401k BALANCE RISING RAPIDLY!

While my 401k account through work is still the smallest of my 4 investment accounts, the balance is rising rapidly in comparison!  This is mostly attributable to the twice monthly deposits from payroll as the return on investments is only around 3% so far.  However, since the majority of this money is coming from money I would have been paying in taxes, I'm quite pleased with the result.  Within the next two years, it's quite possible the 401k balance could surpass that of my taxable investment account and may even come close to matching my IRA balance!  Pretty amazing considering I just opened the account last year.

Also amazing is the progress I've made with the Roth IRA account.  I opened the account in June of last year and it is now the largest of my 4 investment accounts.  This is mostly due to cash contributions, but I have also transferred some investment cash and dividends from my taxable account to the Roth to reduce taxable income and increase non-taxable income.  It's working out quite well.  Monthly dividend income from the Roth account now far exceeds that from the taxable account and is rapidly gaining on the regular IRA's returns!  

Although 2017 has been a remarkable year for my investments so far, it has not been without it's setbacks.  I have had a couple of dividend reductions, mostly from the bond funds.  But this wasn't entirely unexpected and the dividend yields on these funds are still high enough that I have no plans to sell my shares.  Unrealized returns on the value of my stocks has been pretty lackluster all around.  The 401k has a higher return on share prices than my other 3 accounts combined and it's only 3.99% to date.  However, I've taken measures to boost capital gains in the future and since I'm investing for dividend income, I'm not overly concerned about whether the stocks go up in price.  In fact, since I'm purchasing more shares all the time, through re-invested dividends and additional cash purchases, I'm kind of happy to see the prices drop occasionally, so I can pick up some bargains.

Looks like I just need to stick with the plan for the rest of the year and 2017 will turn out to be another good year investment wise.