Hi, I’m Dean. I built a cottage (ADU) in my backyard to accelerate my journey to financial independence, and this blog documents the process and shares my learnings with the world.

I’ve been planning my path to financial independence for more than 15 years, and building an income producing ADU has been a cornerstone of this dream. The only problem was, that I’d never built anything before, let alone an entire detached ADU - I didn’t know where to start.

Luckily, My dad’s a general contractor who’s built dozens of residential homes and a handful of ADUs over 40 years, including an ADU in the back yard of the house I grew up in. In fact, it was my dad who first planted the seed for this project when he told me that building a cottage was the single best finical vehicle for growing my wealth, and then proceeded to lay out every reason why. I listened intently and thought to myself, “Why don’t more people know this stuff?”

When my dad offered to help me build my own ADU, I knew it was too good of an offer to refuse. I am so fortunate that he helped and guided me every step of the way.

This website shares a detailed account of the process I went through - starting from finding the right property all the way through completing the ADU and finding tenants. I started this journey with no idea where to start or what to do, but I was lucky enough to have my dad as my teacher. I’m still learning every day, but people are turning to me to ask how they can get started.

I believe everyone should have access to the knowledge I had, and this blog is my attempt to do that. There are plenty of construction and money/FIRE blogs, but nothing I’ve found that explicitly combines them. If nothing else, this is great documentation for myself.