How I Retired at 42 in Portugal on Index Funds and an Etsy Shop I Built in My Spare Time

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Today, I have a great guest post from Janeen Blake of Love. Eat. Travel. Repeat on how she retired from corporate life at 42 and moved with her family to Portugal. Here’s Janeen’s story.

I graduated from law school with $230,000 in student loan debt and a job that I needed to be grateful for, but despised. Yes, you read that right. $230,000! 16 years later, however, I was able to retire from corporate life at 42 and move my family abroad to Portugal.

You are probably wondering how I dug myself out of that hole, and into early retirement. It was not fast, it was not easy, but all of the slow, consistent steps that I took are something that anyone can do to reach financial freedom before the traditional retirement age.

And I want to walk you through exactly how I did it, the investing foundation that made early retirement possible, the multi-six-figure Etsy side hustle that accelerated the timeline, and the mindset that kept me from blowing it all when things got hard.

This is not a get rich quick story. But, if you are willing to play the long game, it can be repeatable.

The Life I Built Was Making Me Miserable

I graduated from law school in 2009, right in the middle of the financial crisis.

I had a job in Big Law waiting for me after graduation. At that time, I felt lucky that I had a job, and grateful that I was not among those lawyers whose job offers were rescinded, or were laid off within a year of starting.

I was grateful. And I was miserable.

Big Law looks like success from the outside. The salary, the prestige, the career path everyone said was worth the sacrifice. What it actually looked like from the inside was consistent 12 hour days where self care took a back seat to billing as many hours as possible to a client.

Imagine that pace of work but done inside a culture where mistreatment was tolerated as long as the person doing it was bringing in enough revenue for the firm. You learned quickly that your job was to absorb whatever came at you, keep everyone happy, and not make waves. Think The Devil Wears Prada, but with much uglier clothes.

After my first year, I knew I could not continue to work in this environment for 40 more years. And so, I did what I do best, I researched as much as I could and found a solution.

I dug into every book, tv show, and blog I could find at the time to figure out how I could escape the rat race and pay down my debt as fast as possible. My favorite book that I recommend to everyone is J.L. Collins’ The Simple Path to Wealth. If you only had time to read one book on building wealth, I would recommend that one.

Soon, I learned all about financial literacy, debt payoff, and investing. Then, I learned about a movement that tied it all together.

Finding Fire And Forging The Path

I found the F.I.R.E. movement, which stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early.

The concept is straightforward. Invest consistently in low-cost index funds that track the market. Build toward 25 times your annual expenses in an investment portfolio. That is considered your F.I.R.E. number.

At that number, the 4% rule says I could withdraw around 4% a year, adjusted for inflation, and have a high chance of making the money last over 30 years. Because I also have Etsy income, I can withdraw less than that, which means my money will last as long as I do!

The idea that I could eventually cut my own paycheck without relying on an employer blew my mind. Once I calculated my F.I.R.E. number, I had a specific goal to work toward. Everything else got better from there, including work.

After 6 long years at the law firm, I moved into an in-house counsel role, which gave me back something Big Law had taken: the mental space to think about what I actually wanted. My boss there was an incredible human and that job was a real gift. I was now both grateful and happy!

But even in that better chapter, I was still trading my time for someone else’s agenda, and I wanted freedom. I wanted F.I.R.E.

Here is everything I did over 16 years to achieve my F.I.R.E. number and how you can do it too.

Build An Emergency Fund First

For me, three to six months of expenses was not enough. I needed 12 months of living expenses in savings to sleep at night. I’m a risk-averse lawyer after all.

I kept it in a high-yield savings account which paid me monthly interest just for having the money sit there. That monthly interest now covers my kids’ 529 contributions. My bank effectively pays for my kids to go to college!

If your money is sitting in a regular checking account earning nothing, move it. Marcus by Goldman Sachs, Wealthfront, and Ally are great options. Put your emergency fund to work.

Pay Down Debt While You Invest

Some conventional financial advice says knock out debt first, then invest. I was not willing to wait. I needed my investments to start compounding as soon as possible.

I targeted my highest-interest debt first while still investing money into the market every month. Make sure you dig into the details of your debt.

Understanding how much of your monthly payment goes to pay down the principal versus the interest will motivate you to pay off your debt as soon as possible. It certainly motivated me. Let me be honest, first it made me angry, then it motivated me.

I realized that on some loans for example, if I paid the minimum monthly amount due, I would be paying back almost double the amount in interest than the actual loan! Cue the anger. I refused to let that happen. Cue the motivation.

So I made a plan. Every bonus, every extra dollar left over after payday was split between debt paydown and my investment portfolio.

Invest Consistently And Leave It Alone

I chose to invest in index funds. In simple terms, an index fund is a diversified basket of stocks that tracks a broad part of the market, like the S&P 500 or the total U.S. stock market. So instead of picking individual companies, you own a small piece of hundreds or even thousands of them at once.

You buy the whole market, you hold it, you add to it consistently, and you wait. The market will be volatile in the short term, but historically, investors who stayed the course over any 10-year period have not lost money.

This is where The Simple Path to Wealth comes into play. If you are nervous or intimidated by investing, this book breaks it down in simple terms.

Automate Your 401(k) Contributions And Take Advantage of Your Employer Match

Automating my 401(k) contributions and capturing every dollar of my employer match was one of the highest-return moves I made. I did not have to think about it. It happened automatically.

My 401(k) has now reached Coast F.I.R.E. That means even if I never contribute another dollar (which I won’t because I’m retired), it will grow to over $3 million by the time I can withdraw from it.

Compound interest at a conservative 7% annual return does the math for you. I used the Compound Interest Calculator on investor.gov website to run the numbers myself. I recommend using this calculator to get an estimate of what your investments will look like in the future.

It is eye opening to see how your money can grow over time in the market. Just seeing what is possible makes the investing process less intimidating.

Do Not Inflate Your Lifestyle As Your Income Grows

As my salary grew, I kept my cost of living relatively stable. I still traveled. I still enjoyed my life. But I tracked my spending, debt repayment, and investments with the Empower app.

I didn’t upgrade my lifestyle, and knowing my F.I.R.E. number made it easy to choose my ultimate freedom over a larger home or a luxury car.

None of these steps toward F.I.R.E. are complicated. The hard part is doing them consistently for long enough that the compounding kicks in. It always does. You just have to stay in it long enough to find out.

Start A Side Hustle

This is where Etsy comes in.

I could see the finish line on F.I.R.E. The portfolio was building. But I wanted to throw more money into the investment account and compress the timeline.

I again went back to what I do best, research. This time, I scoured YouTube for side hustle ideas and learned about print-on-demand and the idea was almost too good to be true.

You create the designs and place them on physical products digitally. A fulfillment company prints them on physical products and ships directly to the customer when they purchase from your shop. I use Printify as my print provider. It is absolutely free to use.

You sell your products on Etsy. You keep the margin and you have no labor required, no inventory and no post office runs!

It is the ultimate faceless side hustle. You don’t need to show your face or actively market your Etsy shop to get sales!

The best part about print on demand is that it is portable income. You can run your shop from anywhere. That portability was not just a nice feature. It became essential for me and my family as we wanted to live abroad someday.

A mass shooting close to home changed the timeline from “someday” to “as soon as possible.” I started my shop in October 2022 after my 40th birthday trip to Portugal, which is ultimately where we moved in 2024.

Every dollar of profit went straight into the investment account. My Etsy shop helped me achieve F.I.R.E. faster.

Etsy Print on Demand Tips for Early Growth

You don’t need to be a graphic designer to succeed. I certainly was not. There are easy user-friendly tools like Canva that make it so easy. And AI tools can help you enhance research, design, and mockups!

I made every beginner mistake before I figured out what actually worked. Here is what I wish I had known from the start.

1. Design for the search bar, not for yourself

For my first several months, I designed things I thought were cute. Nobody was searching for them.

This is the most common reason new Etsy sellers get no traction. The fix requires a real shift in thinking. No one wants to buy what you think is cute. Someone is on Etsy right now, typing something into the search bar. Something that they want. Your job is to figure out what that is, and list it.

2. Use an Etsy SEO tool before you design anything

I use eRank to find keywords with active search volume and low competition. Then I use eHunt to confirm those keywords have actual recent sales behind them, not just searches. The combination tells you there is both interest and a real buyer. You need both signals before you put time into a design.

3. Do not niche down before you have data

Conventional advice says to pick a niche immediately. When it comes to Etsy, I disagree.

When you are new, you do not know what your buyers respond to yet. And the great part about Etsy is that it is a search engine with built in traffic. You don’t need a strong niche or brand to gain traffic, you just need listings with the right keywords.

Spread your first 30 listings across a few related niches and let the data tell you where traction exists. After 60 to 90 days, look at what got views, favorites, and sales. Then use that data to focus on going deeper on those listings. That is your niche. It can find you!

4. Learn from the non-sales victories

Sales will ebb and flow. One mistake I made early on was letting the dashboard decide whether I was making progress. I had to learn that progress does not always look like a sale. Sometimes it looks like hitting 100 reviews and realizing people trust what you’ve built.

Sometimes it looks like listing two new products and seeing them get views and favorites the same day, even if they do not sell immediately. Sometimes it looks like a full month of 5-star reviews, or unlocking ChatGPT prompts that help you find stronger keywords.

Those little victories are evidence that your skills are stacking and you are making progress. I wish I had celebrated those wins along the way, because they were not small.

At the time, it felt like I was failing. But really, I was being forced to build the skills that later made the shop work. You either sell or you learn. And if you are willing to learn, the slow part is not wasted.

Case in point, I almost quit my second year, but then Q4 of 2024 hit. I made $21,000 in November and $28,000 in December, at a roughly 45% profit margin. None of that would have been possible without the slow months that came before it.

If You Want To Build A Side Hustle Like This

I teach my full Etsy print-on-demand system inside Freedom Unclocked, my community for people who want to build this kind of portable income.

It includes my Etsy strategy course covering everything from opening your shop to scaling it, bi-weekly live coaching calls, a private community called the Freedom Lounge, a Tutorial Library built from what members actually ask for, and a custom AI tool called Promptessa that generates bestselling prompts, designs, and mockups so you are never starting from a blank screen.

When you are ready, the door is open. Join Freedom Unclocked here.

What I Want You To Take From This

Compound interest and compound effort work on the same principle.

I put money into index funds at 25 with amounts that felt meaningless. I did not sell when the market dropped. I did not chase every new investing trend I read about. I stayed consistent and trusted the math. Over 15 years, that quiet consistency became the foundation of early retirement.

The Etsy shop works the same way. The sellers who quit almost always do so right before their data starts working for them. The shop that feels like it is going nowhere in month six is the same shop that can generate serious income by year two if you stay the course, keep learning, and double down on what is working.

Small consistent actions held long enough produce results that feel impossible when you are standing at the beginning.

For example, paying off $230,000 in student loans felt impossible when I first started. I did not wipe them out overnight. On September 15, 2023, I finally paid them off in full, just before the COVID-era federal student loan pause came to an end and interest accrual and monthly billing resumed.

The pause had been enacted under the CARES Act, and when it was ending, I knew I did not want those loans following me into the next chapter of my life.

I paid them down slowly, month after month, using the same consistency that later helped me build my Etsy shop and investment portfolio.

This is not fast. It is not a hack. The market will drop and you will want to sell. Your Etsy shop will have slow months and you will want to quit. Your goal is to do neither. Stay the course. Trust the math. Build the thing.

The Last Day

After 16 years of consistent investing and growing my Etsy shop, I reached F.I.R.E. and left my corporate role on October 3, 2025. The day was emotional. It sounds very cliché, but it did not feel like an ending, it felt like a beginning. Truly the start of a life of freedom. And I was ready for it!

My parents were there when I closed my work laptop for the last time. My family brought me flowers. We celebrated over dinner. It hit me later just how significant of an accomplishment this was.

I wake up now and think about what I feel like doing that day. Sometimes I work on my membership, or my Etsy shop. Some days my husband and I will do a wine crawl through Lisbon or take a food tour. That sense of freedom is the life I was buying, one index fund contribution and one Etsy sale at a time.

What would you do differently if you knew you could retire from your career years earlier than expected?

Author Bio: Janeen Blake is a former corporate lawyer, multi-six-figure Etsy seller, and founder of Love. Eat. Travel. Repeat. After using index fund investing and an Etsy side hustle to retire from corporate at 42, she moved with her family to Portugal. On her blog, Janeen writes about Etsy print-on-demand strategy and life in Portugal.

The post How I Retired at 42 in Portugal on Index Funds and an Etsy Shop I Built in My Spare Time appeared first on Making Sense Of Cents.

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