5 Financial Mistakes I Made in My 20s and How They Cost Me Thousands of Dollars in Dividend Income

Posted on July 23, 2018 by DividendDiplomats

Mistakes. We’ve all made them. I’ve made my fair share of mistakes over the years, professionally and personally. Sometimes, the best way to learn is to experience the pain yourself. It is funny, my mom and I were talking over the weekend and she told me that my grandpa always used to tell her that “learning is expensive.” This didn’t specifically relate to education, either. This related to different life situations her and my dad encountered over the years. This year, I’ll be turning 29. My 20s will soon be in the rear-view mirror. I’ve made plenty of financial mistakes over the years that have likely cost me a lot of dividend income. With the benefit of hindsight, I wanted to share my top 5 financial mistakes and calculate the true impact they had on my life and my dividend income.

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Bert’s Fourth Quarter Goals Review

Posted on January 8, 2018 by DividendDiplomats

Goals. Man setting lofty and ambitious goals are so important to achieving success. I’m relatively new to the goal setting process and only started doing so just a couple of years ago. At first, I only set annual goals; however, after the third quarter, I took a new approach to setting goals. I created a list of four life and finance goals to compliment my lofty annual goals. The thought was I could focus on taking care of both little and big rocks during the quarter instead of focusing my attention solely on those lofty annual goals. In this article, I plan on reviewing these four fourth quarter goals. Let’s take a look at these goals and see how I performed.

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Dividend Diplomats’ Recent Buy – AT&T (T)

Posted on November 10, 2017 by DividendDiplomats

We weren’t kidding with our dividend stock watch lists posted earlier this month, expected dividend increases and even tweeting about how the market is opening up opportunities. It is always exciting when dividend aristocrats go on sale and one has capital to deploy. Due to the frugal lifestyle that Bert & I live, we were able to strike when the stock market took a few steps back. The end of October & early November has opened up quite a few opportunities in the dividend investing arena and what do Dividend Diplomats do best? You called it, brother, dividend investing of course! Let’s dive in to see our recent purchase that we both ended up buying for our respective dividend stock portfolios!

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Bert’s Q3 2017 Goals Review

Posted on October 29, 2017 by DividendDiplomats

Three quarters down, one to go. 2017 is rapidly coming to a close. October is one of my favorite months. My wife and I love the fall weather, playoff baseball is back, and some of my favorite holidays are right around the corner. If you recall, at the end of December I set five goals for myself. I knew some of the were stretch goals, but it has been a blast aiming for them anyway. Each quarter Lanny and I review our goals to check our status and see what possible changes may need to be made. Let’s jump in an perform my Q3 goals review.

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My Recent Stress & Finding New Ways to Combat It

Posted on August 26, 2017 by DividendDiplomats

The last month or so for me has been, oh how do I say it…crazy. And I’m not going to lie, a lot of the craziness and stress has been self-induced. Through all of this, I’ve learned that a lot of my typical de-stressing activities were suddenly not doing the trick anymore. It has slowly trickled through to a lot of different aspects of my life and it sucks. At times, my typical upbeat self has felt anything but that. With typical methods not working, I have been searching for other means to de-stress.

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Bert’s Recent Buy – Cardinal Health (CAH)

Posted on August 24, 2017 by DividendDiplomats

Recently, I’ve had an itch to purchase a stock and I was motivated as heck to scratch the itch. The motivation is coming from all directions. Whether it was from seeing my cash balance increase since I have been hoarding cash while preparing to move into our house, seeing impressive growth rates in our monthly dividend investing income summary from the community, and quite frankly, watching Lanny to continue to add to his portfolio and see his dividend income soar. We all motivate each other and push each other, and seeing all of you crush it has motivated to move some cash from my recent “hoard” to my investment account and add a company that is on my last watch list. I still have a long, long, way to go if I am going to catch Lanny. But heck, I have to start somewhere, right?? All, check out why I added to my stake in Cardinal Health, Inc. (CAH) the other day.

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Bert’s July Dividend Income Summary

Posted on August 5, 2017 by DividendDiplomats

2017 is flying by. I barely know what hit me for work here in July. Between travelling for work and gaining possession of our house, I have barely had time to sit down, relax, and focus on things. But I must say, I couldn’t be happier doing some of the house work and I am finding it fun and therapeutic (especially when I am listening to music while painting). Before I knew it, July was over and it was time for me to recap my performance and write my July dividend income summary. Let’s see how I performed during the month.