I am on a mission here. It’s weird, we just transitioned our blog to a newly hosted domain site – this just helps solidify the goal myself and Bert are trying to attempt – Financial Freedom. I have started the year off with an initial dividend income projection goal of $3,200 and decided to not achieve it, but CRUSH it. What exactly am I doing to do this, where is my goal currently at and why?
We have begun this journey to Financial Freedom for different reasons between Bert and I. My mindset is completely focused right now on different income streams, especially and more specifically – Dividend Income paying stocks. I am a smooth 5.5 years into my investing career and have been fortunate enough to build an investment portfolio over $115K as this age with dividend income now, as we will dive into more deeply, projected at over $4,000! That is a whopping $333.33 at least per month in cash flow as I run outside, sleep in my mind, read the news or make tiramisu. So thankful and lucky, I’ve played a few cards right to this point, have done thorough research using our Dividend Income stock screener & have saved quite a bit of money every month to do this. Humbled and am in disbelief looking back at everything that’s happened.
Feeling Behind
However, even with these metrics, I sadly feel… behind. I know, that may sound weird, but I look at this investing community we are in, and they are all approaching over $4K in dividend income to upwards of $20K in dividend income. I mean wow, talk about the fierce motivation out there – yes – motivation, not competition, as this is a way to Peg yourself or to see where you want to be and beyond – so thank you everyone, such as DividendMantra, StartingFromZero, Dividend Pipeline, Dividend Life, DivHut, Retireby40, Cashville Skyline, to name a few (others at the Blogroll), for helping push me to new lengths. So I feel behind, but there are others reasons I feel behind…
My monthly expenses aren’t covered by this dividend income yet. My car, which is a Honda 2010 Accord, has had – for some great reason – Tire problems? I recently purchased 4 brand new tires and just last weekend, one of them popped, after a few thousand miles on it. I know it’s because of the glorified Cleveland-pot-hole/bad-road syndrome, but wow, I was disappointed and also upset. Upset because I know owning these types of assets are the unknown and unplanned liabilities it brings. With cars, for example, not only is there insurance, gas, tires, oil changes and other maintenance but there are further liabilities – sudden tire pops, potential traffic tickets, automated screen capture tickets, other people driving could hit you (as I’ve been T-Boned within the last 12 months, not fun), etc. I feel without some of these liability type assets I would be more ahead and more free, it’s weird. This past week I have taken the public transportation 3 times and… loved it. I felt that I didn’t have to worry about parking and paying to have my car somewhere. I didn’t have to worry as much about my car being broken into. I was saving gas and traffic road-rage. It was bliss. I also started to see what it’s like to only have public transportation and different individuals that you see. It was eye opening. I was happy, I liked it. Now don’t get me wrong – I love driving my car on a highway, listening to music and being in control of being able to get anywhere that I want. Also, Cleveland is a city where you more so need a car than don’t need one – as I am a traveling auditor and my family is ~30 miles away from me, with no public transportation to & from. That’s why I feel behind – as I have these items that are holding me down/back and technically lengthening the process of being financially free.
Additionally, 36% of my dividend income annually is from retirement accounts. What that means, is that, with all things constant, I will not be touching those assets or grabbing that dividend income until I am 59.5 years of age. Ouch and dang, that is a long time from now (33 more years!). However, as you remember – I have a plan of Maximizing my Roth IRA for 10 years and doing the match with my employer to set and forget it! With all this being said, I still feel behind due to a large % of my dividend income being in an account that I will not touch.
Why I CRUSHed $4,000 in Income & Set a New Goal
It’s September 16 and my projected Dividend Income is approximately $4,100 going forward. This is $900 more than my initial established goal of $3,200 at the very beginning of the year or 28% higher than the goal. As you can recall in my August Income Summary, I up’d the ante and made my new goal at $4,250 or 6.25% more than $4K and 32.8% higher than the initial $3.2K goal. I am out to CRUSH $4K going forward into 2015, for all of the reasons listed above. As a dividend income investor, I am looking for a pullback without a disruption in fundamentals on blue chips stock to add to current positions & create new ones. I spent the bulk of my time two weeks ago trying to tweak my monthly expenses to only one success – I increased my deductible on my auto insurance which decreased my premium roughly $115 for the year. Not too bad, but that’s not too significant. I looked to re-finance my mortgage, but I purchased my house in the fall of 2011 and the rate and price I purchased at was extremely low. Therefore, the payback period was just too far out to take the hit on the closing costs. Does anyone else have recommendations in decreasing my monthly costs? My auto loan rate is very low and I had no luck with talking to 3 different car insurance carriers that had a better premium than my current one.
This is why more dividend income is necessary – to cover all monthly expenses and part of the reason why I continue to purchase high quality dividend income producing assets. Going forward, I am even considering somehow changing how I transport myself from point A to point B as well, and experience a different side of life that way, as I think I could reduce gas costs and insurance costs, simply by… driving less? Who would have thought, right? haha I am buying dividend income stocks also because I feel this is what I learned in my MBA-finance program partly, what I would read about in books and, well, I understand it. Also – I’m having a gosh damn fun time doing this research, bouncing ideas off of the community, Bert and reading what others see. I want to keep crushing the dividend income targets and see the thorough research & actions come to life.
Concluding Summary
I’m having fun. I’ll be honest – this blog to me is so damn fun and being able to experience this with one of my best friends has been humbling, exciting and motivating. Every night I come home and am excited to read what others have written, respond back to comments and be a part of this community. This platform helps motivate me in CRUSHING my financial goals and put me into a place that I wouldn’t have been without it. I highly recommend to check out all readers mentioned above and I apologize on leaving names out – this was not on purpose! I will continue to crush these goals for the community, for Bert and also, in a very non-conceited way – myself. In the words of our hometown hero Lebron James – “I have a goal …and I won’t stop until I get it” Thank you.
-Lanny