Weekend Reading – Sunday Night Edition

Happy Sunday everyone. The weather has been beautiful here in Cleveland and August could not have started off any better. It has been a great weekend in the dividend investing community as well and we have spent some time reading a lot of great articles this weekend.  It is an infrequent occurrence here on our website, but we wanted to take some time and put together a brief list of some of the articles we thought were great reads.   Let’s take a look at our Weekend Reading list, the Sunday Night edition!

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Bert’s March Savings Rate Summary

Each month Lanny and I challenged ourselves to save at least 60% of our income.   This high savings rate will allow us to jump-start our dividend income snowball by allowing us to invest as much as possible now and allow the power of compounding interest to do the rest!  Not only that, but I have found this exercise very beneficial as it allows me to take a hard look at my expenses each month and help me trim the “fat” of my expense outflow.   I have had a very successful beginning to 2015, as I was able to save 60% of my income in both January and February.  Can I keep the streak alive in March? Let’s dive into my March savings rate summary and find out!

Piggy Bank

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Lanny’s Debt Update

Debt.  What is debt?  Is this America’s Horror Story?  Is it chains strapped to your hands and ankles?  Well, by definition, Debt is “An amount of money borrowed by one party from another. Many corporations/individuals use debt as a method for making large purchases that they could not afford under normal circumstances. A debt arrangement gives the borrowing party permission to borrow money under the condition that it is to be paid back at a later date, usually with interest.”  Thanks Investopedia for that.  Debt can be used in two ways – to pay for something that we use day in/day out as a liability that does not generate cash for us OR debt can be used to leverage buying an asset that produces a greater return than the cost of the debt itself.  I have debt and I wanted to share an update where I stand based on today, Mid-April.

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