In earlier commentaries, we've shown just how easy it is to make a million bucks. Provided you've got the discipline to sock away the savings -- and the time to let compound interest work its magic -- you, too, can be a millionaire. Indeed, $500 plunked down monthly in a mere index tracker -- such as the dirt cheap SPDRs (SPY) exchange-traded fund -- will grow to a million bucks in just less than 28 years, if the market delivers its historical return of 10.5%.

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But what if you want to shoot higher and amass, say, $2 million? Is that just a matter of time and gumption, too?

Not exactly. The bigger the goal, the more critical it is to get your plan right and spring into action posthaste. If you have the stomach for volatility and the wherewithal to put financial independence on the front burner, you can reach your lofty goals. Here's how.

Go growth
Value investing has been all the rage for so long now that it's hard to blame investors -- particularly newbies -- who have come to believe that it's destined to be that way forever. However, growth and value are relative terms, and these days, it's possible to snap up shares of stocks with double-digit earnings growth forecasts on the relative cheap. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM), for example, fit that profile, as do Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX): All clock in with stock prices more than 25% below their 52-week high-water marks.

Add eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY), Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), and Southwestern Energy (NYSE: SWN) to that list and then add up these numbers: Taken together for the 10 years that ended with August, these three stocks have delivered an annualized average return of 32.5%. Pick winners like that, and at a comparable rate of return, your journey to Two Millionaire Acres would take roughly 15 years on the $500-a-month plan. Talk about making good time.

Copyright © 2008 Universal Press Syndicate.