Thursday, July 28, 2016

LATEST ADDITION TO MY EGYPTIAN COLLECTION

I'm a big fan of flea markets and thrift stores.  Today I had an enjoyable afternoon at the Midway Flea Market west of Columbia, Mo.  Found another dinner plate for my set of Corelle Impressions dinnerware, a great Starbucks coffee mug with the mermaid logo laser cut on the side and an Anubis statue for my Egyptian collection.  I was just thinking a few days ago that I only had a very tiny Anubis in my collection and I should find a better one.  Low and behold, here it is!


Went flea marketing with a friend and had dinner at Cici's Pizza on the way home.  Was very pleased with my finds, but I'm most happy to have had such a great time and I only spent $30 including dinner.
  

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

ADDED NEW STREAM OF INCOME WITH PURCHASE OF IGD

Today's purchase of IGD shares will add an additional 12 dividend payments per year to my Roth IRA account.  This brings the total number of "dividend paydays" up to 276 per year, or a dividend every 1.322 days!  It would be simple to get from here to 365 dividends per year, meaning a "dividend payday" every day of the year.  I've decided to make this the main goal of my investment plan for 2017.  

Although I've made my first share purchases for my new 401 k account, I won't have any details on the number of dividends or income amounts these two funds will add to my overall investments until I receive my first statement.  I'm pretty excited about this account though, since deposit witholdings from my paycheck have had no significant impact on my net income.  Since contributions are taken out on a before tax basis, I'm basically building this account with money I would not otherwise have access to.

If I were to count payments from interest bearing accounts and paydays from work, I am already close to getting paid every day of the year.  However, my goal is to collect a dividend payment for every day, with any earned income or interest income being icing on the cake.  Yesterday's drop in the stock market has me thinking I may have been correct to withold dividend reinvestment at recent lofty prices.  I'm anxious to see how much stock prices will drop and am looking forward to picking up some bargains should it occur.  If there is a substantial pullback in stock prices, I will definitely go back to reinvesting all dividends.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

INCREASING MONTHLY DIVIDEND INCOME OVER 2% WITH PURCHASE OF IGD!

Just placed an order to purchase a stake in IGD a monthly dividend paying fund with a current yield of 12.92%.  This purchase will increase monthly income from dividends by over 2%, not to mention I'll get back a portion of the fees charged by the fund since shares of Voya are owned by one of my other funds.  Voya Global Equity Dividend and Premium Opportunity Fund (IGD:NYSE) will add an extra stream of income to my Roth account in addition to increasing overall monthly cash flow.  My next purchase for my Roth account will be additional shares of SPHD.  I started my account off with some high yield monthly and quarterly dividend funds and am eager to add the more stable SPHD for additional monthly income as well as long term growth prospects.

The only other new purchase I have planned for this year is Wells Fargo's EAD fund for my IRA account.  Any other purchases will be directed toward increasing current holdings.  Like I mentioned in my last post, I'm expecting a market correction sometime in the near future and am concentrating on building cash to take advantage of opportunities should this occur.  However, this does not mean I plan on hoarding cash.  I've had such a great year of increases in monthly cash flow, I want to keep the momentum going.  So to accomplish this, I will be adding additional cash purchases to my investments for the rest of 2016.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY VISITORS FROM BRAZIL!

Just wanted to say Thank You to my many recent visitors from Brazil, the one country I'd most like to visit outside of the U.S..  I'm looking forward to the upcoming Brazil Olympic Games!

BUILDING CASH IN PREPARATION FOR STOCK MARKET CORRECTION

The stock market has been on a roll lately and sometimes when this happens, it's easy to forget that this will not always be the case.  Eventually we'll be faced with another correction.  When will it happen and how severe will it be?  I have no way of knowing, but in my experience, it's sure to happen.  Given that the bull market is already a bit long in the tooth, I'm thinking it will be sooner than later.  I read an interesting article today which pointed out that historically, there was a slump in the market for the first year or two after every U.S. presidential election.  This was regardless of which party won the presidency.  So while I'm a big believer in re-investing dividends, with the prices being so high right now and a possible correction looming in the not to distant future, I believe it would be prudent to put build up the cash portion of my portfolio.  This will allow me to take advantage of bargain prices when the stock market drops.  While I won't earn a significant amount of interest on the cash, I will earn some and it will help insulate my investments from a correction.

While I had already diverted dividends to cash because of the run up in stock prices, I'd planned on doing this only on a short term basis.  Now I might be looking at several months, or even a year or more.  I'll miss out on some compounding from reinvesting the dividends, but I think I'll more than make up for it by getting better prices on the future stock purchases.  This does not mean that I won't be buying any stocks at all.  I've got my 401k kicking in at work and I'll be making purchases for my IRA and my Roth accounts.  Cash investments will keep dividend income growing and dividend payouts will build up the cash portion of my portfolio.  Of course I guess I could just save the cash and keep reinvesting dividends, but I think I'll stick with what I've already set up.  Time will tell whether this was a wise choice or not.

Monday, July 18, 2016

WHEN PROFITS ARE SLIPPING AND EXECUTIVES WANT RAISES, SELL!

If you're invested in a company who's profits are dwindling, maybe they've cut the dividend and the company executives are giving themselves raises, it's time to SELL, SELL, SELL!  While slipping profits are enough to consider selling, it may just be a temporary setback, so you'd want to check it out and see what's causing the problem and decide whether you think they might make a comeback.  However, if profits fall and/or you've seen a cut in dividends and the company wants you to vote on executive compensation, better to just cut you're losses and get out of the investment, because they obviously don't have investors best interests at heart.  If they did, they would not be asking for a raise when they're doing a poor job of running the company.

While this might seem obvious, I've seen executive compensation plans approved time and again while companies are under performing.  To be honest, it makes me very angry as a shareholder that they would even ask for a raise when they're losing money for shareholders.  It's downright insulting when they do so after cutting dividend payouts.  I don't waste my time with it anymore, I show my disapproval by selling my shares and putting the money to work elsewhere.

Friday, July 15, 2016

EXTRA CASH FOR INVESTING FROM COUPONING!

I haven't written about couponing in quite some time, which doesn't mean that I'm no longer using coupons.  On the contrary, I'm a firm believer in saving money on daily purchases to free up cash for saving and investing.  Just got back from my weekly grocery shopping, where I saved over 31% on my groceries with my customer loyalty card and digital coupons.  I don't get the big savings like the extreme couponers, but I routinely save anywhere from 25 to 40% or more by matching up coupons with sale items that I would normally buy anyway.  I do not buy items simply because there is a coupon or sale, but if it's something I buy on a regular basis, then it just makes sense to get the best price.  With the little effort I put in, I manage to keep my grocery budget for one person to $20 or less per week.  

On this trip alone, I saved a total of $7.86.  Sometimes I save more, sometimes less, but assuming an average of $7 per week, that adds up to $364 per year!  That's not a tremendous amount, but I'm only a single person household.  A family of 4 could easily save $1,456 a year or more!  No matter what I save, every little bit helps toward reducing debt and building my investments.  I rarely ever clip paper coupons anymore.  I'm saving this amount using digital coupons from my grocery store's website.  So if you're one of those people who think coupons aren't worth messing with, maybe you should give them a second look.  

DIVERTING ALL DIVIDEND PAYMENTS TO CASH

I like seeing the number of shares I own go up every month, but I also like to purchase those shares at a good price.  While I'm happy to see the increase in value of my portfolio with the recent run up in stock prices, I also know from years of experience that it's not likely to last.  So while I was posting today's dividend payments from JMP and MAIN, it occurred to me, by reinvesting dividends at such lofty prices, I was also raising my average price paid per share.  It also meant that I was lowering my average yield in dividend income.  So I decided to divert all dividend payments to cash for the time being.  I'll earn a small amount of interest while the money is parked in cash and I can decide where to invest the money at a later date.  I may miss out on some small gains temporarily, but I think in the long run, holding on to cash and investing it when prices have dropped to a more reasonable amount, will pay off by keeping costs down and yields high.  I may be entirely wrong here, it's not like I haven't made mistakes before, but it just makes sense to me.

I've also been giving some thought to my investment goals for the upcoming year.  With my total number of dividend payments per year being 264, I'm giving serious thought to adding additional investments to bring my payments up to 365, so I'd collect a dividend payment for every day of the year.  While quite ambitious, I think this goal is entirely doable.  Purchasing a stake in 9 monthly dividend payers would do the trick, increasing total payments by 108 per year.  I've already made more than 9 stock purchases this year, so it should be a simple matter to make the first 9 purchases next year monthly dividend payers, bringing my total number of payments per year to 372.  I probably wouldn't even need all 9 stocks, since I'll have some dividend payments kicking in from my 401k and I do plan on making a couple of purchases this year, so I think I'll go for it.  Just think what it would be like to get paid every day of the year!  Not to mention how much faster your money compounds with the increased number of payments!

Made my first transfer of dividend cash from my taxable account to my ROTH IRA today!  It was not a large amount, but I'm still excited to know that I've begun the process of converting taxable income to non-taxable income producing assets!  When I retire, my plan is to draw income from the taxable account and the non-taxable ROTH account first and let the 401k and the regular IRA continue to build on their own until I'm forced to make withdrawals at age 70 1/2.   

Monday, July 11, 2016

MAKING PROGRESS ON DEBT REDUCTION!

You've heard the expression, "Where there's a will, there's a way."  I wrote in a post a while back about my plan to attack my remaining debt, since eliminating debt would free up a tremendous amount of cash to go towards investing.  To realize how impossible this task seemed in my case you'd have to understand that my earned income is barely larger than my expenses each month.  Yet what seemed nearly impossible has proven to be quite possible and I'm happy to report, for the month of July, I was able to reduce my total remaining debt by 1.5%!  While that might not seem like much, it's way better than watching it go up or remain the same every month.  It has also motivated me to seek out more creative ways to show an even larger reduction in the month of August.  

I'm thinking about some side gigs to my regular job, not a second job mind you, but other means of earning extra cash to put directly towards debt reduction.  I could always do some buying and selling on Craigslist or ebay, which I've done before.  My work schedule won't allow for a flea market booth like I ran a couple of summers back, but a yard sale is not out of the question.  Maybe do some window cleaning or carpet cleaning jobs on the side.  I could always divert dividend income from my taxable account towards paying off debt, but I really want to keep my investment accounts growing, so that's not a likely option.  I'm getting my cash reserves in savings and checking built up, so it might be possible in the near future to make a lump sum payment from these accounts.  Just want to make sure I have sufficient reserves in case of emergencies.  

The best thing about the progress I've made on reducing my debt in June and July is the biggest reductions are in my higher interest accounts.  Right now I'm only using my lowest interest credit card and I'm being as stingy as possible with that.  If my finances continue to improve as they have since the beginning of the year, I should be able to stop using all charge accounts entirely.  My sister is very good with credit cards.  She uses her rewards cards for everything, but she pays the balance in full each month.  That is my ideal goal.  To be able to use my rewards cards and pay the balance in full every month.  Freedom from monthly payments will be the ultimate prize here.  Right now I have a total of 6 charge accounts I'm making monthly payments on.  It will be most gratifying to watch the payments disappear as each account is paid off.  The good news is 4 of the 6 are small balances, so they'll be gone pretty fast and I'll be able to divert the savings toward reducing the 2 highest balances.  

Friday, July 8, 2016

BIG GAINS IN MONTHLY DIVIDENDS SINCE DECEMBER 2015!

As part of my mid-year review of my investments, I did a comparison of December 2015 to June 2016 dividend payments.  Here are the results:

SPHD -- Payments are 12 x's what they were at end of 2015!

PSEC -- Up 25%.

PHK -- Up 100%!

PDLI -- Up 400%!

NCZ -- Up 25%.

CRF -- Up 10%.

DON -- Up 100%!

AOD -- Up 20%.

HWBK -- Up 100%!

The smaller gains can be attributed mostly to reinvested dividends, while larger gains represent additional cash investments on my part.  The list above is only a portion of my actual investments, however, dividend income from all of my investments increased from the end of last year.

While these type of comparisons don't do much to improve my performance as an investor, they do provide a great deal of motivation to stick to the plan.  I'm very happy with results from the first half of 2016 and am excited about the next 6 months.  If last year's results are any indication, I can expect to see an increase of 50% in dividend income for the last 6 months of the year, compared to the first six months.  I'm hoping to boost that up some by making additional cash investments between now and the end of the year.


Sunday, July 3, 2016

SPECIAL STOCK DIVIDEND FROM HWBK 5 TIMES NORMAL DIVIDEND!

As a dividend investor, I'm always on the lookout for stocks with special dividends.  HWBK has paid a special stock dividend in July for every year I've owned the stock.  So far the stock dividend has been 4% of the value of shares owned.  The value of the stock dividend I received this year was over 5 times the actual cash dividend.  It's like a hidden bonus, since these type of dividends are not included in reported dividend yields.  I also receive a special dividend twice a year, in June and December, from monthly dividend payer MAIN.  MAIN is the only stock I know of, that pays 14 dividends per year.

Put in an order to purchase PDLI for my ROTH account July 5th.  As I mentioned before, this is a highly speculative move since the stocks' been down for quite some time now.  However, I think they'll turn around and the money I put in is a very small portion of my overall portfolio, while the possible payoff could be quite large.  The additional shares will double my current holdings in PDLI and double the quarterly dividend as well.  

Friday, July 1, 2016

JULY 2016 OFF TO GREAT START WITH 7 DIVIDENDS!

Ended the month of June with 7 dividends and started July off right with 7 more dividends!  Collected big payments from PHK and NCZ as well as HWBK and EMN.  Got the first dividend payment for my ROTH IRA from PHK this month.  It's nice to see the tax free income starting to roll in to the new account.  If the first day of the month is any indication, it's going to be another great month for dividend income and quite possibly a new record month!

Decided to purchase additional shares of PDLI for my ROTH account.  This is purely a speculative move on my part.  However, I think they've been way oversold on patent rights expirations, so I'm willing to bet a few dollars they'll turn around.  In the mean time, I'm content to collect the 6.37% dividend yield while I wait to see how it all works out.  I'd like to see this double in price.  If that should happen, I'll sell enough shares to pull all my cash investment out and keep the remaining shares for the dividend income.  

Hope everyone has a safe and festive 4th of July weekend!