Dividend income - September, October & November 2014

This is the true power of DGI. I haven't been very active for the last couple of months. Despite that fact, the money was still working for me! All I had to do was wake up every day and do my daytime job.

September 2014

KO $12.50
TICC $0.58

Total: $13.08

October 2014
T $22.08

Total: $22.08

November 2014
KO $12.50
JNJ $11.20
TGT $14.56
AFL $7.41
MCD $9.35

Total: $55.02

After starting back in June, I would not have believed that this long term strategy could end up earning $55 in just a few months time. It was one of my goals to create an annual passive income of $200 in 2015, but I just increased this goal to $300, to reflect my new expectations.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas with your loved ones.

by Chopeh @ deviantart

Recent buy - August

Despite the fact I had to buy a new bike, I'm happy to announce a recent buy.

My job is asking a lot of my attention, so that's why I haven't been very actively blogging recently.
Hopefully I'm able to blog more in the near future, as I love to be part of this great community.


McDonald's (MCD)
Buy: 11 shares @ 94.77

This stock is in many portfolio's for a reason.
They increased their dividend for 39 years in a row and this year is no different.

Thanks for reading!


Disclosure: Long MCD

Income & expenses - August 2014

My bike got stolen
I live in a big city. As I was cleaning my garage, I had to park the bike outside. Unfortunately I forgot to put the bike back in the garage after I finished my work. So the bike was kept outside for about a week. More than enough time for some douchebag to steal it. A costly and stupid mistake from my side.


Normal account income
€3099 Salary
€100 Loan payment
€25 Loan payment

Normal account - expenses
€1013 Rent + utility bills + state tax
€527 Groceries + personal hygiene + cash withdrawals (usually spent on  groceries as well)
€351 Gas + car insurance + state car tax
€295 New bike
€200 Fun money (going out dinner, theater, sports, etc.)
€99 Payment to a student loan
€93 Cable TV + mobile phone + fast internet access
€68 Medical insurance (covers full cost of any hospital visit for example)

I withdrew some more money than usual. This is why the 'groceries' are more expensive than usual.

Broker account - in & out
€800 - For a new investment opportunity

Savings account - in & out
€200 - Remaining money at normal account at salary pay day goes to savings account.

Thanks for reading!

Stock analysis - August

In order to determine new purchase possibilities I use my watchlist.
As I do not want to pay full price, I added a column to find bargains.
This indicator does not make me buy the stock right away, it's just to determine which stocks require more research.

The best deals for this month are McDonalds, Universal Corp. and Deere & co.

McDonalds (MCD)
This major fastfood company does not require any introduction. As a matter of fact, I don't think there is anyone reading this blog who has never heard of McDonalds.

Stock wise it is also a very popular stock amongst DGI bloggers.
With their recent downfall, it is currently trading at very affordable levels.

MCD has a yield of 3.43%, a 3 year DGR of 11.35% and a P/E of 17.13

Universal Corp. (UVV)
Universal Corp is a tabacco merchant. They sell the most important ingredient for cigarettes to large manufactures like Philip Morris. They have been successfully doing so for more than a century, despite all the negativity around the smoking addiction worldwide.

UVV has a yield of 3.93%, a 3 year DGR of 2.08% and a P/E of 9.89.

Deere & company (DE)
John Deere is the largest company for agriculture machinery worldwide. A few relatives of me are farmers in Canada and their backyard is full of John Deere stuff. The recent drop in its stock price is probably due to their announcement to lay off more than 600 empoloyees in four of their plants.

DE has a yield of 2.82%, a 3 year DGR of 19.71% and a P/E of 9.3.

Conclusion
Both MCD and DE are suffering from various problems.
MCD took a large hit if you take a look at their recent (3m) graph. Although I would be in it for the long run, one could say that it would be pointless to take a stock which is still dropping. But how would we know?

UVV seems to be a healthy company, despite their very unhealthy product.
However, I am not happy with their lack of growth, especially compared to other companies in the same sector.

DE would be the best choice if I'd go by diversification of my portfolio.

At the end of the day I haven't decided yet.
Any thoughts?

Thanks for reading.

Dividend Income - August 2014

My broker pays dividend at the ex-dividend date.

This means August 18th was a good day for me.
Both AFL and TGT called ex-dividend last Monday.

AFLAC Incorporated
AFLAC called $0.37 in dividend. As I have 19 shares, this earned me $7.03.

Target Corporation
Target called an amazing $0.52 in dividend. As I have 28 shares, this earned me $14.56.

*Update*
This blogpost was published a little bit too fast.
Today, I received additional dividend from JNJ.

Johnson & Johnson
JNJ called $0.70 in dividend. As I have 16 shares, this earned me $11.20.

Total dividend for August: $32.79.

Below is a screenshot of my total dividend income for this year.

Thanks for reading!

Income & expenses - July 2014

Normal account income
€3243 Salary
€4 Return from a television service I stopped earlier this month

Normal account - expenses
€998 Rent + utility bills + state tax
€422 Gas + car insurance + state car tax
€350 Groceries + personal hygiene + cash withdrawals (usually spent on  groceries as well)
€296 Fun money (going out dinner, theater, sports, etc.)
€99 Payment to a student loan
€93 Cable TV + mobile phone + fast internet access 
€89 Medical insurance (covers full cost of any hospital visit for example)
€15 Clothing
€8 Usage of bank account + credit card

Savings account - in & out
€541 - Remaining money at normal account at salary pay day goes to savings account.
€800 - This went to my brokerage account as I try to invest $1000/month for now.


In comparison to last month, we went out for dinner once, instead of 4 times.
This reduced the fun money with about €100, which is huge to me.

We also baked our pizza at home, instead of take away. These home baked pizza's even tastes better!
Great way to save some money.


Thanks for reading!

Liebster Award!

A happy, healthy & wealthy girl nominated me for a Liebster Award. This is an award bloggers could give to each other in order to get to know him/her better. The goal is to answer their questions and then invite 5 other bloggers to do the same, with questions of my choosing. Thanks again for your nomination HHWG!

This were the questions she asked me.

1. Your favorite vacation spot

That would be New York. I'm from The Netherlands and back in 2009 I made a 4-week trip through the east- and westcoast of the States and that was amazing. New York has everything you need for a great holiday.

2. Your first stock

Actually, I bought 4 stocks at once, but KO was the first company I was confident enough with.

3. Your worst and best investment

My best investment to date would be TGT, which grew for 2.95%.
KO is my worse investment with -0.99%.
Please bear in mind: both these stocks have been in my portfolio for just 6 weeks, as I just started this journey.

4. Do you have pets?

No I don't have pets. On workdays I'm away for over 12 hours. That's not a good situation for a pet.
Perhaps in the future I'd like a dog.

5. What will you do if you win a lottery tomorrow?

First I'd take my parents to all the places they couldn't visit, because of financial issues.

Depending on the amount I win, I'd like to invest at least $100k in DGI.
If it's millions I'd like to start working parttime, like 3 days a week.


For my own nominations, I'd like to nominate the following blogs.

1. Dividendasaur

2. Dividend & Whisky

3. A dividend dream!

4. Dear Dividend

5. Pollie's Dividend

My questions for my nominees:

1. Did you try other methods of investing before getting into DGI?

2. What's your favorite movie?

3. If you have a spouse, does he or she support you with this journey?

4. Which book are you currently reading?

5. What's your opinion about Bitcoin and do you own any?

Recent buy - July

At my last post I did some research about a couple of blue chip stocks which are currently trading close to their 52w-low figure. Some of my readers gave me valuable advice, which is much appreciated!

Getting so much kind words and good advice from fellow bloggers is great to notice and I have to say this feels like a warm welcome in this very kind community, as I am just the little new guy in town.

Aflac (AFL)
Buy: 19 shares @ $63.02

My broker is very cheap with their transaction costs (about $1 per transaction), but the interface is very basic. Another downside is that it does not allow fractional stocks to be purchased. After last month purchases I had about €80 in my account as leftovers. After todays purchases I had about $25 in my brokerage account which was not working for me. This bothered me.

In order to put this money to work for me, I wanted to invest it in some company with a high yield. However, the price for this stock should be as low as possible, since I only had a few bucks left. It was then when I came across a handy website for this matter: DiviData.

At this site, I came across a company called TICC. This was the highest yielding company with more than 10 years of dividend paying history. This stock certainly does not belong in a portfolio focused on long term and growth, but I couldn't resist buying 2 shares at an amazing 11.92% yield. After just 2 terms of dividend from this company, the transaction costs will be covered. I'm probably going to sell this stock shortly after that, in order to use this capital to buy a new blue-chip stock, which I couldn't afford this month.

TICC Capital Corp. (TICC)
Buy: 2 shares @ $9.80

In other news, my watchlist is growing.
I added 52w high/low values to the list, in order to try to find a bargain.
However, this was not easy readable, so I added a percentage. This percentages reflects the growth of the stock, compared to its 52w low value. Hopefully this makes selecting stocks for further analyses a bit easier for me.

Thanks for reading!

Full disclosure: Long AFL

Stock analysis - July

As of July I have $1000 available to buy a new position.
I'm trying to get a diversified portfolio. My current portfolio consists of stocks in these sectors: Telecommunications, Consumer Staples, Healthcare & Consumer Discretionary.

This means my next purchase should be in one of the other sectors. Of course I take into account that I do not want to pay a full price for a stock, so it should be trading close to its 52-low at the moment.

Looking at my watch list, there are just a few safe options to go for: WGL, BMS & AFL.

• WGL Holdings Inc (WGL)

WGL Holdings Inc. is a public utility holding company serving the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region.
It has been paying dividends for an amazing 162 years. They have been increasing their dividends for 37 consecutive years now. Needless to say, this stock is about as safe as it gets.

Yield: 4.1%
DGR-1y: 4.6%
DGR-5y: 3.4%
P/E: 119

So the yield is pretty good and the DGR is average, but the P/E is very high. Not only compared by the S&P 500 but also compared to all other Dividend Champions in the same sector. I'm not a very experienced invester, so I searched for what this high P/E could mean. Several websites stated that 'Generally a high P/E ratio means that investors are anticipating higher growth in the future.'.

This sounds good, but are there any downsides to this?

• Bemis company (BMS)

Bemis is a global manufacturer of packaging and pressure sensitive materials with 2013 net sales of $5.0 billion. A large part of their business is related to healthcare. They have been paying dividends for 98 years, while raising dividends for the last 31 years.

Yield: 2.7%
DGR-1y: 4.0%
DGR-5y: 3.4%
P/E: 19.8

Seems like this company has average DGR numbers, as well as an average P/E, but the yield is a bit low. I'm not familiar with this company, even tho it seems like it's a multinational, with operations in almost every continent. Any thoughts?

• AFLAC Inc. (AFL)

Aflac is a major company in insurances. In the US probably most known for their payroll deduction insurance coverage, but especially in Japan Aflac is huge. According to their own numbers, 1 out of 4 life insurances in Japan in theirs.

Yield: 2.4%
DGR-1y: 6%
DGR-5y: 8.1%
P/E: 9.74

I feel like this stock is value for money. Due to the low Yen, they had a -5% result, compared to last year. This is probably the main reason the stock went down twice this year. The yield and the P/E are low for this company, but the growth rates looks promising.


Please share your thoughts on these stocks.

Thanks for reading.

Update on the goals

As of today, our national soccer team scored an amazing number of 12 goals during the World Championship.
This is good news, but not the news I want to talk about.

Save at least €200 annually on some unnecessary expenses
I've moved 2 years ago, but I was still paying some of the bills of my previous home. This is because my parents still live there. Two weeks ago I've talked to them and we agreed to change this. As of next month they will be paying their own internet and television bills. This saves me €564 annually!

Sell at least worth of €300 on Ebay
This is a difficult one for me. I'm not very good at selling stuff I don't use anymore. My Wii, several collectors editions of games and some old hardware have been eating dust for a couple of years now. This money should work for me, but instead it's devaluating each month. The deadline is in 2 months so I have to start sacrificing something for the greater good.

Stop buying expensive stuff I don't need
So far so good. The only temptation I had was the Steam Summersale. I love gaming and I have about 250 games in my library. Of those games, about 100 are never even started after buying them..
When I was in college I had a lot of time for gaming, but when you start living on your own and getting a fulltime job, there is little time left to spend on gaming. However, I had more money so I kept buying games..

I'd like to think it's some sort of addiction and I am trying to stop it! As I said.. so far so good. :)

Receive $200 on dividends annually by the end of 2015

I have amazing news on this one. My broker pays dividend on the ex-dividend date. AT&T annouced their dividend payout yesterday, which means I received my very first dividend today. This $18.77 ($22.08-$3.31 tax) may seem small, but I am very excited about this!

Thanks for reading!

Recent buy - June

My very first dividend yielding stocks are bought!

These are the stocks that I felt were worth my money.
You will find my short motivation below.

Please feel free to comment, as I'm very excited about this first step to financial independance.

• Coca Cola company (KO)

Dividend growing for an amazing 53 years. Very stable stock price, but has shown a steady growth over the last decade. Combine this with their nearly 3% yield and a 3-year DGR of 8.37% and this should be a great champion to start my portfolio with.

• AT&T (T)

One of the few IT related dividend champions in the list. This company originated in 1875, right after Bell invented the phone itself. Despite its age, the company succeeded to bring innovations decade after decade. Their 5.19% yield is huge, as it is amongst the top 4 of the dividend champions list, in this category. However the 3-year DGR of 2.33% is small.

Despite my focus to growth rather than high yield, I think this high yielding company is a safe stock to own.

• Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)

Life care will always be important. Johnson & Johnson provides millions of people with their medical supplies. I could not find any reason why this stock is risky or not worth anyones money. Their stats back me up fortunately. With an average yield of 2.3% and a 3-year DGR of just over 7% I think this is a great low risk addition to my portfolio.

• Target Corp (TGT)

Due to several problems this company has had, its stock price has shown a large downfall over the last couple of months. However, I'm confident that their new CEO will be able to solve these problems over time. Some experts are warning us for rough times ahead, but as always, we can't believe all rumors. Besides that, stocks in a DGI portfolio should be measured over the long run, not over the next months or two.


The company has a current yield of 3.0% and a top 3-year DGR of 23.44%, which makes Target the #1 of the entire Champions list, in this category. Given the price and these stats, I couldn't find a better stock to start my DGI career with.



My total portfolio could be viewed here.

Full disclosure: Long KO, T, JNJ & TGT

Goals are set!

My goals page is updated. It is important to set goals in order to achieve victory.

- Get my income and expenses categorized
Currently I have a general idea of my income and my expenses, but I want to know it exactly.
This data will be shared on this blog for inspirational purposes. If you can save 50% of your income, you will be financially independent in just 10 to 15 years. Isn't that great? I'm not sure if I can reach that, but I will definitely try!






- Determine which companies to invest my starting capital of €5000
If you want to start, start now. Determining which companies are worth my money is my first priority after categorizing my expenses.

- Generate an annual dividend income of $200 (December 2015)
At the end of 2015 I'd like to have received at least $200 of Dividend, passive income.
This is a small estimate, because although I'm confident, I do know that this method of investment is a long term activity. This $200/year does not seem much, but remember that my bank offers me approximately $60 in interest rate for my starting investment of just €5000.

Hello world

This blog is a personal blog about my journey to financial independance.

I'm 30 years old and I don't like the idea to work until I am 70 years old.

The tool to reach my goals will be Dividend Growth Investment.

This is a low risk investment method which doesn't make you a millionaire over night, but done correctly will return you more than your local bank offers you in interest nowadays.

I am by no means an expert on the subject, so please check out my blogroll for more experienced and inspiring people.

Thanks for stepping by!