April update

Hola everyone,

Happy Mother's Day to all the mother's that happen to come across this small blog.

Just a update from April.  A little busy so haven't been able to post or interact with other blogs as much as I'd like but I feel I can at least do a monthly update on what went on this past month.

I bought another $200 to the loyal3 account, broken into the same 14 companies.

I added $26.38 to the Fund.  Every bit helps right?  lol

I added $780 ($390 each to my wife' fidelity account and $390 to my roth account)

Let's see what else...Chevron with  a decent 7% raise on their quarterly dividend.  Awesome.

More after the jump....

March Loyal3 buys and March Dividends.

Well, my March monthly Loyal3 buys went through. From my previous post my monthly $200 breakdown is as follows:

$20 KO
$10 DIS
$10 DNKN
$10 HAS
$15 INTC
$10 K
$10 MAT
$20 MCD
$15 MSFT
$20 PEP
$10 SBUX
$20 TGT
$10 UL
$20 WMT

My buys were initiated on 3/20 and the share were bought a couple days later.  I have updated my portfolio to reflect the buys.

New Goal

I'm making changes to my goals.  I still plan on investing but I may not be able to contribute to The Fund account as much as I'd like but who said it would be easy to save. I'm keeping the same goals just adding one more.

If you were following from the beginning, I was planning on using The Fund to help me reach financial independence earlier than 58.  But also to use it as a way of helping pay for my future kid's college education instead of investing in a 529.  It didn't make sense to invest in a 529 when currently, my state (California) does not offer tax breaks for contributing to a 529.  Well, in late February, an assemblywoman from the San Francisco Bay Area introduced a bill to give a 20% tax credit (up to $500) for contributing to the 529.  Here are the specifics on the bill. Although it isn't a law as of yet, I feel it will get passed so I have added to my goals of contributing $2.5k to a 529 to max out on the tax credit.

You may be wondering how I can contribute to a 529 without a child.  I plan on opening up an account and have my niece as a beneficiary and contribute $2.5k to it per year just to get the tax credit when the bill passes.  If we are able to have children, I'll switch the beneficiary to my kid.  If we aren't fortunate, my niece will continue to be the beneficiary.  Either way, I get a tax benefit and my niece/kid(s) gets help with paying for college.  I say it's a win win.  

Plus, how can you say no to free money?  LOL  I certainly won't.  

Buys - KMI

I'm finally listening to my dad.  Well, I usually do, but I'm going to follow him without hesitation on his latest advice.  When I told him I was going to start my journey towards financial independence, he was telling me to invest in pipelines and railroads.  Well, I'm going to listen and follow him on my latest buy,

Yesterday, I invested in Kinder Morgan (KMI), an oil and gas pipeline company.  Looking at the peripherals, the only thing I don't like is the PE (27.33) is a little high but going forward it (21.25) will drop a little bit.  I like the projected EPS in the next 5 years is projected  to be +12.61%.  That will definitely help out to improve on my YOC of 5.16%

Yesterday, I bought $1000 of KMI for The Fund account.

I got 31.4668 shares at $31.78 per share.  I'm pleased with the share price although it has dropped a little since my purchase.

This new buy adds $51.61 to my 12-month forward dividend income in The Fund Account.

My new total is $237.49 in 12-month forward dividend income in my combined accounts ( The Fund, Roth, Allowance).

I have reflected the change in the portfolio tab.

Buys - TGT

Yesterday, I bought $1000 of TGT for my Roth IRA account.

I got 16.0515 shares at $62.18 per share.  I am ok with the share price.  It wasn't where it was a week or two ago before the 4th quarter results came out (better than expected) but based on my calculations, it's still a fair deal at the price I got.

This new buy adds $27.61 to my 12-month forward dividend income in my Roth Account.  I expect a dividend increase some time in the 3rd quarter so looking forward to that.  The buy is reflected in my Portfolio.

Buys

Well my loyal3 buys on the 14 stocks finally went through today.  I have reflected it in the portfolio tab.  I'm kind of disappointed the buys didn't go through on the 24th like I wanted.  Loyal3 buys in batches so  i probably lost $5 on share price on Target with the two day difference.  I'm not sure on the other stocks but Target did stick in my mind.  i guess it doesn't matter since i only invested $20 into Target but i was disappointed i didn't get the share price from monday instead of today.   I also checked my credit card and no additional fees were added to the transactiona.  So that was pretty sweet.

Update

Good news about Coke (KO).  Their dividend increased once again from .28 to .305.   That's pretty sweet.  I was expecting a smaller increase but I'll take it.

Also, thanks to Write Your Own Reality.  He gave me a heads up on a brokerage account at Loyal3, where it's fee free.  You can buy and sell stock for free.  Yes free.  You can do a dollar cost average (DCA) with your stock purchases.  There aren't too many available stocks to purchase but they do have some solid choices like coke, pepsi, mcdonalds for the dividend stock investors and solid stocks like amazon, google, bershire.  Another thing is DRIPs aren't available on majority of the stocks so you can pick and choose what to do with the dividend and since it's fee free, it's sort of like Scotttrade's FRIP.  Here's the best part, you can use your credit card to fund the transaction.  I know I have a 2% cash back credit card and with no fees, win win chicken dinner.