BOOSTED MONTHLY DIVIDENDS ANOTHER 1%!

With Capital One Investing transferring all their investors accounts to Etrade in August, I was forced to sell fractional shares from reinvested dividends.  After liquidating the shares, it occurred to me that I could reinvest the money in mutual funds which allow for fractional share transfers.  So I took the cash from the fractional shares and used it to purchase additional shares of FTF and ZTR.  The new shares will boost monthly dividend income by 1%!  So as it turned out, this wasn't an entirely bad thing.  I took lemons and made lemonade.

Now that I'm finding out more about Etrade, I've decided to keep my accounts with them instead of transferring to TD Ameritrade.  While I still think TD Ameritrade is better, I believe I can work with Etrade and avoid the hassle of moving my accounts a second time.  

Can't say I'm especially proud of the performance of my 401k, although the account is making money.  It's just not making much money.  I've always thought TransAmerica was a very good company.  They're the ones managing my 401k.  I have to say I'd really like to see on my account statements when or if my dividend funds payout dividends.  For some reason, that information is not provided.  Otherwise, I'm O.K. with how things are going there.  I'm certainly stockpiling a lot of extra retirement savings I probably wouldn't have, had I not signed up for the 401k.

Can't wait to get things moving with Etrade.  I've researched some of their "no fee" funds and have already purchased a stake in one.  I have another one I'd like to buy shares in as cash permits.  That probably won't happen until my accounts are transferred over.  I'll have to get my dividend reinvestment program in place.  It's a little more involved with them than it was at Capital One, but it doesn't seem especially difficult.  I'm excited about the move.  Sometimes change is good.

KEEP YOUR MONEY MOVING!

I've been reading a lot lately about the laws of attraction, especially pertaining to attracting money.  One thing that struck me as really profound is that money is energy and needs to be in a state of flow.  Normally people think of money as coming in and flowing back out to bills and expenses, but we should never forget it's just as easy to spend your money on tools to make more money as it is to spend it on things you probably don't really need.  

I have a weakness for electronic gadgets and have a tendency to spend too much money on them.  Even though I know I don't really need them.  Lately I've taken to asking myself whether these things will increase or decrease cash flow.  So I've cut way back on the amount of money I spend on things and use it instead to buy more dividend stocks to increase money coming in.  If you get in the habit of spending your money on things that will bring you more money instead of things that collect dust around your house, eventually you'll be making way more than you ever thought possible.  

So you need to keep your money moving.  But most importantly, you need to keep it moving in the right direction.  Make a habit of it.  Once it comes in, pay yourself and put that money to work earning you more money.  Then pay your bills and expenses and if there's anything left, you can buy the extra things that you want.  

SDIV REPLACES NRZ AS MY FINAL STOCK PURCHASE WITH CAP ONE

After doing a little more research on Etrade, I decided I may leave my account with them after it's transferred from Capital One.  With that in mind, I looked up a list of their commission free funds and identified two monthly payers with high yields and low price to earnings.  So I cancelled my purchase of NRZ and put in an order for SDIV instead.  Once my account transfers to Etrade, I'll be able to purchase additional shares of SDIV commission free!  Not to mention this initial stake will increase monthly dividends by over 1%!

Once my account is transferred and I have the DRIP plan in place, I'll also be purchasing shares of SRET.  It's a REIT with a yield of 8.4% and a P/E of only 9.49 and pays monthly dividends as well.  In order to have more cash on hand, I'll be taking all dividend income from my taxable account in cash.  I'll transfer that to an interest bearing account to hold for a rainy day or in case some incredible opportunities should pop up in the future.  As for my retirement accounts, I'll be mostly reinvesting dividends, although I think I'll make an exception for the bond funds and take those payments in cash.  

At the beginning of the year, I certainly didn't expect to make so many changes.  However, sometimes change is good and you got to roll with the punches, especially where the stock market is concerned.  So I'm excited and optimistic about the changes.  I think there could be some real opportunities here to take my investments to the next level.

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.

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.