Am I too Overweight in Mutual Funds?

As investors, one of our favorite words is diversification.   We are taught to diversify our portfolios to avoid exposure to any one particular investment or sector of the market and achieve balance.  One of the easiest ways to achieve diversification is through purchasing mutual funds, which I did at the beginning of my investing career.  However, now that I have grown as an investor and now own 30 individual stocks, I wanted to take a look back at my current mutual funds to determine if too much of my portfolio is allocated to these diversified holdings.  It is time to take a look at the five mutual funds I hold and determine if ACTION needs to be taken.

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Lanny’s November Dividend Income

We are now entering December!  Gearing up after this one for the FINAL dividend posting and last month + to reach your annual goals.  Extremely excited for things coming down the pipeline and dividend income will be looking solid going into December.  Now… to the numbers!

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Lanny’s October Income & Expense Summary

October is more than officially in the books after a quick review of the income & expense breakdown for the month.  It was another fun overall month, busy with work, travel, clients and other activities.  I wonder if I still am achieving the 60% savings challenge?  Only one way to find out, let’s check out my income & expense summary for October!

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Dividend Impact of a Potential Acquisition for Norfolk Southern (NSC) Shareholders

One of the reasons why I love investing in dividend growth companies is that management has many tolls at their disposal to generate value for their shareholders.   The easiest manner is to announce a share buyback program or a dividend increase, which have minimal impact on the operations of the companies.  However, if management is looking for a larger splash, they can always spin-off a business unit, merge two companies out of no-where (See Kraft) or even sell the company to the highest bidder.   All of these scenarios have different impacts for us dividend growth investors.  Today, I wanted to take a look at one of the rumors that has been floating around for the last couple of weeks and analyze how the move would impact my forward dividend income.  Let’s dove into these Norfolk Southern (NSC) buyout rumors.

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My Phone Battle & Success with AT&T Cable & Internet

Well, well, it seems as though Bert was driving off of what I was able to accomplish with my mom’s package with AT&T recently/earlier this month.  You know how this battle goes – price is too high, you don’t want to pay/can’t afford that service, want to save money to invest/act more frugal, but that does mean one thing we all dread… Calling your cable/internet provider.  Luckily, I don’t have cable at my house, but my mom does, to which she wants to keep it.  Well, I wanted to put the gloves on and go to battle for her, did I come out the victor?  Let’s see how this went down and who stood at the end…

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Realty Income (O) Stock Analysis

I have a little capital to invest over the next few weeks and I am looking to make a splash with my next purchase.  It has been a few weeks since I purchased my last stock and I am starting to get the itch to invest again.  I still have just under $200 to go to achieve my goal of reaching $2,750 in projected dividend income by the end of the year, so I want my next purchase to count.   Don’t worry everyone, I’m not chasing yield, I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.   My focus is shifting to a company that I am shocked is not in my portfolio by now and I may be the only investor in the dividend growth investing community to not own this stock.   It is time to run Realty Income through the Dividend Diplomats’ Stock Screener.

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Interview with Tawcan

Last month we announced that we were going to begin an interview series and help share some of our favorite dividend bloggers with the community.   We think our first interview of one of our favorites, Dividend Hustler, went really well and hopefully many of you found out why Hustler’s kindness and humor make for one entertaining blog.  Couldn’t be happier to have gotten to know Ty.  Now, we wanted to interview another one of our favorite bloggers….Tawcan!

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