Wednesday, August 31, 2016

AUGUST INCOME UP 120%!

Just collected the last 7 dividend payments for August.  At first I was a little disappointed with total income for the month, until I compared it to August 2015.  Compared to last year, income for the month of August 2016 is up an astonishing 120%!  So my initial disappointment turned to excitement.  I can't believe I'm still seeing such tremendous gains, I keep expecting them to slow down, but it hasn't happened yet.  I've been thinking about my investment plan purchases for 2017 and I figured out a way to boost monthly cash flow tremendously, but it also involves a measure of risk.  

Estimated remaining dividend income for the rest of this year and it looks like annual income will be up over 100%.  December will definitely be the new all time record month for income.  All good news, but no time to rest on my laurels, got to keep the momentum going.  Speaking of which, tomorrow September kicks off with another great batch of dividends.

Registered with TransAmerica to track my 401k on line.  After my initial sign in, I reviewed my investment choices and I think I made the best picks out of the bunch.  Waiting to see how the 401k affects my taxes, but I'm already thinking about increasing my investment percentage.  Just got a small raise at work, so I could put that money to work by diverting more to the 401k.  We'll see how it goes.

Making all stock purchases through the last four months of the year through my Roth IRA.  Decided to hold off on purchase a stake in SPLV and buy shares of dividend aristocrats BEN and ABT.  While the bulk of my investments are currently stock and bond funds, I'm still a firm believer that you're likely to make more money with individual stocks versus funds.   

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

INCREASING MONTHLY DIVIDENDS BY OVER 3% BY SELLING PSEC AND BUYING CLM!

Just read an article on Seeking Alpha about PSEC's dwindling distributable cash flows and the possible upcoming dividend cut, so I decided to sell the stock and cut my losses.  I'll take the cash from the sale and reinvest in additional shares of CLM.  This move will boost monthly dividend income by a little over 3% while reducing average price per share on CLM.  It's always good to be able to increase monthly cash flow without any additional cash out of pocket, so I'm pretty excited about the move!

The sale of PSEC will reduce my total annual dividend payments to 272.  However, I'm more concerned about increasing cash flow than increasing number of payments.  I'll be looking for a good stock to replace PSEC, but I'm in no hurry since I've actually increased income from the trade.  It occurs to me that I should take CLM dividends in cash and use that money to buy the replacement stock.

I'm still waiting for my first statement from my 401k account, but I really have no idea when I'll get that.  I'm wondering how many dividend payments the two funds I picked will add to the annual total.  Whatever it adds will be a nice bonus as far as I'm concerned, since my contributions are coming out of taxes and have not noticeably affected my take home pay.  Should I get a raise, I'll be increasing the withholding amount to build this account even more.

The Roth IRA account is doing quite well.  Just collected a nice dividend from GUT today!  I'm more excited about building this account than any of my other accounts since the income is tax free.  I continue to pour as much cash as I can into this account and have begun diverting dividend income from my taxable account to the Roth.  It's really exciting to see the snowball effect as dividend income increases month after month.  It's been a great year!  

Saturday, August 13, 2016

AUGUST DIVIDEND INCOME UP OVER 130% COMPARED TO 2015!

Collected 3 great dividend payments today, including my first dividend from IGD.  Was pretty excited about the new dividend, but then I estimated the total dividend income for the month of August and compared it to August 2015.  Total dividend income for the month increased a more than 130% year over year!  I keep thinking these big increases will have to slow down at some point, but it hasn't happened yet.  I remember writing at the first of the year that I thought 2016 would be a good year, but I had no idea it would turn out as well as it has.

Been offered a phenomenal opportunity to buy my own home, which I could pay off in 5 years or just about the time I'd like to retire.  While this would be great in many ways, it would also require a job change, since my current job is would be too far to drive from where the house is located.  I've made some great strides with my current employer and I hate giving up the benefits I've accrued there to start from scratch somewhere else.  But being able to buy a home that I can pay off in such a short time with such small payments is too good to dismiss out of hand.  So I'll be looking in to the job market and weighing my options carefully.  If it doesn't work out, I won't be too disappointed.  It's been my experience that if you miss out on one opportunity there'e always more to come.

It looks like I'll have to put off the purchase of SPLV shares until next month.  My order to purchase a stake in EAD will go through on Tuesday and I'll collect the first dividend from them in October.  So if I follow this purchase with SPLV on or before the ex dividend date of September 15th, I'd collect the first dividend from SPLV on September 29th.  So I've made it my goal to buy a stake in SPLV within the next 30 days.  Not exactly sure how I'll do it, but I'll come up with the cash somehow.  This will bring total dividend payments up to 296 per year!   

Monday, August 8, 2016

INCREASING MONTHLY CASH FLOW BY 2% WITH PURCHASE OF EAD!

Placed an order to purchase shares of Wells Fargo Income Opportunities Fund (EAD) for my Roth account.  I'll collect the first dividend payment October first, since I missed the ex date for September's dividend.  However, this will increase monthly cash flow by a little over 2%!  It will also add an additional dividend payment at the first of every month, which I'm pretty excited about as well.  With this purchase, I'll be well set as far as the number of dividend payments at the first and last of the month.  Now I need to concentrate on building up the middle of the month dividends.  When I retire, I'd like to have money rolling in throughout the month.  While it doesn't really matter when I get paid, I just like the idea of having cash payments spaced throughout the month.  

If I complete the purchase of SPLV by August 15th, I'll collect the first dividend on August 31st.  Have to see whether I'll have the cash to make both trades, but I'm definitely going with EAD first for the current yield of 9.88% versus SPLV's yield of 1.86%.  SPLV may be the better investment in the long run, but I'm still working on increasing monthly cash flows as rapidly as possible.  I'm adding SPLV to balance out some of the riskier high yield investments.

I'm pretty happy about the progress made on building up tax free income with the Roth account.  Already have a good monthly cash flow and am reinvesting dividends from half my investments and collecting the rest in cash.  I may just use this money later on to buy more stock, but with the market being kind of pricey right now, I think it prudent to take some cash off the table and put it in reserve for possible buying opportunities should there be a correction in the stock market.  I'm still growing shares owned and dividend income every month by reinvesting some of my dividends in each account.  With my new 401k, I'm reinvesting all dividends until I have to start drawing the money in my retirement.

Friday, August 5, 2016

SOLD PDLI, REPLACING IT WITH SPLV

Yesterday PDLI announced they were no longer going to pay quarterly dividends, so that was it for me, decided to cut my losses and run.  In keeping with my investment plan to only own stocks paying dividends, PDLI had to go.  Sold all shares today and will be replacing it with SPLV, a five star rated fund paying monthly dividends.  While their dividend yield is not so great, SPLV's main objective is low volatility, which should bring more stabilization to my portfolio, while providing opportunity for growth and income.  It's a sure bet it will be a much better performer than PDLI.  Since PDLI paid quarterly and SPLV pays monthly, this purchase will bring my total number of dividend payments per year up to 296!  So at least something good comes out of the whole thing.  

Monday, August 1, 2016

FOURTEEN DIVIDEND PAYMENTS IN TWO DAYS!

For the last day of July I collected 8 dividend payments and for the first day of August I collected 6 more dividend payments. Each payment collected was higher than the previous month's payment for each stock. Yet nobody seems to understand why I get so excited about dividend investing. When I talk about it, most people I know, show no interest at all.  It's no wonder to me that so many people go through life and never get ahead.  Here is a simple, easy way to build wealth and very few people are interested.  Or perhaps I just need to find a few new friends who are interested in investing.

I started rebuilding my investment portfolio at the beginning of 2013.  I had suffered a couple of heart attacks in the two years prior, having stent surgeries to correct the problem.  However, with no insurance, my old investment portfolio was decimated by medical bills.  But I buckled down and began to rebuild my investments.  It went smoothly the first two years, but I suffered a setback in finances in 2015 and only managed to increase annual dividend income by 20%.  However, 2016 has been a great year and I'm on track to more than recover the momentum lost in 2015.  By the end of this year, even if I make no further cash contributions, dividend income will have increased a whopping 400% in the past four years!  Imagine getting a hundred percent raise every year from your job and you can easily see why I get so excited by dividend investing.  Not only that, but I currently get paid 276 times per year from my stock and bond fund investments.  I also get 28 interest payments from my interest bearing accounts for a total of 304 payments per year and I don't do any extra work to earn this money!

It would be unrealistic to expect the 100% increases per year to continue, although I think it's quite a realistic goal to increase my dividend income by at least 50% in 2017.  That's what I'll be shooting for and if I happen to do better than that, that's O.K. too.