Dividend Epiphany is born

Hello everyone.  Welcome to Dividend Epiphany.  I 'm a soon to be 35 year old civil engineer living in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the most expensive places to live in the United States.

I wanted to document my journey to financial independence through dividend investing.  I'm not sure if anybody will follow but I feel this will keep me accountable with my future goals.

I have three goals from Dividend Investing:

1)  Retire earlier than expected.  My plan is 58.  This is the break even mark where I'll make the same retired (from my pension) or working.

2)  Be able to pay most if not all of my future kid(s)'s college education.  No kids yet, but plan to start having some in the next year or two or three.  I'd like to thank DL for opening my eyes to that possibility and my reason for the name of my blog.  I figured this might be a better avenue than a 529.  I can also grab my Roth IRA contribution (without being taxed) if my taxable account falls short.

3)  Be able to pass this on to my wife and especially my future kid(s) so they won't have to stress about money and maybe future generations can grow it from what I started.

Why now?

All I did was save.  It was the thing my parents instilled in my sister and I.  It's a valuable trait to have especially living in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Things are just so expensive.  I started working at 21 after college.  I saved and saved and put pretty much put all my savings into my current house in 2005.  Let's say I had to win a lottery just to be able to purchase this house in a new community.  During the housing crash, I could buy almost 2.5 of the same house.  Yup definitely no bueno, but I made it work.  Currently, I'd say 60% of my current take home pay goes into the mortgage, taxes, insurance, which leave the other 40% on bills, food, gas, etc.  I saved very little from my paycheck or had to go into my little savings account.  In late 2012, I got married and my paycheck had to cover two people now so we lived pretty much paycheck to paycheck until now.  My wife got a job.  Woohoo.  I thought about buying stuff but nope I want to save.  The plan is to save her entire paycheck.   We plan to save a small percentage towards a savings fund, maxing out both of our Roth IRA (Could also be used as an emergency fund), and the rest towards a taxable account.

My regret is not doing this sooner.  It's something I'll be teach my kids about so they can be financially independent in their 40s or even earlier.

This blog will follow both Roth Accounts and the taxable account.  My wife will be using a Vanguard target fund for her Roth.  We will put the same amount in both Roth accounts so it will be interesting to see if I manage my Roth IRA better than Vanguard.

I will not be able to regularly contribute to to the taxable account, which I will lovingly call The Fund (I know catchy right?), until April at the earliest so we can fund $3k for my wife's 2013 Roth IRA contribution.  I have my $3k ready to use starting tomorrow. Stay Tuned.   I wanted to max out our contributions for both 2013 Roth's but $3k for both was all we could afford.  Starting in 2014 and future years they will be maxed.