BBL’s spin-off and cost basis???

A question rather than a post…

Earlier this month, I received shares of South32 after its spin-off from BBL. But I noticed that cost basis of BBL hasn’t changed. Typically in other spin-offs that happened before (like COP and PSX), the cost basis of the parent stock was automatically changed once the new stock was awarded. But that didn’t happen with BBL. Is it because this is an ADR or is it based on the brokerage? I hold BBL’s shares at Sharebuilder, where as my COP was held at Scottrade.

Any thoughts?

Two Milestones this week

I hit two milestones this week. These milestones are not related to dividend income, portfolio value or dollars invested etc. Those kind of milestones are documented in goals here. I had also documented some finance related milestones lately.

But the milestones that I want to talk about today are about this blog itself. I started this blog sometime in June 2014. It has been about 9 months since then. One of the goals I had when I started this blog was to ensure that I was active in updating this blog, the reasons for which are two-fold.

• Documenting my financial progress in this blog helps me to stay focused towards my financial goals
• Another reason for this blog is to share the information that I can with others like me

On those lines, I believe I have been able to keep this blog updated as much as I can. With that out the way, the following are the two milestones that I hit this week.

• I posted my 100^th post this week. The post was the goals update for February. 100 posts is not a great count for some, but I am not a full-time writer to spend as much time as others. So I was pleasantly surprised when WordPress mentioned that I had just posted my 100^th post.
• The total number of hits or views on this blog crossed 25,000 just recently. Please note that this is not a weekly count or monthly count. This is my total overall count up to date. I know, this is not a great number. Most of the dividend blogs that I follow get these kind of numbers in a single day/week/month. But still, it is something that felt great.

I am hoping that I can continue maintaining this blog with updates from my investments and dividends for months to come. Thank you for all your support.

2014 Achievements and Milestones

The December 2014 goals update reflected the status of the goals at the end of the year. But in this post, I would like to highlight some of the other key achievements and milestones that I crossed during the year. Looking back at the past and documenting key successes is definitely a great motivator for continued success.

Here are some of the key achievements and milestones crossed during 2014.

Weekly Purchases… Are they worth it?

Back in September when I opened a new trading account at Sharebuilder, I had mentioned about signing up for the advantage plan that gives 12 automatic investment credits for $10/month. I had planned to invest around $1,000/month using these  automatic investment credits. The discussion at that time was whether the $10/month fees is worth the low investment amount?

To answer that, I looked at the numbers since I opened the account and started weekly purchases.

Goals update November 2014

I like to review the progress at least once a month to determine where I am with respect to meeting/achieving my goals.

These are the goals for 2014:

• Invest at least $30,000
  • With new investments of $2,581.00 (COP and Regular Sharebuilder purchases) in November, I have invested $30,655.75 so far in 2014 until end of November.
  • Goal Achieved
• Receive at least $1,500 in dividends
  • With an extra $118.32 in November dividends, the total for the year has hit $1,404.32 which represents 93.62% of my goal.
  • With the projections, I will be hitting this goal in December.
• Achieve at least $2,200 in projected annual dividends
  • With the new purchases in the recent months and dividend increases announced, my current projected annual dividends stand at $2,211.28.
  • Even though the projected amount is over $2,200, it has gone down since then because of KMP to KMI switch. But with purchases already made in December and planned purchases, I should meet this goal in December.

The goals page has been updated to reflect the progress until this month.

Goals update October 2014

I like to review the progress at least once a month to determine where I am with respect to meeting/achieving my goals.

These are the goals for 2014:

• Invest at least $30,000
  • With new investments of $2,729.40 (UN and Regular Sharebuilder purchases) in October, I have invested $28,074.75 so far in 2014 until end of October.
  • With the weekly sharebuilder purchases planned, I should be able to hit this goal in December.
• Receive at least $1,500 in dividends
  • With an extra $204.97 in October dividends, the total for the year has hit $1,285.97 which represents 85.68% of my goal.
  • With the projections, it looks like I will be hitting this goal in December.
• Achieve at least $2,200 in projected annual dividends
  • With the new purchases in the recent months and dividend increases announced, my current projected annual dividends stand at $2,128.70.
  • This goal is going to be really close. I might hit this goal early December with the weekly purchases, but I am still not sure how ARCP will play out. ARCP currently contributes $125.00 towards my annual projections. So if ARCP cuts the dividend, I might end up being short on this goal.

The goals page has been updated to reflect the progress until this month.

Goals update September 2014

I like to review the progress at least once a month to determine where I am with respect to meeting/achieving my goals.

These are the goals for 2014:

• Invest at least $30,000
  • With new investments of $2,701.90 (BP and Regular Sharebuilder purchases) in September, I have invested $25,345.35 so far in 2014 until end of September.
  • With new investments planned for the future, I should be able to meet this goal.
• Receive at least $1,500 in dividends
  • With an extra $145.57 in September dividends, the total for the year has hit $1080.30 which represents 72.02% of my goal.
• Achieve at least $2,200 in projected annual dividends
  • With the new purchases in the recent months and dividend increases announced, my current projected annual dividends stand at $2,039.58.

The goals page has been updated to reflect the progress until this month.

Am I really a dividend investor?

Based on the title of the blog, one would think the answer to be yes.

I started focusing on dividend stocks from early this year. But even before that, I had always looked at getting good stocks and holding them for long-term. I have always been a buy and hold kinda investor (but for a few mistakes where I sold stocks like WMT and V). The majority of the stocks that I hold now have been purchased at least 3-4 years back and some even before that and I plan to hold them for several more years.

I hold some stocks that I had purchased for growth potential rather than dividends. CMG (Chipotle), AAPL, GOOG are some prime examples.

Goals update August 2014

I like to review the progress at least once a month to determine where I am with respect to meeting/achieving my goals.

These are the goals for 2014:

• Invest at least $25,000
  • With just 2 new purchases in August (CLX, GSK), I have invested $22,643.45 so far in 2014 until end of August.
  • With new investments planned for the future, I should be able to meet this goal.
• Receive at least $1,500 in dividends
  • With an extra $106.97 in August dividends, the total for the year has hit $934.73 which represents 62.31%.
• Achieve at least $2,000 in projected annual dividends
  • With the new purchases in the recent months and dividend increases announced, my current projected annual dividends stand at $1,917.68.
  • With additional purchases I hope to achieve this comfortably.

The goals page has been updated to reflect the progress until this month.

New trading account

Back in July, I had posted about my thoughts on opening another trading account in addition to the ones I currently hold at Scottrade. My aim was to open a new account specifically to lower the fees for smaller investments (less than $500). I looked at various options include Sharebuilder, Loyal3 and Motif Investing.

After much thought and scouring for deals, I decided to open a taxable trading account at Sharebuilder. Sharebuilder is a popular trading site especially among the regular readers of this blog. I was specially interested in their Advantage plan which offers a specific number of automatic trades for a fixed dollar amount per month. In fact, I got an even better pricing plan since Sharebuilder offers special pricing for Costco members. I got the following pricing option: