Tuesday, November 28, 2017

LET'S TALK TRADES

Earlier this year I purchased shares of 5 big blue chip stocks, with the intention of doing some trading for quick profits.  Well they haven't been quick profits in the sense that most people in investing think of them, but it works for me.  I just sold my stake in INTC for an after commission profit of 14% and reinvested the cash in shares of GAIN for my IRA account.  Not only did I make the 14%, but I sold at just the right time to collect a final dividend from INTC in December.  I also bought GAIN in time to collect both the special dividend and the regular monthly dividend in December.  The profit I made on Intel is roughly equal to what I would have gotten in four years worth of dividend payments.  The dividends I'll earn from investing this money in GAIN are more than 3 times what I was earning from Intel!

Was so happy with the results of this trade, that I'm going to do it again.  As soon as I'm past the record date for QCOM's next dividend on the 29th of this month, I'll sell my shares for a small profit of 10 to 12%.  Once again I'll collect the December dividend from QCOM and I'll be able to purchase NLY for my Roth IRA in time to catch their next quarterly dividend in January 2018.  Purchasing NLY with the money from QCOM will triple the amount I was earning in dividends per dollars invested!  So what I've done is take my quick gains from trading and used them to make a big boost in monthly dividend income.

I still have my stakes PFE, MRK and VZ to make future trades, should share prices increase enough to do so.  In the mean time, I'm satisfied with collecting their quarterly dividends.  The icing on the cake here is that all five individual stocks (INTC, QCOM, PFE, MRK and VZ) are major holdings in several of my stock funds and etf's, so even when I sell them I'll still benefit from future growth.  I'm going to repeat this process in 2018, since I believe it can add great value to my investments in a shorter period of time, as compared to just adding cash out of pocket. 

Friday, November 24, 2017

NEW INVESTMENT PLAN FOR 2018

It's that time of year again, where I begin figuring out my new investment plan for the new year.  It's still in the developmental stage right now, but I've pretty well figured out most of what I want to accomplish in 2018.  It doesn't include too many plans on adding new investments, although I may find something along the way that's just too good to pass up.  I'm looking more at ways to boost monthly dividend income by adding more shares to my current holdings.  Of course I'll be reinvesting most dividend payments, with the exception of CRF and CLM.  Although they both pay high dividends, a great portion of those dividends are a return of capital, while the share prices continue to dwindle.  So I'll most likely keep collecting those dividends in cash, since I can't see by more shares of an ever dwindling asset.

Should I receive a Christmas bonus this year, I've already decided where to invest the money.  I'm taking half to spend on Christmas and buy new tires for my car.  The other half I plan to use to purchase more shares of NLY, GAIN and CCD for my Roth IRA.  If for some reason we don't get our Christmas bonuses, I'll be using savings and money earned through Swagbucks to add to these stocks instead.  I'm using money from Swagbucks to purchase a stake in CCUR next week.  I like their numbers and the fact that at least one of their insiders has been purchasing a lot of shares.  Hopefully the company comes through with the bonus and I can purchase the shares in December.  It would be great to start the new year with a much higher monthly income.

I'll be spending a lot more time for the remainder of this year and all through next year working on building my investments.  As I mentioned in a previous post, my investment income has gone up over 300% in the past three years compared to only 6% for my earned income.  So I think it would be the wiser choice to put a little more effort towards my investments, since that's where the real opportunities are for increasing income.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.

In one of Robert Kyosaki's Rich Dad books, I remember him saying, "Mind your own business" by which he meant you should concentrate your efforts on building an income for yourself aside from work.  At the time, I thought this a remarkably simple yet profound statement.  Think about how much time we spend in life working hard to make other people rich.  Shouldn't we pay more attention to making ourselves wealthier?  

Recently I was reminded of this advice when I was passed over for a promotion at work.  I was very disappointed, since I've been working hard for the past three years and thought I'd be the logical choice for the job.  Well I didn't get it and I've gotten over the ordeal, but it did get me thinking about priorities.  I realized I'd become lax in "minding my own business."  

As I mentioned earlier, I've worked hard and invested a lot of effort over the past three years at my job, while not spending much time on my investments.  During that same period of time, my earned income increase a very modest 6%, while my investment income grew by a whopping 300%!  Just think about that a minute.  With a great deal of hard work, my earned income only went up 6%, while with very little effort, my investment income increased by 300%.  A 300% increase is fantastic, but how much more could it have been had I been "minding my own business" or putting as much effort into my investments as I put in at work?

So in a way I'm kind of glad I got passed over for the promotion because it frees up more time for me to work on building my investment portfolio.  Going forward, I'm very excited about my investment plans for 2018.  I've already created new spreadsheets for the upcoming year and identified additional investment opportunities which I think will boost income dramatically.  In the mean time I'm putting some of the money I earned on Swagbucks to use with the purchase of a stake in NLY.  I won't get my first dividend payment until January 2018, but I figure a new stream of income is a great way to kick off the new year.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

MULTIPLE INCOME STREAMS VS. MULTIPLE JOBS

In recent conversations with co-workers, I was amazed at how many of them have multiple jobs.  Several had both a full time job and a part time job, with some having as many as four jobs.  Times being what they are, I can see possibly having two jobs, but I think the wiser course would be to work one job and have multiple streams of income.  Dividend investors are well aware of the benefits of multiple streams of income.  As a dividend investor, I own a stake in a total of 35 different stocks, mutual funds and bond funds.  In addition to that, I do have a full time job and four internet side gigs, (not jobs per se but they do pay me a little income each month) for a total of 40 different sources of income.  

From these 40 income sources I receive a total of 530 payments per year!  Which means I get paid every .69 days, or almost twice per day for every day of the year!  Of course, I don't work every day of the year.  Most weeks I have two days off and I have two weeks paid vacation per year.  So with my two weeks vacation and two days off per week, I really only work 251 days per year (365 - (2 x 50) + 14 = 251.  Now if you consider that I only work an actual 251 days per year and divide that by 530 payments, I really get paid every .47 days that I work, or more than twice per day!

No matter how good a worker you are, you could never manage to work 40 jobs, but it's quite easy to have 40 sources of income.  If you have a job and invest some of your hard earned money in dividend paying stocks or funds, you could easily amass 40 sources of income in just a few years and if you only have one job, like myself, when you quit working you'll still have at least 39 sources of income.  So I think it's probably better to concentrate your efforts on building multiple streams of income instead of working your life away at multiple jobs.        

Friday, November 3, 2017

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP FOR NOVEMBER

Big jump in the market today and in the overall value of my portfolio.  Especially a nice jump in my stake in QCOM on rumors of a takeover by Broadcom.  Whether it will or won't actually happen is quite another story.  They may face an uphill battle gaining approval from regulators in the U.S..  However, I plan to keep a close eye on the situation and see if I can find an exit point with a tidy little profit.

Otherwise things are going well.  In the two days from the 31st of last month and the 1st of this month, I collected a total of 24 dividend payments!  November is one of the lower income months, with only 35 dividends for the month.  However, it's followed by December with a whopping 48 dividends!  So I'm not losing any sleep over it.  Cash balances continue to grow as I collect selected dividend payments in cash.  Looking forward to my next stock purchase with Swagbucks cash and adding new quarterly income there.  

Been working extra hours at my job, so I'll be concentrating on retiring more old debt and saving on monthly interest charges.  Should also be able to set aside a little extra to boost holdings in some of my current stocks.  I'll definitely add any additional cash to one of the monthly dividend stocks.  Haven't really decided which one yet, but I want any extra cash to create more monthly cash flow.  

Also made a little extra cash with a yard sale, not to mention getting rid of some of the clutter around my house.  Sold one of my old coats for $3, which isn't much, but since I bought it at a yard sale 3 years ago for $1, I was pretty happy about that.  The rest of the stuff I've sold are things I no longer have any use for and cannot hope to recover what I paid for them, but whatever money I recover is a bonus as far as I'm concerned.  I'm pretty sure I got my money's worth out of them in use, so if I can sell them for a few dollars, I'm happy.