A lot of Updates - Part 2 - Recent Buys!

Hello again,

A continuation from the last post results in great information for you guys about what has been going on around here. First of all, the...

Stock Purchases and Sells
Goals

...pages have been updated.  Perhaps you noticed the stock purchases and sells page already in the last few days and in that case, you'll see that a lot of purchases were made!!

I alluded to the fact that my wife is awesome in the previous post and now I'll tell you why.  Many years ago, she was given a small inheritance when an aunt passed away.  This inheritance paid off her small student loans, a new car (Nissan Versa), a trip to Ireland and finally it has increased our pursuit of early retirement!

We have had roughly $16,000 sitting in a separate bank account for the past 2+ years.  Over the course of these 2 years, a lot of uses for this money has been talked about but nothing has ever been done.

First, we wanted to update our master bath.  We wanted to knock out a wall, put in a shower (so we have two) but the contractors we had come in to give us an estimate wanted $5,000 or more.  That number scares us both because personally I think I can do all that work for much cheaper.

Then, we wanted to completely redo our kitchen.  It is closed off, old cabinets, no pantry, fridge is in a weird location, etc.  No contractors for this to tell you quotes, but just new cabinets alone were running $5,000.  Our kitchen is perfectly fine the way it is.  It does everything we need it to do and in the 4 years we have owned the house, it has never let us down.  So why change it?

Finally, the big one...   Completely finish our unfinished basement.  I have started this undertaking already.  The studs are up, all duct work is framed out, and some additional pieces (doors and such) have been purchased.  Thing is, we never go down there currently and there is no reason to.  Our living room already has everything we need.  It is just my wife and I in a 3 bedroom 1.5 bathroom house.  The only thing a finished basement adds is more costs to furnish it, more time to keep it clean, and more space that we currently don't use, etc.

So that brings us to two weeks ago.  I received our QUARTERLY statement from the bank account and what I saw was shocking...   We made, wait for it...   SEVEN DOLLARS! in 3 months!  Roughly $2.33 a month in income.  Absolutely PATHETIC!  Reading early retirement blogs have changed my life and this bank statement was just the kick in the ass I needed to try to persuade my wife into using this money to make more money.

Before I go on, can we all admit that the interest the banks pay out...   SUCKS!

A lot of Updates!!

To all the readers out there:

Sorry I have been such a lame ass with updating the blog recently!!

I was looking at the pages on this blog and noticed that I had not updated some of them since November 2015...  WEAK.

So, for all my readers out there, I apologize and now the...

401K Portfolio
Portfolio
Dividend Income

... pages have all been updated.  I am working feverishly to catch up with the stock purchases and sells and the goals pages.  I will get a new post out on those two soon!

Sorry,
ADD

Dividend Income - April 2016 Update

Hi Everyone,

Sorry this is so late ya'll...   but man, I think it was worth the wait!!

We have not been able to put away as much income this year due to increasing the 401K contributions but I've got a surprise in an upcoming post --  Hint:  My wife is awesome!

With that being said, our prior investments and additional compounding growth have allowed us to set new records for the month of April.


This months total came in at $345.53!!  which is an increase of 25.88% compared to last year and a 5.80% increase compared to last quarter.

April Dividend Income:

Total: $345.53

As you can see, there were quite a few new investments along with some one time payouts, along with some respectable compound growth.  I sold O (perhaps a bad call since I have not been able to buy it back cheaper yet) and OHI & TROW were one time payouts last year.  Those were all the big negatives.

Big positives from last year, I invested heavily into WPC, a purchase of RAI earlier this year, along with new purchases of BNS, CSCO and STJ.

All told, there was an increase of $71.04 from last year, and $18.94 from last quarter!  Gotta love the growth!

Jump over to our dividend income page to see the increases month after month. There is also a nice chart on that page for all you visual learners out there. On that page, you can easily see dividend income investing at work which hopefully one day will be greater than our expenses and that's what we like to call The American Dividend Dream! Check out our complete portfolio here.


How was your April?

Thanks,
ADD