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.