with my own eyes, it just makes it incredibly tough for me to take things for granted… I mean, regardless of how much money I’ve been blessed to make in my life, I’m the kind of guy who can still ALWAYS sleep on the couch (or ground floor), on a moment’s notice, without fail… and I’ll do so without complaining about it.

Everything that I have today was only made possible thanks to the incredible sacrifices that my grandparents, parents, and relatives made…

They got me to where I am today… And I had something that none of them ever had — A real opportunity to create a better life for myself (and others).

No, I’m not trying to get all sob story on you or anything like that, but I don’t come from much, so I don’t need much to be happy in life…

Never did, never will…

See below…

I’m a “country boy” all the way through… In fact, that’s what a good friend in HK calls me… because I’m so simple and basic (bland). As you can see, it’s all smiles even though the house was drenched with water and I had a lot of mopping up to do…

Moreover, I was actually sleeping on a floor mattress in Hong Kong until the typhoon arrived, water seeped in, and soaked up the entire place!

Anyway…

Although I’ve wanted to focus on giving back and helping out others more with my free time, in many ways, my whole debacle with Shitcago really set my life back… a lot…

I mean, I lost pretty much 4-5 months this year just dealing with all that shit… and even now, I know people stuck in Shitcago hell, who are desperate to get out… so yeah, I’m like still trying to help out some peeps… however I can.

And not to mention the mental anguish of having to just deal with all that garbage for ~1 full year has left me exhausted… totally drained… to say the least.

But at some point, yup, I most definitely need to move on to bigger and better days.

My Plan

Ok, with all that said, now let’s get to the good stuff! I guess I don’t need to mince words since I’ve already rambled on enough by now…

I need a new goal and here it is:

Figure out a way to earn $3,000/month in online revenue (income).

Currently, I’m making enough dough from this blog to buy a few cans of beans per month, but not much more than that…

Should I be deeply ashamed?

Probably…

But no lie, it is what it is… I suck horribly at monetizing my work.

And that’s what makes this next journey of my life so darn exciting… I get to in a way hit the reset button and attempt something new!

I will most certainly stumble, fumble, and make a total ass of myself in the process, so, hopefully readers will be forgiving and entertained enough to stick around and see where the wind takes me.

Nope, can’t say I have a plan in place or absolutely any clue how I will make that dream a reality…

But we have to start somewhere, right?!?

And by just putting it all out there, that’s my start!

What’s with the $3,000/month figure?

No rhyme or reason, really… It seems rather ambitious for a money-making newb like myself, but I might as well aim high! I mean, why the f not?

Right now, I’m hatching up some ideas on how to monetize my work…

What will I do with that income?

Here’s what I’m getting at — Since I blew myself up in South Shitcago (MASSIVELY), in many ways I feel totally robbed, jaded, pissed off, and bitter… So, no question, I want my lost $200,000 back! That’s my money and I feel like it was unjustly taken away from me…

But I also really want to help people out, especially the less fortunate…

So, I’m thinking this — Use the earned income each month to invest in dividend stocks. Yup, you read that right… It’s about time I got into some more safe/secure/stable long-term investments that should hopefully outlive me…

Each month, I will add to the total, and who knows, someday really far down the line, if everything goes well, I will have amassed a portfolio valued at $200,000.

So cool, I’m putting together a plan to help me recoup my lost capital… I dig it.

However, the caveat would be this — Each dividend distribution would pay out let’s say between 3-5% yield… Instead of re-investing those funds to acquire more dividend stocks, I would instead like to use that money to help me perform charity work. I dig that more.

No, I’m not obsessed with accumulating more money just for the mere sake of having mo money… I actually want to do something with that money… Ideally, I’ll be able to make a positive impact on the lives of others.

At this stage, it’s too early for me to know what type of charity work, exaclty… but I want to give it back to the less fortunate… It could be here in America, but most likely in Southeast Asia somewhere… at least to start with.

On a long enough time scale, eventually, the master plan is to not only be able to use the dividends each month to help me perform charity work, but to give away the entire principal as well…

And on an even longer timeframe than that, I would like to one day give away all my other assets as well…

Basically, having $$$ is cool, but I know full well you can’t take that shit with you when you’re gone, anyway… so what’s really the fucking point of hoarding?

I want to make a positive difference in this world, NOT go out clutching a buncha Benjamins in my hands…

Could my plans alter course and change entirely?

Of course!

That’s what makes life a journey, after all…

And I want to share that next journey (the good, bad, ugly) with all my readers… Definitely, any advice/feedback/tips/etc. are welcome and encouraged.

Honestly, I don’t know how I will achieve my goals… but writing about them is a start. And you have to start somewhere if you want to get anywhere in life.

Further, my friend is teaching me to NOT be so fearful of the unknown (I really should just wallpaper the following message so that I look at it all the time)…

Attack your life with passion, and let the chips fall wherever they may…

Stay tuned… Much more details, thoughts to come.

Thanks for reading!

Fight On!