A dividend and some more buys

This past week my Unilever stock paid me 0.073 shares as a dividend.  That works out to $3.30 or $3.25 after deducting a tiny fee.  The fee is apparently because Unilever is a foreign stock that trades in the U.S. as an American depository receipt (ADR).  The fee surprised me but I think at my previous brokerage account they showed my dividends net of the fee.  The ADR fee is normal and is generally 1-3 cents per share apparently.  Since I had 10 shares, I guess I got a bit of a bargain :-)

On one of my last posts I had a nice conversation in the comments with Anon about how I look at dividends.  Since I do not need the cash, all of my dividends are set to reinvest.  However, I try to compare the dividend received to what I could buy with it today.

I have the usual retirement accounts and those will hopefully go untouched until my formal retirement age.  If life's circumstances allow me to do this, they should have enough money in them to take care of me for 20-30 years (assuming no Social Security income and no debt outstanding).

But the money I'm investing with this blog - well that money I want to spend :-)  In about 10 years, I will probably stop reinvesting the dividends and have them paid to me as cash.  So what I can buy with them is a very real question that I enjoy trying to answer.  

$100K of investments may only net me about $4K (on the high end) in dividends.  After taxes, that works out to less than $300 a month.  Not a lot but it would pay for my groceries and my utilities.  So something I wouldn't have to worry about which is nice.

And in retirement, assuming I haven't sold off the shares that are valued at $100K (all estimates, hopefully the value is much much higher than that), then those same dividends could end up being my *fun* money in retirement since all of my living expenses should be more than adequately covered by the aforementioned retirement accounts.  (Hopefully!)

Now on to some trades.  I was doing a bit of research into various Vanguard funds last weekend and I came across a brand new ETF Vanguard International High Dividend Yield (VYMI).  Well I already owned 3 shares of Vanguard High Dividend Yield (VYM) so I was very happy to see this new ETF.  It is the international mirror to my current ETF.

I had about $300 in cash in my settlement account.  And so on Monday I impulsively bought 4 shares of VYMI (at $53.09 each) and 1 share of VYM (at $67.25).  Going forward, my plan is to buy the same number of shares in these ETFs so if I buy 1 share in the domestic then at the same time I'll buy 1 share in the international.  

I have no plans in the near-term to buy any more ETFs.

Of course I had other plans for the $300 that was in my settlement account.  I was going to combine it with a cash injection later this month to buy more stocks.  This changes my plan somewhat and I need to regroup and look at my list of stocks that I want to buy.

I will make a stock purchase this month but it will be in the last week of the month.

Happy weekend!
Pru