BOOSTED MONTHLY DIVIDEND INCOME BY NEARLY 10%!

In earlier posts this month, I talked about selling SPHD shares in my taxable account to lock in some capital gains and take advantage of tax break by transferring the cash to my IRA.  All that worked out well, but by purchasing shares of CHI and VZ with the money I transferred, I nearly doubled monthly income on that portion of my investments and increased overall monthly dividends by nearly 10%!  It's a win, win, win situation!  Of course I'll have to pay taxes on the capital gains next year, but I can offset that by contributions to my IRA in 2017.

My next big purchase will be ORA and JNJ, sometime around the end of this month or the beginning of next month.  While they won't add a great deal to monthly dividends, they are both solid investments and should add a measure of stability to my portfolio.  I always try to balance out the high risk/high return investments with more solid, low volatility plays.  Recent political tensions may make it possible for me to pick up these shares at a lower price.  We'll just have to see how it all plays out.

While the overall value of my investments may suffer a setback in the near future, I'm looking at it more as an opportunity to pick up extra shares at a better price.  As long as dividend income continues to increase, I'm not terribly concerned with the price of the stock.  After all, my plan is to draw on the dividend income in retirement, not to live on cash from selling stock.