We are now going to create a Weekend Reading post of our favorite weekly reads and show the community – which one’s we’ve read and which one’s we’ll make a mention! These are articles that sparked our interest, intrigued us, challenged us and even taught us a few lessons.
The List
Our big motivator and journey-man Dividend Mantra had a great article about Saving More being more Effective Than Earning More. He used great examples about how someone can be saving 25% of $40K, but then gets a raise of $10K, boosting his savings to $20K per year, which still is only 40%, not a bad mark, but still someone who has saved 50% of their income and continues to do that ultimately gets to financial freedom faster. It all comes down to learning how to save 50% with lower amount of income, so that your expenses aren’t as high and you break down what you need/don’t need. Thus, any pay increase should even break the 50% barrier and reduce your time even more. Great read to learn why it’s better to save than to earn. If you have both – save and earn more – then you are on a rocketship to financial freedom.
Cashville talks about work/employment Burnout and how saving, planning and having options can reduce your stress. Being in public accounting – the dynamic is non-stop and the last 9 days I have worked until 1 am twice. I find at the place I work – the dynamic of our office is quite interesting and we don’t have the most highly motivated individuals, thus the burden of work projects gets tossed back up stream because the reliability isn’t there. Suffering from work burnout is bad. Great read.
DivHut has posted an article about Canadian Century Club stocks – or stocks that have paid out dividends for over 100 years! It’s quite interesting to see that all Canadian century club stocks are banks over there, which luckily one of us diplomats owns one (Lanny – CM). They are all relatively undervalued with P/Es below 15 and yields of 3.5%+ . Great post if you haven’t gone into the Financial Institutions area and are looking for a quality bank with great history.
RetireBeforeDad has continued his track record of increasing the monthly income from his investments and is geared to continue to make more moves into rental properties and also he highlighted the potential Bank of America dividend increase request. We shall see if that gets approved, but they are the last monster bank to raise their dividend. It should be interesting to see what happens there. Check out his page to see the different investments he entails and is embarking on into the future!
Retire By 40 had a great article about Why we Buy Useless Stuff. It is a very interesting read and shows why the US continues to buy junk, which ultimately fills the space that we live in, to the point where we either have to expand our living environment or get a storage unit to place all of this “Junk” that we continue to buy. When one is about to make a purchase – you should ask yourself – do I Need this or is this just a want? It’s all about knowing what you WANT out of life – possessions or experiences? I tend to opt for experiences when I have the chance. Lately, I’ve been buying too many things I think that I Believe I need, but really I more than likely don’t. This helps me re-evaluate the things I have to see what I can give away to the needy or sell online. Nice post.
See DividendLife use math to show which is better – Dividend Yield or Dividend Growth? Div Life also provides spreadsheets within the post so that we can tweak to see our own horizons. In the summary you can see – it all comes down to investing time period, goals, and possibly risk levels. Very interesting read to really get into a calculated formula for projections. Check it out.
Please check out these posts! They were very fun and great to read. Hope you all have a great weekend, talk soon!
-Diplomats