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How often I look at my portfolio

I’m a long-term investor, which means that I’m more worried about what my dividend stock portfolio is going to look like in 10 or 20 or 30 years from now than I am about it in this current year. I know that there are lots of people who look at the market news and their brokerage account every single day and are paying attention to even little fluctuations in value. I would consider many of…

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Assumptions and why they’re not helpful

Everyone knows the old saying, “Assumptions make an ass out of you and me.” It’s kind of cheesy, but it’s definitely true in almost all areas of life, and especially with regard to personal finance. Just because someone doesn’t own a nice house and a fancy new car, doesn’t mean that they don’t have 200 000 or 500 000 or a million dollars in the bank. Maybe it’s that they choose to live a different…

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Payout Ratio

One of my favorite metrics that I use when determining which dividend paying stocks to buy is the payout ratio, which according to Investopedia is: “The proportion of earnings paid out as dividends to shareholders, typically expressed as a percentage.” It’s maybe helpful to think of it as similar to finances on a personal level. You have some money coming in each month and you can either spend or save it. Maybe you spend 50%…

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Buying Stocks: How Limit Orders work

When you’re buying stocks, there are a lot of different kinds of orders you can use. I generally understand the basics of most of them, but in actuality, I only use 1 type, a limit order. For the dividend stock investor who is investing for the long-term, it’s all you really need. Check out Investopedia for all the different stock market order types. Here’s how a limit order works: 1. Buying stocks. If stock ABC…

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How much income?

One of my friends recently asked me about how much money I would need to invest to earn a certain amount of money each month. It’s actually quite easy to explain, but the actual calculations are a little bit complicated. I invest in dividend paying stocks and ETFs that pay a certain amount of money out in dividends/year. I hold some things on the lower end, such as VWO (Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF) at 1.2%…

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Dividend Reinvestment

When you have dividend paying stocks in your portfolio, you get a share of the earnings paid back to you in the form of a dividend, usually around 3-4 times/ year (although it ranges from monthly to annually). They will automatically be added to your stock brokerage account and will impact the positive (you don’t have leverage), or negative balance (you are using debt/leverage). The exception to this is if you have an automatic dividend…

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Invest like a Grandma: Dividend Stock Investing

There are a million and one things to invest in that are far sexier than Dividend Paying Stocks. A quick list off the top of my head: IPO’s, options contracts, shorting, commodities, emerging markets, Bit coin and day trading. A lot of these things can actually make you a lot of money IF you know what you’re doing. And while I know the basics of most of that stuff, I’m certainly no expert and would…

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Stock Market Pyschology: Greed and Fear

When it comes to how psychology relates to the stock market, there are 2 emotions that dictate most individual investor’s decision: fear and greed. The so-called “Smart-Money” (hedge fund/mutual fund managers) should be making better decisions than the individual investor, but not always. Fear is rampant when the stock market is in fast decline and it leads people to do crazy things such as sell when stocks have hit their lowest points (ie: the crash…

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What’s in my Portfolio: Industrials

I have a few holdings that fall under the category of “industrials” and I love them because they just seem to plug along, making me money off dividends, increasing their earnings and causing me no stress or worry. Exactly the kind of companies I want in my portfolio. 1. Boeing Airlines(BA): 2.7% of my portfolio. Although they’ve had some problems in the past few years with their new airplane catching on fire, etc, they’re still…

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Trading vs. Investing

I’m an investor, which means that I invest my money in the stock market for the long-haul and don’t really care about the short-term fluctuations in the market. I lose no sleep if there is a crash and actually feel quite happy because I can pick up stocks that I want cheaply. Trading, on the other hand is for the purpose of making money off the fluctuations in the market. You can make money when the…

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What’s in my Portfolio: Consumer Staples

I have a few things in my portfolio that are kind of hard to classify, so I’ve just included them under the category, “Consumer Staples.” They are things that consumers buy, usually habitually and over long periods of time. 1. Kimberly Clark (KMB): 4.8% of my portfolio. Everyone uses things from this company: tissues/feminine products/baby stuff, etc, which is basically the reason that I bought it. This company is one of the most “recession-proof” companies…

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What’s in my Portfolio: Gold and Silver

Gold accounts for 5.6%, and silver 2.2% of my portfolio.  I am really not as well-versed in this area as I am with dividend paying stocks and ETFs, so will just offer some very general thoughts. I use ETFs (GLD/SLV) to invest in them because it’s annoying and expensive to physically hold it.  Of course, you could just buy them from a store in your town or whatever, but I’m no expert and would actually…

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What’s in my Portfolio: Financial Stocks

Financial companies get a bad rap- often for good reason The whole financial sector gets a bit of a bad rap from the press, investors as well as the general public and for good reason: ridiculous compensation packages/poor financial management/extreme risk-taking/government bailouts.  However, it’s too big of a sector to overlook and the key is looking for the less-risky companies that have a proven record of good management. Here are the financial stocks in my…

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Passive Income Report: March 2014

For my February report, please see this post. But, onwards to March.  You can see all the details here, but the total minus interest paid to my broker was $466.44 US.  The large majority of it was in Dividends, and a big portion of that was NPK (National Presto Industries), which paid a special dividend of over $100. Compared to previous years: March 2013: 251.97 March 2012: 455.72 March 2011: 156.86 March 2010: 7.02 Similar…

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What’s in my portfolio: Tech

I’ve talked previously about my pharmaceutical holdings as well as the oil & gas companies that I hold.  You can also check out my complete portfolio, but today I’m going to talk tech. AAPL (Apple): 5% of my portfolio.  Check out the Dividend Monk’s AAPL report. INTC (Intel): 2.5% of my portfolio.  Check out the Dividend Monk’s INTC report. Tech companies are generally thought to be the high-flyers, which means that they often warrant a…

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Borrowing to invest

Basically all online stock brokers offer what they call “Margin” which means that you can borrow money from them to buy more stocks or ETFs or whatever you want.  Of course this isn’t free!  Brokers charge interest ranging from extremely low (ie: Interactive Brokers) to extremely high (will remain nameless). The reasons to not do this include “margin calls,” which is when you borrow too much money relative to the amount of actual money that…

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Investing in Pharmaceuticals: What’s in My Portfolio

Pharmaceutical Stocks: I Love You! I love investing in pharmaceuticals for various reasons, but essentially in the research I’ve done, it almost seems like a can’t lose thing. The US government basically props us these industries and does a lot of their research for them (or at least funds it) and then allows the company to patent the final product, charge ridiculous amounts of money for it and then guarantees that no other company can…

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