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When people talk about frugality, something that gets kicked around quite often is the Latte Factor. That is people who go to Starbucks every morning and drop $5 on a specialty Latte when they could just make a cup of drip coffee at home and save themselves $4.80 each day, which adds up to over $100/month and more than $1000/year. And I get that. Frugality is all about the small choices you make each day…
My old English teaching friend and I have been talking about various options for where to move after Korea. I really could move to literally almost any country in the world because everyone seems to want a reasonably well-qualified and experienced English teacher. Except the only problem is that the places that are the most fabulous to live (ie: Thailand, Costa Rica, Eastern Europe) pay the least and are pretty weak on the benefits. While…
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%…
Perhaps one of the first things that someone would notice upon entering my bathroom is the minimalism of my beauty products when compared to others, especially most girls who have bathrooms packed with various products. But, I’m not really a typical girl and it’s just something that I don’t really care about. Sure, I like nice smelling things but when it comes to shelling out large amounts of money for them, well, I don’t like…
This month, I earned $310.41 in passive income. Everything was pretty normal except for my Iherb earnings, which increased significantly to $24.99, mostly due to their free shipping special for most of May. Anytime I can earn over $300 for very little effort on my part is good news! Here’s how May 2014 compared to previous years. May 2013: $386.06 May 2012: $380.02 May 2011: $243.11 May 2010: $49.22
These days, final exams are looming and I have a lot of grading and other stuff to do at the day job, so I’ve been neglecting my blogs and Squidoo and the social media that is so important to making it online. It’s frustrating. Enough so that I’m seriously considering limiting the amount of overtime that I do each week. My day job consists of 9 teaching hours, which requires an average of around 5-10…
In the past couple days, I’ve been thinking about boundaries and how they relate to teaching, which is my day job. I’ve been blogging about it over on my other blog: My Life! Teaching in a Korean Uni and I think a lot of the principles can apply to almost anything in life, particularly for the more famous and well-known online entrepreneurs/bloggers/podcasters who probably get hundreds of requests each day. Check out these 2 posts…
I used to the queen of the frugalistas when I was paying off my student loans. These days though, I’ve been toning it down a little bit because I have a substantial amount of money in the bank, and I actually make a lot more money than I did compared to say 5 years ago (almost double). So this means that I am willing to have things that increase my enjoyment of life (2 cats,…
I’ve been living in South Korea for almost a decade and have adapted pretty much to the culture/way of life here and actually like most things a lot more than living in Canada. Not that it wasn’t hard at first: it most definitely was. And the one thing that disturbed me perhaps more than others was the lack of clothes driers. Koreans just hang-dry and while I guess you could maybe, perhaps, possibly buy a…
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…
One of the podcasts that I listen to for inspiration and practical tips related to passive income is, “The Smart Passive Income” podcast by Pat Flynn. Pat is an upbeat kind of guy and extremely savvy about the Internet business world. I’ve already learned a lot from him including the importance of podcasting (I’d like to start my own!), and why you can’t do everything by yourself (I’d like eventually get big enough to hire…
When I was a kid, my family went camping for basically all our vacations. We’d load up the car and meet up with the aunts and uncles and cousins at a lake near my Grandma’s house and do the usual camping thing. Swimming, building massive fires, napping, playing catch, eating and then thinking about the next meal. And we actually slept in tents, on the ground. These days, I still really enjoy camping. There’s something…
I’m quite fortunate in that I quite often don’t work 5 days a week; it’s usually 4. And, at my current place of employment, there are multiple campuses, which means that I’m usually only in one location for 2- 3 of those days. What does this mean? I truly don’t need that many work clothes, which can save a significant amount of money over the l0ng-term since I really only need 3 complete outfits to…
Lately I’ve been listening to the podcast, “The Suitcase Entrepreneur” and I’d highly recommend it. It features Natalie Sisson, who is doing well along the path of building passive income streams and being an online entrepreneur who travels the world, having lots of interesting adventures. Her podcasts are generally short and concise, but contain lots of interesting information and so far, I haven’t encountered any episodes that I’ve stopped 1/2 way through (a rarity for…
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%…
How to Buy Stocks: Explained Simply I get a lot of questions from my friends and readers of this blog who are new to the investing world about how to buy stocks. There are a few options for buying stocks, but the one I like the best (by far) is using an online discount brokerage. You can go with a full-service brokerage, but they are far more expensive and also quite unnecessary. Full-service brokers help…
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…
My passive income for the month of April 2014 was $274.64. You can see the breakdown of that in this Passive Income Report, as well as compared to previous months. Here is the data from previous Aprils: April 2010: 5.29 April 2011: 214.34 April 2012: 328.1 April 2013: 251.97 Overall, this month was a bit lower than other years due to decreased dividends. This year, March was a huge month for dividends, so it was…
I’m sure everyone would agree that pets are not cheap because you have to pay for things like: food, vet care, toys and a myriad of other things. I have 2 cats and I’m a big believer that it’s really possible to take care of them, cheaply. Here are some of my tips: 1. Order pet food online. In Korea at least, it’s far cheaper to order in bulk quantities online on a place like…
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…
Back in another lifetime, I hiked (most of) the Appalachian Trail, which is a 4000km or so hike across the USA. I fell into the ultralight category, which was strongly influenced the Ray Jardine’s book, Beyond Backpacking. Essentially, it’s carrying as little as possible in order to move long-distances with as little effort as possible. And this has carried over into my “real-life” these days. I have a few comforts, but really am okay living…
If you want to be a digital nomad and build up passive income streams, ESL Teaching might seem kind of like an attractive gig to get into. You get paid to live overseas. And you often get a free plane ticket (Middle East /Korea) as well as paid for, or subsidized housing. And you’ll have so much time to get your online ventures up and running. Sounds fabulous! Except the thing that many people forget…
Dave Ramsey is all about the emergency fund and I would most definitely agree with him. He advocates having $1000 in the bank until you pay off all your debts, excluding the mortgage. And then once that is done, build it up to 3-6 months of living expenses. These past few years, I’ve been really focused on making and saving my income from the day-job to invest in Dividend Paying Stocks and must admit to…
