June 2016 - Dividends (Money!!!)

Oh boy this post is late in coming :-)  Thankfully the dividends didn't just magically disappear because of my lateness.

In June 2016, I earned $321.01 in dividends.  Yay!  It's like free money!  Seriously I love the quarter end months because that is when the money starts rolling in :-)

Every single penny of those dividends were reinvested for future dividends.  

As always I do like to imagine what I might spend that money on.  $321 is a good amount.  Assuming I was in retirement, it would be $107/month (averaged over a quarter).  $107 could pay a monthly bill (utility, internet, cell phone) or it could be 2 weeks of groceries for me.  That is really tangible.  And it makes me want to keep saving and investing.

Dividends & Capital Gains page has been updated.

Pru

Another purchase...another dividend...

I'm closing out the month with another purchase - this time a new ETF.  It is silly but I only bought one share.  I had about $70 in my settlement account which isn't a lot when it comes to buying stocks and ETFs.  But I had been thinking about this ETF for awhile now so I went ahead and spoiled myself with one share :-)
(I'll share more on why in a later post.)

VNQI is Vanguard's Global REIT ETF that excludes the U.S.  I already have the U.S. REIT mutual fund so this is just a bit of diversification.  A really itsy bitsy tiny bit.  But I will be buying more.

1 share of VNQI at $53.66 per share.

Additionally, I also received a dividend about a week ago from my Starbucks holdings.  The total amount was $4.01 which translated into 0.073 shares that were reinvested.  Sorta funny because $4.01 doesn't even buy you a tall cappuccino where I am (at least not after you factor in tax) but it will get you close to that.  Suppose once a quarter SBUX is giving me a free coffee or will be in the future :-)

Total dividends earned thus far this year are about $238 which isn't too shabby but most of that comes from my REIT mutual fund.  I am expecting to get a bunch of dividends next month as well as potentially some short or long-term capital gains.

I also made my transfers to various savings accounts and over-paid my mortgage last week.  I will update all the necessary pages in the coming days.  (It's busy right now and the heat is making life difficult.  But I will do my best to update as soon as possible - have the info handy just too tired to do so right now.)

Pru

End of the month purchases

I suppose that title should really be last day of the month...still some investments were made!  I literally made these investments on my phone while walking to work on Friday.  Not my finest hour.

- 2 shares of VYM at a price of $69.67/share = $139.34
- 2 shares of VYMI at a price of $55.81/share = $111.62
- $200 invested in my Energy mutual fund at a price of $48.73 = 4.104 shares

Also received a dividend from the settlement fund of $0.24 on Friday.

I still have about $600 to invest which I will combine with May's investment money to buy more of UL this week.

What wasn't done in April was the transfers to savings - more because I just didn't have a lot of time during the past week to do anything personal (it was ALL about work!).  The money is there so those transfers will occur this week.

Pru

This week's trades and a small dividend

This week I made a few purchases.  Early in the week I invested an additional $200 into my Energy mutual fund and received 4.624 shares.

Then yesterday I purchased 4 shares each of my two high yield dividend ETFs (VYM and VYMI).

This past week I had a look under the hood of my ETFs and I really liked what I saw - especially on the international one which is a brand new ETF.  Highly recommend that if you own an ETF or a mutual fund to look at the underlying companies.  So far I have not been surprised.  But it's something to do before you buy and from time to time as the underlying companies can change and you may decide you are no longer comfortable with that fund. 

Also, my one Walmart share paid me a $0.50 dividend which equal to 0.007 shares.  This, like all my dividends, was reinvested.


(All pages have been updated to reflect the dividends and investments.)

My portfolio is generally down - well any increase is due to the new investments and not to the value.  However, I am not stressed about it as this is a 10 year plan (9.75 years remaining...).  The overall values will increase!  Okay they may not and that would really suck but most likely they will :-)

Pru

Dividends, trades, and catching up

Oh my!  It is April already - not sure if I should smile or frown.  March 2016 was a bit of a whirlwind foggy month for me.  I didn't manage to buy any stocks although I had wanted to.  So that will definitely happen this month.

I have updated all my pages so the balances are as of Friday April 1st.  Although I am taking a long-term view (i.e. knowing the market goes up and down), it is fun to see how I've done.  Since the end of January 2016, I have made about $1,900 (pre-tax).  So the value of my investments has gone up about $3,800ish and then I've backed out the cash investments I made.  Of course I don't intend to sell right now so it's a moot point.

Lots of dividends came rolling in the last couple weeks of March.  Well not lots but something.  Everything was reinvested.  The biggest dividend came from my REIT mutual fund ($215) which almost doesn't feel fair to count (but I'm going to!).  Most of the funds in my mutual funds are from pre-blog days but for calculation purposes I will still include them since it just makes it easier on me and my record keeping.  

In addition to the REIT dividend, I also received $1.91 (VYM), $0.34 (VYMI), and $0.70 (PEP) - all were reinvested.  There was also a cash dividend of $1.73 from my money market settlement fund.  The money market settlement fund dividend is particularly large because I had transferred some non-blog related funds into it.  I don't expect to have a dividend this big coming from the settlement fund ever again!

Back to April!  I have schedule a trade for tomorrow as I realized that I completely forgot to purchase more of my Energy mutual fund in March and I believe February as well.  I want to slowly increase that balance.  I will post the details next week (or weekend).

The remaining monies in the settlement fund will either go towards purchasing 10 more shares of Unilever (UL), shares of a new stock, or purchasing more of my dividend ETFs (VYM and VYMI).  This will happen this week.

While I would like to increase my holdings of WMT, PEP and SBUX, the prices are a little rich.  Even INTC which is trading just above $32 feels a tad rich (since I bought the last shares at $29).  I am not sure that INTC will come down though but SBUX may.  

As for the new stock, I am actually looking at Ford (F).  Not sure on this though - need to do some more reading.  I may buy a few shares of Ford as well as my dividend ETFs and save Unilever for later in the month when I make my "April" trade.  (These current trades are using March monies.)


Wishing all a very happy and wealthy April 2016!

Pru

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

Let the money come pouring in!

Okay that title is a tad misleading.  But just saying "Dividends Update" would have been a bit boring.  One day in the not-so-distant future, however, the money will be pouring in me hopes! :-)

But I have received a bit of money.  Specifically I received $0.09 in my money market settlement fund on 2/29/2016.  The cash that is in there is just in a holding pattern until I can deposit more cash in the next couple of weeks and then invest it properly.  But that is 9 cents that I will gladly take!

And on March 1st, my Intel stock (INTC) paid me a princely (princessly) sum of $6.50.  (It was actually 0.217 shares that were reinvested at a price of $29.93.)

In less than 3 months I have earned $10.64 or about $1.50 over the past 7 weeks.  Not bad, not bad eh?

That $10.64 will buy me a lunch (sandwich and chips).  Or it can buy me 5-6 boxes of non-sale pasta that would last me over a month eaten every day.  Right now it would buy me 2 bags of 3-4 lb oranges.  

It isn't quite enough to pay any of my bills.  (My lowest bill is my utility one and that is $40 for the last month - bill received yesterday.)  But I am definitely on track to pay a few utility bills this year just on the basis of a few dividend paying stocks.  

I should receive a few more dollars this month since most of my stocks and my mutual funds pay on a quarter basis.  Stay tuned!

The Dividends & Capital Gains page has been updated.

Pru