Tuesday, July 25, 2017

HWBK BECOMES SECOND "FREE" STOCK!

HWBK joins UVE as my second "free" stock.  What I mean by free stock is, I have none of my out of pocket cash invested.  Like UVE, I purchased shares of HWBK back when they were cheap and held on until I saw over a 63% gain.  Then I sold enough shares to take out all my original cash investment and kept the remaining shares.  The way I see it, from now on, whatever these stocks earn in dividends or capital gains is pure profit!  So they're definitely long term holdings.  Why would I sell something producing cash dividends when I have no money invested in them?

I used the cash I pulled from HWBK to add MRK to my IRA account.  Aside from gaining 4 additional dividend payments per year, the dividend yield from MRK is double what I was earning from HWBK.  My investment in MRK could be long or short term, depending on price performance.  Should I see a nice price increase anytime soon, I'll sell and take the cash.  However, if the price should lag, I see nothing wrong with holding on to a good stock and drawing the dividends.

That's the basis of my trading strategy I've recently developed for my non-taxable accounts.  I buy a position in one of the big blue chip dividend stocks and wait for a big enough price increase to sell for a small profit.  I keep the cash profit, less commissions and reinvest my original cash in another big blue chip dividend payer.  If I get stuck holding the stock, it's O.K. because I still have a good stock paying cash dividends.  Some of the stocks I've sold so far, were not bad stocks, but if I can collect the same amount of money as I'd get from 10 or 12 years worth of dividends by selling now, I'm going to sell.  Along the way, I figure I'll come across opportunities like UVE and HWBK where I'll be able to pull out all my cash and keep the profit as shares of the original investment, creating more "free" stocks for my portfolio.

Friday, July 21, 2017

SOLD TROW BOUGHT PFE

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I looked over my portfolio for additional stocks to sell for capital gains and reinvest the cash.  I had a small profit on TROW in my ROTH IRA, so I sold the shares and kept the profit as cash.  Then reinvested the original capital in shares of PFE which is closer to its 52 week low than the 52 week high.  This increases quarterly dividend income by nearly 1% and leaves me room for share price growth.  I may have to hold the stock for quite some time before I see enough growth to sell and repeat the process, but it's a start.

Yesterday's trade along with the one I made today will nearly double investment income for the month of July 2017!  While I might not be able to do this every month, I think it's quite possible to pull this off several times per year, allowing me to greatly improve investment income.  I've decided to collect cash dividends on individual stocks while I wait to trade for capital gains.  Also decided that each time I sell a stock, I'll keep the profit (less commission costs) in cash and reinvest the original principle.  It's a work in progress that I think could greatly enhance monthly investment income.  We'll see how it goes.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

SOLD CSX IN IRA AND BOUGHT NCV

While I hadn't planned on selling any individual stocks in any of my accounts, in this case it just made sense.  I have been sitting on a small 10%+ gain on CSX thinking I'd keep the stock long term for increasing dividends.  However, when I realized it would take over 12 years to collect as much in dividends as I could get right now by selling and taking the profit I reconsidered.  Then I was left with the problem of replacing the quarterly dividend payments by investing the money elsewhere.  So I decided to put the money in monthly dividend bond fund NCV.  Not only did I replace the three quarterly dividend payments lost by selling CSX, but I also added an additional 8 payments per year, bringing my total annual dividend payments up to 453!  On top of all that, the monthly income from NCV is a little over 392% more than I earned from CSX!

So this has me thinking I should watch for more opportunities to cash in on capital gains in my non-taxable accounts and reinvest the cash to boost monthly dividends.  I already have a few good prospects I could take advantage of.  The only question that comes to mind is, how can I repeat this process over and over?  I'm thinking it would be a good way to add a great deal of money to my final retirement stash.  I'm going to have to look into this a little more and figure out a way to incorporate it regularly in my investment plan.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

IMPROVING YOUR PERSONAL PROFIT MARGIN

Was reading an article recently about becoming a millionaire.  Although that's not specifically one of my goals, it is within the realm of possibility.  Anyway, the thing that really got my attention was their advice to improve your personal profit margin.  Just like a business, we all have either a profit or loss in our personal finances, hopefully a profit.  By improving our our profit margins we free up more cash to put towards our investment goals.

There are basically two ways of doing this.  You can either cut expenses or increase your personal income.  If you've already cut expenses to the bone, then you'll have to look at ways to increase the amount of money you make.  Possibly taking on a side job or monetizing a hobby.  If you're already setting aside cash for investing, you can improve your profit margin by putting more money to work.  This month I plan on buying more shares of AOD for my ROTH IRA, which will increase my monthly cash flow from dividends by 1.5%.  That's admittedly not much of an increase, but they all add up and they all improve personal profit margins.

All this got me to thinking about what else I could do to improve my personal profit margin.  I try to keep my expenses as low as possible, but there is still room for improvement.  One idea I came up with is to use more coupons.  I use coupons regularly, but there are a lot of times I make purchases even though I could have used a coupon to get a better deal.  Coupons are like cash, you can either use them with the money budgeted for whatever you're purchasing and buy more, or you can save the amount of the coupons and put it towards increasing investment capital.  Of late, I've been doing more of the former and spending the extra cash to buy more than I normally would.  So here is an easy way for me to improve my profit margin, simply by using the coupons and buying only what I need and putting the cash I save to work, generating more income.

If you give it a little thought, there are probably a lot of little ways to improve your personal profit margin.  Individually they may not seem like much, but they all add up.

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

ENJOYING SUMMER SUNSHINE



Taking a short break in the shade during a recent walk around the Missouri state capital building.  Lots of interesting places to see on the walking tour of historic downtown Jefferson City.

MONTHLY DIVIDEND INCOME UP 826% IN JUST 4 YEARS!

As if setting a new record for monthly dividend income in June 2017 wasn't enough motivation, I decided to compare it with dividend income from June 2013.  2013 was when I began to rebuild my investment portfolio after losing all my money after having stent surgery with no insurance.  I was overwhelmed to find that monthly dividend income had increased a phenomenal 826% in just 4 short years!  While I think it unlikely I'll be able to do this again in the next 4 years, if I do, my retirement is looking much better than expected.

Of course I actually have 5 more years until I plan to retire and even then, health permitting, I'll most likely work part time.  To supplement my Social Security, I plan on drawing from my ROTH account first to allow more time for my regular IRA and 401k to continue compounding dividends.  Whether at a job or working on my own, I plan to keep active in retirement for as long as possible.  I believe it's better for your health to keep busy as you age.  Once people sit down, it seems like they go downhill quick after that.

I'm excited to see how the next 4 years will go!  

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

JUNE 2017 BEATS OLD RECORD DIVIDEND INCOME BY OVER 20%!

As I suspected it would, the month of June 2017 set a new record high for dividend income, beating out the previous record, set in March of this year, by over 20%!  This is mostly due to increased shares purchased since March and reinvested dividends.  While I'm always excited about new record highs, I suspect this one won't last long.  If last year is any indication, the month of July will be even better than June.  With the special stock dividend from HWBK, this month kicked off with a bang!  Dividend payments collected so far are almost equal to half last month's total and I still have middle of month and the big end of month dividends to go.

Want to wish everyone a happy and safe 4th of July holiday!  While I have to work, I'm O.K. with it, since it's double time pay for the holiday.  Working on paying off the personal loan I took out to buy a better car.  So far I'm 4 payments ahead.  The holiday pay and overtime I've worked this week will put me 5 payments ahead.  The quicker I pay off the loan, the more I save in interest and the more money I'll have available to invest.  

While comparing end of month statements for May 2017 to end of year statements for 2016, I was both shocked and pleased to see that I'd already invested the total amount that I'd planned to invest for the entire year!  So whatever I manage to contribute for the rest of the year is just icing on the cake.  It should be pretty good though, since payroll deductions for the 401k will add a substantial amount and I set aside money every month for additional cash investments to my ROTH and IRA accounts.  Just have to see how it goes.