It was a hot summer’s day in 2016 when Firecracker and Wanderer splashed across my monitor. A CBC story about two 30-something early-retirees from Toronto with a million-dollar portfolio of index funds. Instead of funneling their life savings into Canada’s inflated housing bubble, they had launched it into the stock market, read every investing book they could get their hands on, and resigned from their soul-crushing engineering jobs when their portfolio crossed the one-million-dollar mark. What followed was a year of ‘geo-arbitrage’, slow travel to affordable places while their portfolio grew and collected dividends. With two backpacks and a laptop they wandered sunny beaches in Thailand, drank $1 beers in Cambodia, rode ATVs in Santorini in the off season. All for 40k/year, or 4% of their portfolio. Meanwhile their portfolio grew, outpacing their annual expenses and inflation.

The comments under the CBC story were harsh. Everyone wanted them to fail. They can’t travel forever. Should have bought a house instead. But Firecracker and Wanderer would not be silenced. They wanted to spread the message that what may have worked for the boomers – affordable home prices, corner offices, company pensions – was no longer available to younger generations. Millennials would need to forge an alternative path. One option? Build lasting wealth overtime through the stock market.  

“We need to talk about what we did,” they decided. “And if we get haters, we get haters. This is bigger than us.”

So with grit, sarcasm and pages of colourful pie charts, they launched their blog Millennial Revolution to great fanfare. Thousands of readers joined their Investment Workshop and built portfolios of their own. Firecracker and Wanderer (or Kristy and Bryce as they are known on their passports) went on to publish two books, one of which, Quit like a Millionaire, has sold over 150k copies.

But what makes Millennial Revolution so special is the fact that, from the start, Kristy and Bryce have always shared the juicy details of their finances with their readers. Each year they divulge:

  1. Which funds they are currently invested in
  2. How much their portfolio has gone up or down in value

As an early fan of Millennial Revolution, being able to compare my own portfolio alongside Kristy and Bryce’s has been key to my own investing success and has definitely helped me stay the course – even when markets are down. I can still remember how much their portfolio grew back in 2021 when the Covid bull market was raging harder than a drunken millennial at a co-worker’s wedding. Their million-dollar portfolio had just crossed over to $1,435,000, a gain of 435k in just five years. Those were sky-high returns! The following year, after the 2022 bear market had sent fortunes plummeting, their portfolio dropped down to $1,277,787, a sobering loss of 157k. And yet Kristy and Bryce never lost faith in the incredible wealth-building power of the stock market. They stayed invested and encouraged readers to do the same. Sure enough, their portfolio eventually rebounded in 2023 with the dawn of a new bull market. Today, 11 years after retiring with one million dollars, even after withdrawing 3-4% per year to pay for living expenses, their portfolio is worth well over two million dollars.*

As I sit here writing on this dreary day in late October there is a bit of a sell-off happening in the stock market. Poor quarterly earnings by Google and Amazon have caused investors to question AI’s profitability. The US/Iran war is now in its eighth month. Mid-terms are next week. There doesn’t seem to be an end to the US/Canada trade war. My own portfolio is hemorrhaging by the hour. There’s a lot for investors to fear. But we’ve here before. In fact, readers of Millennial Revolution have been through much worse.  

That’s why for me, seeing examples of real DIY index investors like Kristy and Bryce has been critical to my own long-term investing success. Anytime my portfolio drops sharply like it’s doing right now, I simply log onto Millennial Revolution to see how they are doing. And sure enough, they are staying invested, sharing their current net worth, not batting an eye if their portfolio is temporarily down. They are living below their means and enjoying their lives to the fullest. These days they are busy taking their sweet little son to the park and breathing in the fresh Vancouver air. If they’re not worried, then neither am I.

I can’t wait to see what Firecracker and Wanderer’s net worth is at the end of the year. Whatever it is, I’ll be tracking my own portfolio alongside theirs, and feeling confident in the future.

Check out Millennial Revolution as well as their books, Quit Like a Millionaire and Parent Like a Millionaire (Without Being One).

*Because Kristy and Bryce’s blog and books have been so successful, they have continued to make money through these income streams after retirement. But in order to stay true to their original FIRE experiment of living off of 3-4% of their portfolio, they have set up a second portfolio (Portfolio B) where they have invested the income from their writing. That portfolio is about 850k nowadays, while their original million dollar portfolio (Portfolio A) is around $2,050,000, making their total net worth a whopping 2.9 million CAD.