The Million Road

My name is Natan, I come from Eastern Europe, and this is my journey to earning my first million. I believe that if I can do it - a person living in a post-communist country (and yes, it seems like my country is rapidly heading back there)—then anyone in a truly capitalist country can achieve it too.

Life is great unless you're poor.

I am a completely average person. I have no special skills, and my memory is below average. Despite this, I love common sense, especially when things make sense, and that is particularly true for numbers and finances.

I admit that I am very lazy. I often think about how to achieve more with less effort or how to delegate work to someone else. (Don’t worry, even here, I use AI, because my own writing style would be disastrous.)

It annoys me when business experts say, “When you’re young, there’s no such thing as work-life balance.” I disagree with that. At 32, I don’t want to spend 16 hours a day working. In fact, I’d prefer to avoid work as much as possible. I’d rather spend the day playing Lego with my son.

Since COVID, I’ve decided that it’s important to think about how to stop working and aim for financial independence as early as possible. That’s when I slowly started saving, and so far, I’ve managed to build up my portfolio.

I know that I’m just at the very beginning of this journey, which could take several years, but at least I won’t run out of topics to write about anytime soon.

Current portfolio breakdown:

• My investment portfolio includes ETFs and stocks, which I consider a solid foundation for wealth building (approximately $40,000).

• A small amount of Bitcoin (approximately $8,000).

• We are in the process of buying our first property, which represents a significant step toward building long-term assets ($11,000 from our own funds and a $180,000 mortgage).

• I run a very small gardening business (hard to quantify, as it has no employees and is practically unsellable, but it includes some assets).

• cash and cash box with coins (approximately $10,000).

Don’t worry; in the upcoming blog posts, I will break down exactly how I achieved all this in as much detail as possible.

Please sit back, buckle up and enjoy The Million Road.