LAST STOCK PURCHASE THROUGH CAPITAL ONE

Just put in an order to make my last stock purchase through Capital One Investing.  I'm buying a stake in NRZ for their 11%+ yield and intend to hold on for the long term, as long as their earnings hold up.  This will increase monthly dividend income by a little over 1%.  Not a huge increase, but it all adds up.  Don't know how I'll feel about Etrade, I'm taking a wait and see approach right now.  If I don't like it, I'll switch my accounts to TD Ameritrade.  

My place of employment has become really unstable due to poor management, so I've been looking at options outside my job for earning an income.  I restarted my resale business, which is doing good so far and am considering launching a service type business involving computer upgrades.  More on that to follow.  Due to ongoing health issues, I'm not really sure how much longer I'll be able to work a regular 40 week, so I've been exploring my options.  Would love to see my health improve so I could move on to another job, but I'm beginning to think that just might not happen.

I think there's a lot of instability in the markets going forward, so I've decided to take some money off the table by collecting all dividends in cash.  I'll be holding the cash in an interest bearing account and waiting for future opportunities to put it to work.  While this will slow the growth of my investment portfolio to an extent, I'll still be adding more through my 401k at work.  

PAYING OFF DEBT

A couple of months back I got really angry about the amount of interest I was being charged each month on my credit cards and charge accounts.  So I decided it was time to get serious and work out a plan to pay them off for good.  So I started with the highest interest charge account.  I've been paying my regular monthly payment and making 2 additional payments each month with money earned from swagbucks.  I've already got the balance down low enough that the two swagbucks payments would actually pay the monthly bill.  I'm going to continue paying the three payments per month for a couple more months, then I plan to finish paying the bill off with swagbucks cash and divert the $70 per month I normally pay on this bill towards paying off the next bill.  Once I have the second bill out of the way, that frees up $180 per month to rapidly knock out the third bill.  I'll just keep repeating the process until they're all paid off.  At the rate it's going, I'm estimating it will take two and a half to three years.  

Once all my charge accounts are paid off, I really only need to work 3 days a week to cover all my regular monthly expenses.  Most likely I'll continue to work 5 days a week and add the extra money to my investment accounts.  While using all available income to reduce debt, my investment accounts continue to grow through 401k deposits each payday and the 502 dividend payments I receive each year.  It's exciting to see my debt levels dropping instead of increasing!  

If you'd like to earn a little extra cash to invest or payoff debt, I highly recommend Swagbucks.  You can sign up by clicking the link in my Link Exchange on the right side of this page.  It's free, it's easy and you can make some cash!

SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO ASK FOR MORE

At the first of 2018, I asked myself how I could make more in dividend income.  Just asking the question got me looking at ways to earn more per month and I've been able to increase monthly dividend income by a considerable amount without adding any additional cash out of pocket.  Then I asked myself how I could pay down my old debts and cut the high cost of interest charges every month.  That got me looking for ways to accomplish this and I've made considerable progress in that direction as well.

Monday of this week, I met my boss at the door to her office and asked for a raise.  I had very good reasons to ask for a raise, I never miss work, I'm highly trained for my position and I always do more than is expected of me.  Unfortunately, the company I work for is not very forthcoming with raises.  So I took the initiative to ask for a raise.  I figured I have nothing to lose, either I'll get it or I won't, but it's a sure bet that if I didn't ask, I was not likely to get one.  Didn't get a definite answer to the affirmative, but I got things moving.  They're submitting a request for a raise to the corporate office.  We'll see if it works out.

So now I've been asking myself how I can increase sources of income outside of work, without taking on another job.  Not that I'd mind working part time at another job, but my health just wouldn't permit it.  So it's time to ask what can I do and forget about what I can't do.  I'm making 6% of my income outside my job at the present time.  Three percent is in the form of dividend income, the other 3% comes from money I earn over the internet.  Since asking myself how I could come up with other sources of income, I've had several ideas.  My goal is to boost income outside of work to 10% of total income by the end of the year.  All this just took a little thought on my part and I began the thought process because I asked.