OCTOBER OFF TO GOOD START WITH 8 DIVIDEND PAYMENTS!

Although we've been whip sawed by the stock market for the past week or so, October is off to a good start with 8 dividend payments for the first week!  This includes the first dividend from monthly dividend payer EAD, added last month to my ROTH account.  Cash balances are up from collecting dividends as cash rather than reinvesting.  This has helped to stabilize my accounts to some extent.  I plan on continuing to collect cash dividends for the remainder of 2016.  We'll see how things are going after the first of the year and I'll decide whether to start reinvesting dividends again. 

Speaking of 2017, I've decided to totally change my investment schedule to make 2017 the year I start collecting a dividend a day.  I'm up to 299 dividend payments a year now, so I only need to add 6 monthly dividend payers and I'll collect 371 payments per year!  I'm so excited about the idea of getting a payment for every day of the year, I'll probably make a few of the new stock purchases before the end of this year.  I should be able to complete this purchase plan by June or July of 2017, but even if it takes all year it will be worth it.  This new goal should also go a long way toward doubling total annual dividend income, which I'd like to do again next year.

We'll find out soon enough who our next President is going to be.  Which candidate wins probably won't have much to do with the performance of the stock market for the next year or two.  I'm not expecting to see any major gains during 2017 or 2018 as far as stock prices go.  But that's actually good news when you're a dividend investor still in the accumulation phase.  The less expensive the stocks, the higher the yields and the more shares you can buy with your investment cash.  Not sure yet what the new year will bring politically or economically, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be another great year for dividends.