Liebster Award Nomination

I would like to thank My Dividend Pipeline for nominating Liebster Award Nomination. MDP is one of the blogs that I follow regularly – especially his weekly purchases.

Here are the questions from MDP

1) If you could retire with ONLY 5 dividend stock in your portfolio what would they be? (Here is the kicker…you cannot choose JNJ, KO, CVX, XOM, or PG)

I would choose GE, AAPL, MO, COP and PEP. These stocks are reliable dividend payers and also provide reasonable diversification. I hold everything except PEP which I plan to acquire soon.

2) What is the most important thing you would do in your first month of early retirement that you can’t do now because of your job commitments?

All through the life, we are just running around chasing one thing after another. For once, at least for the first few days/weeks, I would like to just not do anything. Of course, for who I am, I can’t do that for long. So traveling more often is something that I would definitely look at.

3) Mentally, how do you prepare for a massive stock market correction/collapse like we experienced in 2007-2009?

Right now I don’t rely on the income from the dividends. Hence a massive crash will actually help by enabling me to invest more dollars. But I always plan for any emergency by having a few months of expenses in an emergency fund.

4) What one major sacrifice will you make next year to accelerate your FI plans?

Not really a sacrifice, but would like to get my spouse involved in investments. Right now, I manage all of it. With both involved, it might be better and could open more avenues to invest more money towards FI

5) If you decided to open your own business today, what kind of business would it be?

I have always thought of opening a small-scale fast casual restaurant, but never really put too much thought into that.

Goals update July 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 1 new purchase in July (MCD), I have invested $19,846.95 so far in 2014 until end of July.
  • With new investments planned in the near future, I should be able to meet this goal.
• Receive at least $1,500 in dividends
  • With an extra $187.47 in July dividends, the total for the year has hit $827.76 which represents 55.18%.
  • The new investments should continue to add some more dividends through the rest of the year and I hope to achieve this goal a little early and maybe exceed it by a margin.
• 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 $1,792.98.
  • With additional purchases I hope to achieve this comfortably.

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

AAPL’s new products ???

Even people who are not familiar with gadgets/smartphones/tablets etc know iPhones/iPads. iPhones/iPads are synonymous to smartphones/tablets for most people. That’s how ubiquitous the Apple brand is. Being the largest company (in terms of market cap) doesn’t hurt either. That’s one of the reason, Apple occupies more than its fair share of coverage in the media as well as among the common people in spite of being a tech company.

But lately the last couple of years, the company has been going through tough times, even though it has bounced back in the couple of quarters. 

New Brokerage Account?

I have my trading accounts with Scottrade. I started out with a regular taxable trading account in 2009. Since then I have opened an IRA account for myself and my wife. So currently all stocks in my portfolio are spread across these three accounts.

I am really satisfied with Scottrade with respect to their fees. But I am always on the lookout for better options.

Scottrade – Flexible Reinvestment Plan (FRIP)

I had discussed about the advantages/disadvantages of DRIP (Dividend Reinvestment Plan) and why I don’t do DRIP.

All 3 of my brokerage accounts (Regular, IRA for myself and IRA for my spouse) are with Scottrade and I participate in their FRIP (Flexible Reinvestment Plan). I didn’t start using this until early this year, but wish I had started it earlier.

Goals update June 2014

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

These are the goals for 2014:

• Invest at least $20,000
  • With just 1 new purchase in June (BAX), I have invested $18,075.95 so far in 2014 until end of June.
  • Thanks to aggressive investing in the first few months of the year, I have almost hit the goal. I hope to hit the mark in the next month or so and hope to continue to add more to my portfolio.
• Receive at least $1,200 in dividends
  • With an extra $128.09 in June dividends, the total for the year has hit $640.29 which represents 53%. This coincides with 50% of the year gone by.
  • The new investments earlier this year should continue to add some more dividends through the rest of the year and I hope to achieve this goal a little early and maybe exceed it by a margin.
• Achieve at least $1,800 in projected annual dividends
  • With the new purchases in the recent months and dividend increases announced, my current projected annual dividends stand at $1,734.66.
  • With additional purchases through the rest of the year this should be achieved with ease.
• Have a portfolio of at least 25 stocks/ETFs
  • Currently have 25 stocks/ETFs counting Google as 2 symbols even though I just hold 1 of each.
  • With additional investments through the rest of the year, I should get even more.

Overall, I am happy with the progress though the first half of the year. I am on target (or even slightly higher) towards reaching the goals. I wish I could have invested more over the last couple of months, but with the markets not taking a breather, it is getting very difficult to find good stocks at reasonable valuations.

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

DRIP – Yes/No

A common dilemma for most of the long-term investors is whether to participate in DRIP (Dividend Re-Investment Plan).

For starters who are not familiar with DRIP: DRIP allows you to reinvest the dividends back onto the same stock automatically each time the dividend is paid out. So instead of getting cash, you get fractional shares based on the share price on the payment date. There are a couple of advantages with doing this:

What is going on with the market?

Warning: This post is just a quick rant about the market 🙂  This is not a detailed analysis of the market financials/valuations.

As a long term investor, I shouldn’t (and now don’t) try to time the market. That’s a lesson I learnt by waiting in sidelines between 2011 to 2013.

Does being a stockholder affect your purchase decisions

I have been wondering about this for a long time. Does being a stockholder in companies like PG, PEP, PFE etc affect your purchasing decisions in the grocery store/pharmacy etc?

Welcome

Hello,

I will be documenting my dividend growth investing journey on this site and I welcome you to be a part of this. I welcome your thoughts, comments and suggestions as I travel though this.

Learn more about me and this site here.

Check out my investment goals.

As I mentioned in my about page, even though I have been investing since 2009, I have started focusing on dividend investments since early this year. Since then I have made some purchases which I will document in the next post.

Going forward, I will document each and every purchase here. I will also report my monthly dividend income and portfolio status periodically.

I will be creating a page/excel of my portfolio and will publish it soon.