Friday, January 27, 2017

SURPRISE BONUS FROM WORK WILL BOOST DIVIDEND INCOME 20%!

I was surprised and honored to find out I'd won Employee of the Year at work!  Along with this great honor, comes an all expenses paid weekend in Branson, Silver Dollar City tickets and a substantial bonus check!  Since I didn't even realize I was in the running, this bonus was totally unexpected, so I've decided to invest the entire amount in my Roth IRA.  This windfall will boost monthly dividend income by a whopping 20%!  This should make it a lot easier to reach my goal of doubling dividend income again this year.

I want to say a very special THANK YOU to all my co-workers who voted for me to be recognized in such a great way!

JUST $2 AWAY FROM MY FIRST $25 ON SWAGBUCKS!

Finally got around to registering with Swagbucks around the end of December.  Now I'm just $2 away from my first paypal payment of $25 and a $5 bonus!  Should make that easily either today or tomorrow.  While that may not sound like much, it's free money!  I've spent nothing, registered for nothing and still earned money, mostly while watching television at the same time.  I have done a couple of surveys and watched a lot of video clips, but it was pretty easy and a lot faster than some of the other programs I've tried.

If you'd like to sign up and start earning money today, just click the link below:

Swagbucks

Although I've chosen to collect most of my swagbucks rewards in cash, you do have the option of converting your swagbucks to gift cards, starting at just $3.


Friday, January 13, 2017

UTG JANUARY DISTRIBUTION NEARLY 7 TIMES NORMAL MONTHLY PAYOUT!

Collected 4 great dividend payments for Friday the 13th!  Was very happy with the payout from UTG, which included a special capital gains distribution, making the January payout 6.8 times higher than December 2016!  Yes I know about the taxable event created by capital gains distributions, but since my shares are held in my IRA and Roth IRA accounts, I'm not too concerned about taxes.  Reinvested all distributions except JMP.  I'm taking some JMP distributions in cash since I originally purchased the stock for possible capital gains.  Just taking a little money off the table should the price drop instead of increasing in value.  Right now I'm ahead, but not planning to sell anytime soon.  I'll continue collecting the dividend in the mean time.

Missouri is getting hit right now with a big ice storm, so I'm a little concerned about making it to work tomorrow.  If I have to call in, it will be the first day I've missed work in the last two years.  Would much rather go to work, since I don't want to lose any hours, but just in case, I've been racking up Swagbucks on my days off.  I figure if I do miss work, the cash I earn online will help minimize the loss.

Dividend income for January 2017 already exceeds January 2016 dividends by nearly 50%!  With some of the biggest dividends yet to come, it will be interesting to see what the monthly total comes to.  Just off the top of my head, I'd say I could easily see a 100%+ increase over last year!  I did expect a nice increase, but frankly I'm blown away.  Never expected the big payout from UTG, so that's a very nice surprise and the rest of the month looks pretty good too.  We'll see how it goes.

Friday, January 6, 2017

EASY WAY TO AVOID TOTAL LOSS ON ANY DIVIDEND STOCK

As a long time investor, I have to admit to having a couple of total loss investments.  My old shares of Kmart which I purchased during their bankruptcy went to $0.  I had 1,000 shares of Atlantic Energy Solutions which also ended up worthless.  There was also a high flying REIT back in the 90's that dropped to $0.  As scary and disappointing as this may seem, I've found an easy way to avoid this as soon as I switched to dividend investing.

What's the secret?  Take some money off the table.  When you own a stock paying dividends, it's quite easy to take some money off the table by simply collecting your dividends in cash instead of reinvesting.  While I'm a die hard advocate for reinvesting your dividends, there are times when this would be contraindicated.  If you own some high yield, high risk stocks like I do, it never hurts to take some of the risk out by collecting some cash dividends.  If you collect cash, that money is yours and even if the share price drops to zero, you still have the cash.  Thus you avoid having a total loss on your investment.  

I employ this strategy regularly and it helps me sleep much better at night knowing I'll never lose my entire investment in any one stock.  You don't have to collect all the dividends in cash.  To continue growing monthly income, I'll have the dividends reinvested for 3 months and collect cash for the next 3 months.  That way I'm covered if the stock does well and I'm covered if it doesn't.  Maybe I miss out on a little growth, or maybe I avoid excessive loss and have a nice tidy bundle of cash to take advantage of other investment opportunities as they present themselves.

Just a simple way to any avoid total loss.  

Thursday, January 5, 2017

HWBK INCREASES DIVIDEND!

Collected first dividend payment from Hawthorn Bank (HWBK) for 2017 and was pleased to see they'd increased the dividend from .05 to .06 cents per share.  Also received the first dividend payment from monthly dividend payer CCD.  It's always gratifying to add a new stream of dividend income.  Should also get the first dividend from SPLV later in the month.

Reviewed my 401k statement online.  Looks like my two fund picks are far outperforming the target retirement fund the company picked out for me.  So much for their expertise.  Still it's nice to see the total investment increasing every month.  The return is not all that much but the regular deposits from my paychecks are adding up pretty fast.

Signed up for Swagbucks to add another small stream of income.  Looks like it will be pretty easy to make an extra $25 to $50 per month.  Definitely plan on investing any cash earned.  They say you can earn up to $150 per month watching videos, but I'm thinking that's not very likely to happen.

Just finished reading Charles Carlson's "The Little Book of Big Dividends."  I'd highly recommend it for anyone interested in dividend investing.  It's explains everything you need to know about dividend investing and is packed with actionable advice including sample dividend portfolios.  While it was nothing new to me, it was an interesting read and provided some good ideas I could incorporate into my own investment plan.


Monday, January 2, 2017

KICKING OFF THE NEW YEAR WITH 7 GREAT DIVIDEND PAYMENTS!

2017 has finally arrived and I couldn't be happier to start the new year off right with the first 7 of 27 dividend payments for the month of January!  While these 7 payments may not seem like much, they are equal to over 50% of the total monthly dividend income for January 2016.  With 20 more dividends for the rest of the month, which include the majority of the big dividend payments,  it's a pretty safe bet I'll see a huge increase in monthly income for January compared to 2016.

The first order of business for the new year is to purchase the final two monthly dividend stocks to guarantee a dividend for every day of the year.  As long as I complete this task before the end of March, it's a done deal.  Since I already have the cash to make the new purchases, it shouldn't present a problem.  I've decided to buy shares of NCV and SPFF.  NCV is strictly an income play, going after the high yield, SPFF provides a smaller yield with possible dividend growth and capital gains.  I'm also planning to purchase shares of AEG, the parent company of TransAmerica, to recover the fees they charge me for my 401k through AEG's dividends.  Should complete all three purchases before March 1st.  

The plan for the rest of 2017 is simple, reinvest dividends and make additional cash purchases of current holdings to boost monthly cash flow as rapidly as possible.