September 2016 Income & Expenses

The amounts below are cash amounts and are net of taxes, insurance, 401k contributions, HSA, etc. In other words, the amounts are what get deposited and withdrawn from my accounts.

Day job (take home pay) --- $12907.95
Dividends/Interest ---  $535.72

Total net income --- $13443.67

Expenses --- $6733 (Taken from Mint)

Savings  $6710.67 --- Rate  49.94%

After hitting a record low savings rating in August, I bounced backed nicely saving 50% of my income for the month. Expenses were still on the high side, but my income was my highest amount so far for 2016.

Considering I prepaid a 4 day cruise last month, I feel really good about last month and will continue to work on my daily living expenses, I have noticed a trend this year that "one-time" anomalies are becoming monthly occurrences so I better tighten things up.

My day job income was outstanding last month which was surprising considering the election is so close. October will not be as kind as we are tracking for our worst month of the year. Make hay while the sun shines I guess.

It also feels good seeing some real progress from the passive income front. I probably should start reporting my interest income from Lending Club as well. I might hit the $100 mark in October.

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

September 2016 Lending Club Update

I'm a couple of weeks late uploading my Lending Club Summary. These numbers reflect yesterday's balances and interest payments received. Pretty boring and consistent which I like.

I have been investing $25 at a time and now have 375 notes up from 310 notes last report.  I am continuing to use the automated note selecting mechanism which lets the computer spread the capital across a variety different loan grades.

Right now as you can see above, my current return is 6.65% after all defaults and past due loans have been written down.This return closely mirrors the predicted 6.68% return under the Platform Mix. Also, my monthly payments have increased to approximately $294.

The returns continue to bounce around like a pinball as notes are written down when they become past due. If and when the notes are made current, the return adjusts upward as expected.

As mentioned last update, I have seen the returns as high as 9% and as low as 3%. It tends to stay around 7% most of the time.

I will continue to invest $200 a week until I reached $10,000. At that point I will probably continue investing new capital, but may stick with higher credit borrowers.


2016 Net Annualized Returns

July --- 6.77%
August  --- 6.33%
September --- 6.65%

Recent Buy --- BMY

Today I decided to initiate a position in BMY.

• BMY:  35 shares @ $49.96 --- Yield  3.04%

Total capital invested is $1755.48 and this purchase will increase my yearly dividends by $53.20.

While the markets keep marching up towards the sky, BMY is actually down about 35% from $77 in June to the high 40s during the last 3 months. I told myself if the price hit $50 I would jump into a small position.

This company may require some patience as it has fallen hard through all kinds of resistance levels. I am planning on being a long term investor and will gladly add more if the price falls further. I actually feel really good about several of my recent investments. It's not often that your portfolio value surges up while companies you are underweight in drop in value. That is an awesome combination!!

I was close to adding T or NEA (muni bond fund) also. I will continue to watch these two along with other utilities/telcos as well as tobacco stocks like PM and MO.

Forward dividends are $4300.00

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

Recent Buys --- SO & MO

Today I added so high yielders to my portfolio.

• SO:  40 shares @ $49.53 --- Yield  4.52%
• MO:  35 shares @ $61.24 --- Yield  3.98%

Total capital invested is $4138.50 and the combined yield is 4.15%. These purchases will increase my yearly dividends by $171.80.

I already own 50 shares of SO and I thought the recent pullback would be a nice time to add a few more shares.

While I didn't have MO in my portfolio this year, I have owned shares in the past. It's hard to say if the shares are cheap, but I do know that this company rarely gives excellent buying opportunities. In fact, both the price and dividends appear to go straight up over time. If the yield gets close to 5%, I could see myself adding 200 shares immediately.

I was also closely watching T, VZ, and GIS. I would love to add shares all of these companies to my portfolio. On the lower yielding side of the pond, NKE and GILD are looking interesting.

Forward dividends are around $4250.

DEFY MEDIOCRITY

September 2016 Recap

The dividends photo is a tight squeeze so I'll manually type the summary below as well.

Here is the summary of the dividends I received in my taxable account.

• PFE --- $90.78
• XOM --- $77.30
• BP --- $67.18
• RDS-b --- $65.80
• GM --- $61.29
• WFC --- $51.30
• MSFT --- $29.52
• SO --- $28.00
• TGT --- $24.00
• TROW --- $12.42
• GILD --- $11.75
• GS --- $7.80
• NEA --- $6.88
• ESV --- $1.70

Total dividends received for September are $535.72.

September was a fantastic month for dividends and the investments from earlier months are starting to pay off....literally.  As always, I reinvested all the dividends back into the companies paying them.

As you can see I also added $18,419.83 in fresh new capital which increased my forward dividends by$584.88. 

The fourth quarter of this year should be really solid and I can't wait to continue adding more shares of great companies.

Forward dividends are around $4050.

DEFY MEDIOCRITY