Tuesday, August 15, 2017

MID MONTH DIVIDEND PAYMENTS SET NEW RECORD FOR ANNUAL INCOME!

The seven dividend payments collected today pushed annual dividend income to a new record high, beating out the total year's income earned in 2016!  With the biggest half of this month remaining (income wise) and four of the biggest months of the year still to go, it's going to be a great year!  With today's purchase of PSEC and reinvested dividends, I'll have more shares working for me next month, so the last quarter of the year is going to be a big money earner dividend wise.  Of course I still could not retire on my current dividends, but every month is making my retirement look better and better.

Today's purchase of PSEC shares and the purchase of MAIN for my Roth IRA were both paid for with money earned from Swagbucks.  If I continue investing my Swagbucks earnings until my retirement in 4 1/2 years, I'll be earning way more in dividends per month from the stock purchased, than I currently earn from Swagbucks!  Currently, I'm less than $5 away from earning another $25 payment from Swagbucks.

Just to give readers an idea of the progress I've made since January 2013 until now, I earned more in dividend income from today's 7 dividends than I earned for my biggest month in 2013.

Friday, August 11, 2017

PURCHASING SECOND STOCK WITH CASH EARNED FROM SWAGBUCKS!

Next Tuesday's scheduled purchase of PSEC shares will be my second purchase of stock using money earned through Swagbucks!  (See link in Link Exchange)  I'm excited about this because it's a second stream of income created using money earned at home, over the internet.  This purchase will add another 12 dividend payments per year, bringing total number of annual dividend payments to 469.  It will also increase monthly income by a little over 1%.  Not a big increase in income, but it all adds up.

So, with 469 dividend payments per year, 25 paydays from work, 28 interest payments and 12 Swagbucks payments, I'm now getting paid 534 times per year.  While most of these payments are still small, they continue to increase every single month.  It's like getting a raise every month.  If you add in the 12 cash back payments I get from my Discover checking account and the 12 gift cards from Bing rewards, I actually get paid at least 558 times per year!  At some point, this is all going to start adding up to a lot of money. 

Friday, August 4, 2017

ANNUAL DIVIDEND INCOME SET TO DOUBLE FOR FOURTH YEAR IN A ROW!

Did a quick estimate of dividend income for the remainder of 2017 and am pleased to report that, for the fourth year in a row, annual dividend income will double compared to last year's total!  As I've said before, I don't expect this trend to continue indefinitely, since it will require more and more cash contributions to keep doubling income year after year.  At some point, earned income is unlikely to keep up with demand.  But for now, it's nice to see the trend continues.  

Since this year's income double is in the bag, so to speak, I'll be looking at ways to double annual dividend income in 2018.  If I implement a plan now, I should be able to pull it off for a 5th year in a row.  I don't count income made from trading stocks, only dividend income.  I also don't count income from my 401k account, since I have no way of knowing how much of that is actual dividends.  So I'll be looking at ways to dramatically boost dividend income in the following months.  One easy way would be to invest my entire Christmas bonus, but I've already decided to use half that for Christmas presents.  Still, investing half my bonus will significantly increase monthly dividend income going in to the new year.  While this will most likely entail taking on some risk by increasing positions in some of the higher yield stocks, I plan to balance out the risk by increase stakes in some of my less volatile big name shares.

Then there's always the bond funds to consider.  Price wise, they're not likely to do well in an environment of rising interest rates, but they do still pay pretty well.  I'll most likely build positions in these through reinvested dividends more than cash out of pocket.  While bond funds have always seemed like an iffy proposition to me, I've collected a lot of money from them for the past few years.    

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

JULY 2017 SETS NEW RECORD FOR MONTHLY DIVIDEND INCOME!

July 2017 was a great month for dividend income, setting a new record high!  It beat out the previous record set in June by 5%, although I don't expect this record to last long.  August kicked off with 9 dividend payments on the first, including my first dividend from VZ.  I initially bought shares of VZ with the intention of making a little money in capital gains, but after seeing the nice dividend I collected, I'm not in any hurry to sell the shares.  I collect my trade stock dividends in cash, so it's nice to see rising cash balances in my investment accounts.  

Completed the purchase of MRK and NCV for my IRA account.  MRK is a trade stock and NCV I bought for income.  There again, I'm not in any hurry to sell MRK unless I can make a ridiculously large profit in a short amount of time.  I'll be happy to collect cash dividends from them as well as VZ.  Have been very pleased with the performance of my portfolio this year.  Even though price gains haven't been stellar, the increase in dividend income has been phenomenal!  Just have to stick with the plan and keep things moving.

Cash permitting, I plan on purchasing more shares of CHI for my ROTH IRA to boost monthly income once again.  With any luck and maybe a little overtime at work, I may even add to my stake in SPHD.  I'm getting to the point where reinvested dividends are increasing monthly income substantially, so I'm spending more time working on improving the quality of my investments.  To keep it simple, for the individual stocks, I'm sticking with the Dividend Aristocrats with a history of increasing dividends.  For funds I want to increase my stakes in S&P 500 funds SPHD and SPLV.  I'll let the bond funds increase on their own through reinvested dividends.  

The 401k is doing good for the year.  I've been working extra hours so my 5% contributions have been much higher of late.  Even though my employer doesn't match any contributions, I'm still coming out good, since my contributions mostly come out of taxes instead of take home pay.  I figure whatever it grows into will be that much more for retirement.  Right now it still makes up only one seventh of my total investments, but with twice monthly payroll contributions, it may well become one of the largest holdings before I retire.