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I’ve mentioned before that I’ve barely done any investing by choice. I do have investments, but a lot of them aren’t things that I’ve had much (or any) choice in at all, so realistically I’m just now getting started with learning about investments. I know that I want to diversify quite a bit, but I am looking for income as well because I’d like to “retire” in 5 years.

By “retire” I meant that I’d like to be able to only work whenever I feel like it, doing whatever kind of fun thing I like (most likely one of my existing businesses, plus writing) and have a minimum amount of income coming in that I can count on while I’m doing it. So in order to do that I need at least $300,000 invested in things with guaranteed income of at least 4% and no loss of principal. I could live on $12,000 a year. That doesn’t take inflation into account, but the $300,000 is my starting point, and it also will not take into account retirement funds & other investments.

This is a snapshot of how my current investments stand right now (unfortunately they’ll be changing for the worse as soon as I pay my taxes, because the short-term money market amount will go down.) It’s pretty skewed, so I’d like to balance it out gradually and add additional types of investments.

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