May 2015 Recap

Well another month is in the books and it has certainly been action-packed to say the least. Multiple birthdays, Mother's Days, graduations, massive flooding, six state road trips, and as always long work weeks kept me busy throughout the month. A lot of months tend to blur together and it is nice to have unique events/experiences to break the dull monotony that sometimes takes hold in my life. I also bought my wife a 2002 Pontiac Trans Am WS-6 that is totally BADASS! This is not an investment although she thinks it's a great investment. Actually I dig it as well even though the only time I will get to drive it is when it need gas. :-)

On the investment front things were relatively uneventful. I still managed to add a little to my passive income this month. After adding a record amount of cash in April, I tapered things back in May and contributed under $1000 not counting dividend reinvestments. I also received my first Adsense payment which is a nice complement to my dividend and interest income. Finally, I sold a BBL 55 call option that seems unlikely to be exercised before it expires in September.

I am really looking forward to what lies ahead in June. It should be a great dividend month and I am looking forward to continue volatility in the markets. I hope everyone has a great summer and I hope each of you stays relentless in your pursuit of FI. I know I will regardless of market conditions.

My current forward passive income is hovering around $16,500 and would love to go ahead and just blow past $17,000.


Anyway, here is the summary of my passive income for May.

Dividends/Interest

• AHITX --- $257.17
• HCP --- $186.45
• T --- $174.99
• KMI -- $112.68
• PG --- $82.43
• APU -- $70.83
• VZ --- $65.88
• CAT --- $50.23
• CLX --- $39.98
• PAYX --- $35.32
• TIS --- $35.00

Total taxable investment income is $1110.96.

Other non employment income is $114.25 from AdSense.

Total passive income is $1225.21.


New capital invested

• NEA --- $4754.69
• WPC --- $1763.75
• XOM --- $1050
• SO --- $750
• JNJ --- $500
• BP --- $500
• PG --- $300
• KO --- $300
• WMT -- $250
• CAIBX --- ($9231.00)

Total capital invested is $937.44.

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

Weekly Sharebuilder Purchases

Houston is a mess today! At least the multi-year drought should be over. :-)


Here are my automatic investments for this week.

• SO:  5.83 shares @ $42.88 --- Yield  5.06%
• XOM:  2.92 shares @ $85.69 --- Yield  3.41%
• WMT:  3.32 shares @ $75.34 --- Yield  2.60%

Total capital invested is $750 ($250 in each company). The combined yield of these purchases is 3.69% and will add $27.67 to my yearly dividends.


Also, here is the purchase from last week (5/19).

• JNJ:  1.96 shares @ $103.76 --- Yield  2.89%   ($5.78 added to my yearly dividends.)

Well I really enjoyed getting out of the hamster wheel for a week and spending time with my extended family. I don't take much time off from work, so when I do I really appreciate decompressing and just living. Right now I am back at work, full throttle ready to make and invest money to continue building my own dreams!

It looks like I got a break today with the markets retreating a bit. Energy, utilities, REITs, and bonds are looking very interesting to me right now.

I just noticed Shell is close to $60 a share. I may make a larger purchase today.

Companies on my radar for next week include RDS-b, BBL, XOM, BP, CVX, SO, WMT, GM and PM.

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

Blog Stats & My First Google Payment

Today I received my first ever payment from Google. Obviously this is NOT a dividend payment since GOOG doesn't pay dividends. Instead it is my first Adsense payment and it is a whopping $114.25.

I first decided to include ads on the blog around Christmas 2014, so it took about four months to qualify for the first $100 payment. Realistically I could have probably collected aluminum cans and made more money. However, that would require actual work so I probably would have bailed on the idea pretty quickly.

Also here is the latest info on my blog courtesy of Blogger. I started using Google Analytics about a month ago, but I haven't figured out a way to cut and paste a nice clean graph yet.

According to Blogger, April's page views came in at 27,856. As I have mentioned in the past, the Blogger pageview count seems much higher than the actual count. This turns out to be the case as you can see below in the May MTD pageview count comparison.


May 01 through May 21

Blogger pageviews --- 18,378
Google Analytics pageviews --- 13,697

So as you can see, the difference is almost 4700 and that is for only three weeks.

Again, the graph below is from Blogger, but it is the only graph that I can cut and paste....and Yes I am sure there is probably some way that I could export an Excel spreadsheet or Google Docs spreadsheet. Actually I'm not sure that I could do this, but I'm sure many of you probably could. Actually who cares if I can or can't export a graph. Cutting and pasting the Blogger graph works for me and will continue to work for me.

Anyway, I haven't posted much this month, so I will not be reaching new highs. My MTD Adsense total right now is only about $12. Like I mentioned above, it takes a hell of a lot of page views to earn any real money. If I ever reach $50 in a month, it will be a miracle.






I hope everyone has a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend.

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

Gone Fishing

On vacation this week. I will be buying $200 worth of JNJ tomorrow. Will be back next week.

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

Bond Purchase: NEA

It has been over a year since I have added any bonds to my portfolio. Over $130k in stock investments with no bond action. While I love dividends, I also love interest and tax free interest at my current income level (ie 33% top tax rate) is even better.

The yield is somewhere in the 6% range and will add around $287.70 to my yearly interest income.


Action: Buy
Symbol: NEA
Description: NUVEEN TAX FREE ADV MUN FD
Quantity*: 350 shares
Execution time: 05-13-2015 10:47 ET
Price: $13.5649714286
Total Commissions & Charges: $6.95 
Total Transaction Amount: $4754.69
Trade Settlement Date: 05-18-2015 

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

Weekly Sharebuilder Purchases

Here are my automatic investments for this week.

• WPC:  7.88 shares @ $63.46 --- Yield  6.00%
• BP:  11.69 shares @ $42.78 --- Yield  5.61%
• SO:  11.52 shares @ $43.37 --- Yield  5.00%
• XOM:  5.73 shares @ $87.26 --- Yield  3.35%

Total capital invested today is $2000 ($500 in each company). The combined yield on these purchases is 4.99% and will add $99.80 to my yearly dividends.

Gotta love how the market plummets at the open and then my buys go through near the days high. :-(


Mutual Fund Sale

• CAIBX --- 150 shares @ $61.54 --- Yield  approx. 3.9%

This transaction took place on Friday and I received $9231 this morning. This sale will reduce my yearly dividends by approximately $360.93.


With a variety of expenses coming at me during the next couple of weeks, I will not reinvest everything right away. With that said, the way the market is bouncing around today, I might still pick up a position or two before the end of business today. We'll see.

Sectors that look interesting right now include interest rate sensitive names within REITs, utilities, and telecoms. Some energy sector and consumer names also look appealing. In particular I am watching HCP, WPC, SO, T, WMT, PG, XOM, GM, and JNJ. On the more speculative side, I am also watching TIS and NOV.

REITs are really taking it on the chin right now similar to the way oil companies did six months ago. It's really exciting to watch things play out. Stay alert!

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

CLX raises dividend 4.05% --- New yield is 2.88%

Today Clorox announced that it is raising its quarterly dividend from $.74 to $.77 a share. This is a 4.05% increase and the new yield is 2.88%.

The record date is July 22nd and the pay date is August 7th.

Since I currently own 54.45 shares, my yearly dividends will increase by $6.53.

While I was hoping for a larger increase, 4% is not surprising especially after the 3% increase from Procter last month.

DEFY MEDIOCRITY