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!
Friday, June 15, 2018
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
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.
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.
Thursday, May 31, 2018
MAY BEATS PREVIOUS DIVIDEND EARNINGS RECORD BY OVER 10%!
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I expected May 2018 to set a new record for dividend income and I wasn't disappointed. It not only set a new record high for monthly dividend income but it beat out the old record by over 10%! In a year over year comparison, the income for this month was nearly double that of May 2017! While I wish I could see that kind of improvement every month, I'm not really expecting as much for the rest of the year. I expect gains will be much more moderate, as my efforts to squeeze as much dividend income from my investments have pretty much gone as far as they can at this point. From now on, increases will come mostly from re-invested dividends and whatever extra cash investments I make. Still, I'm very happy with the results of my efforts for the first 5 months of the year.
Collected 12 dividend payments for the last day of the month. Will collect several more payments tomorrow to kick off the month of June. All the rearranging I did in my investment accounts had an unexpected benefit, in that it spread income payments out more throughout the month. I'm now getting more middle of month payments and more payments between first, middle and last of the month. I suppose it doesn't really matter when you get the money, but it's kind of nice to have some coming in every week. While I collect 502 dividend payments per year now, most of them were paid on the first, 15th and last days of the month. Now I still get the big paydays but also get 3 or 4 smaller paydays interspersed throughout the month.
Made an extra $50 this month on Swagbucks! That doesn't sound like much, I know, but you should see how much faster my charge accounts are dropping since I've been using Swagbucks earnings to pay off my old debt. I knew it would help, but I'm amazed at what a difference that little extra payment has made in eliminating debt. I'm pretty excited about it. Once I finish paying off my bills, I'll go back to investing all the extra money I earn through Swagbucks. If you're interested, you can sign up for free! Just click on the Swagbucks link in my Link Exchange on the right side of the page.
Collected 12 dividend payments for the last day of the month. Will collect several more payments tomorrow to kick off the month of June. All the rearranging I did in my investment accounts had an unexpected benefit, in that it spread income payments out more throughout the month. I'm now getting more middle of month payments and more payments between first, middle and last of the month. I suppose it doesn't really matter when you get the money, but it's kind of nice to have some coming in every week. While I collect 502 dividend payments per year now, most of them were paid on the first, 15th and last days of the month. Now I still get the big paydays but also get 3 or 4 smaller paydays interspersed throughout the month.
Made an extra $50 this month on Swagbucks! That doesn't sound like much, I know, but you should see how much faster my charge accounts are dropping since I've been using Swagbucks earnings to pay off my old debt. I knew it would help, but I'm amazed at what a difference that little extra payment has made in eliminating debt. I'm pretty excited about it. Once I finish paying off my bills, I'll go back to investing all the extra money I earn through Swagbucks. If you're interested, you can sign up for free! Just click on the Swagbucks link in my Link Exchange on the right side of the page.
Friday, May 25, 2018
BECOMING FINANCIALLY INDEPENDENT
Over the years I've come up with several ideas for becoming financially independent, which to me means I only work because I want to, not because I have to. My most recent idea was to get 1,000 referrals to swagbucks who average making $25 each per month (which is easy to do by the way). Then my referral income of $2,500 per month would mean that I could stop working anytime I wanted to. In my case, I don't need a huge income to live on, so I could live quite comfortably on that amount. While I may never get to 1,000 referrals the idea here is to keep coming up with ideas until I figure out one that I can make work. Had I done this when I was younger instead of putting all my energy into working at a job, I'd most likely have succeeded by now.
The whole point I'm trying to make here is, there are any number of ways to become financially independent. You could do it by saving and investing, starting your own business, building a better mouse trap or creating a popular new app. Whatever the case, you just have to figure out how you're going to do it. So far I haven't been able to make any of my ideas come to fruition, but that doesn't stop me from trying or from coming up with new ideas. In my case, I've noticed that even my failed ideas are not really failures. When I was an ebay seller, I didn't make a fortune but I made money. I make money from my investments every month, even though it's not enough for me to live on. I make money from swagbucks every month. I made money when I bought a rug doctor and cleaned carpets and I made money when I was running a flea market booth. So, even though none of these ideas actually got me out of the work force, I did make money on all of them and am better off because of it. Now I just need to come up with an idea that works. Hopefully you can too.
The whole point I'm trying to make here is, there are any number of ways to become financially independent. You could do it by saving and investing, starting your own business, building a better mouse trap or creating a popular new app. Whatever the case, you just have to figure out how you're going to do it. So far I haven't been able to make any of my ideas come to fruition, but that doesn't stop me from trying or from coming up with new ideas. In my case, I've noticed that even my failed ideas are not really failures. When I was an ebay seller, I didn't make a fortune but I made money. I make money from my investments every month, even though it's not enough for me to live on. I make money from swagbucks every month. I made money when I bought a rug doctor and cleaned carpets and I made money when I was running a flea market booth. So, even though none of these ideas actually got me out of the work force, I did make money on all of them and am better off because of it. Now I just need to come up with an idea that works. Hopefully you can too.
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
CONGRATULATIONS PRINCE HARRY AND MEGHAN!
As an admitted Anglo file, I have to congratulate Prince Harry and Meghan and offer sincerest best wishes for their future together as husband and wife!
NEED TO BUY MORE REEVES UTILITY INCOME FUND
Every time I get the distribution report from Reeves Utility Income Fund (UTG) I can't help thinking I need to buy more shares. While I originally bought in at a steep price, I could buy more shares at a lower price now and reduce my average price per share. Share price has not been a stellar performer, but the monthly distribution is what I'm interested in here. Their current yield is 7.22% on a share price a little over the $28 mark. While that's not as high a yield as some of my other holdings it's definitely nothing to sneeze at. Average annual return for the past five years stands at 9.33%, including reinvested dividends.
The real selling point for me is 100% of their distributions have been paid from net investment income and net realized long term capital gains. Which means they're not playing the old smoke and mirrors game like some funds who cover payouts with a return of capital or some other capital source. I also like the fact that they actually increased their dividend payout in April of this year. So I'm looking to buy more shares of UTG while the price is down. I've held it for a long time now and reinvested dividends, but I think I'd be wise to increase my stake before the price goes up.
The real selling point for me is 100% of their distributions have been paid from net investment income and net realized long term capital gains. Which means they're not playing the old smoke and mirrors game like some funds who cover payouts with a return of capital or some other capital source. I also like the fact that they actually increased their dividend payout in April of this year. So I'm looking to buy more shares of UTG while the price is down. I've held it for a long time now and reinvested dividends, but I think I'd be wise to increase my stake before the price goes up.
Thursday, May 17, 2018
MAY 2018 TO SET NEW RECORD FOR MONTHLY DIVIDEND INCOME!
As I suspected, last month's record for dividend income didn't last long. A quick calculation for the month of May reveals, dividend income will set a new all time monthly record! While I'm very happy about this, here again, I don't expect it to last long. The current month has a total of 40 dividend payments, while June has 42 and July 44. So it looks like there may be one or two more new records set in the next couple of months. This is especially gratifying when you consider the market hasn't done so well this year and I've added very little new money to my investments aside from my 401k. (401k dividends are not counted with the rest of dividend income since TransAmerica does not report dividends to account holders.)
No further news on Capital One's transfer of our investment accounts to Etrade. It's kind of put a cramp in my usual investment style. Finally decided the forced sale of fractional shares for the account transfers would only really affect my taxable account at tax time, so I stopped all dividend reinvestment to that account and continue reinvesting dividends in my IRA and Roth IRA. Holding off on deploying any cash out of pocket until I've finally gotten my accounts transferred to TD Ameritrade.
No further news on Capital One's transfer of our investment accounts to Etrade. It's kind of put a cramp in my usual investment style. Finally decided the forced sale of fractional shares for the account transfers would only really affect my taxable account at tax time, so I stopped all dividend reinvestment to that account and continue reinvesting dividends in my IRA and Roth IRA. Holding off on deploying any cash out of pocket until I've finally gotten my accounts transferred to TD Ameritrade.
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