I’m writing this from a cruise ship.
Pool to my left. Drink in my hand. Phone face-down on the lounger. The whole point of being here is to be as far from work as physically possible.
And while I was doing absolutely nothing, my accounts paid me over $400.
Dividends. Interest. A few crypto rewards. Money that showed up because I own things, not because I did anything this week.
I’ve been tracking this number for years. For most of them, it was a joke. $3 here. $11 there. The kind of “passive income” that wouldn’t cover a sandwich.
But somewhere in the last 18 months, the snowball turned into an avalanche.
I have a specific target: $3,000/month in passive income. That’s the number where my baseline life — rent, food, gym, the boring stuff — gets covered without me clocking in.
Not retirement. Not a yacht. Just the point where work becomes a choice instead of a requirement.
That’s what most people get wrong about FIRE. They picture it as quitting forever. I picture it as Tuesday morning, when I get to decide whether the meeting is worth my time.
Jim Rohn said it better than I can: wages earn you a living, but profit earns you a fortune.
The boring middle is where it’s built.
Here’s the part nobody on Instagram shows you.
For about seven years, building this avalanche looked like nothing. It looked like setting up auto-transfers and forgetting about them. It looked like buying VTI when the market was scary and buying VTI when it was boring. It looked like saying no to the upgraded apartment so the dividends could keep buying more dividends.
There’s no shortcut. The early years are entirely active — you working, you saving, you choosing the boring option. The “passive” part doesn’t show up until the snowball has rolled long enough to have its own momentum.
If you’re at the start, that’s not bad news. That’s the whole game. Show up, automate, ignore.
But don’t forget to live.
Here’s where I break with most of the FIRE crowd.
I’m on this cruise now — not in 20 years when I’ve “made it.” Because the whole point of building the avalanche is to actually enjoy your life, including the part before you cross the finish line.
If you’re grinding so hard that you forget to live, you’re not winning. You’re just deferring everything that makes a life worth living to a future version of yourself who may or may not show up.
Build the assets. Automate the system. Trust the math.
Then go get on the boat.
—Jake