Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Monthly Progress Review: March

It is time for my Monthly Progress Review.

Listed below is a summary of the dividends I received, as well as the purchases I made for the month of March:



Dividends Received
In March I received the following dividends:

*JNJ - $43.82
*SO - $28.55
*WM - $25.96

Therefore, for the month of March my dividend income total was $98.33

I did not mention this in last month's update, but I wanted to take a moment now and explain what I do with the dividend income I receive each month.  Simple. I do the most important thing you can do with dividend income - reinvest it. I cannot stress the importance of this enough and will discuss this topic in more detail later.

Currently, my positions in the eleven stocks I own, I believe, are not large enough to where it is beneficial for me to what I call 'strategically reinvest' my dividends (ie pick and choose the places to reinvest the dividends received; rather than automatically reinvest each portion back into the company that issued them). I expect by the start of next year, however, I will be at a point where it will make sense to implement this strategy.  For now, however, it is all about building shares! I will speak more in depth on this topic in a future article.

Purchases
In the month of March, I made no new stock purchases.  This is the second month in a row where I have not made a new purchase in my income portfolio (and I must say I am a little apprehensive).

However, that said, I still invested money this month.  For the month of March, I decided to contribute to my Roth IRA (Retirement planning should never be overlooked!).  I keep my ROTH IRA through Vanguard and feel blessed to have such low expense ratios!  Nevertheless, in order to maintain pace with my income investing goals I will have to 'make-up' this month sometime in the future.

As always, I welcome and appreciate your thoughts and comments.  Please comment below.

That's all for now.  I will post my 2nd article, On Dividends, in my portfolio analysis series in two days.

DivPartisan

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8 comments:

  1. Do you buy your share directly from a company or do you buy from a brokerage form?

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  2. KILYJAH,

    I buy from a brokerage firm (USAA). I use them strictly because it is easier to manage all holdings in one place. Though I pay a little more in commissions ($8.95), I try to spread this cost by investing over $1k at a time.

    Let me know if you have any other questions,
    DivPartisan

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  3. I also use USAA, and have my Dividend Stocks in a Roth IRA. Are your dividend stocks in an IRA, or just a brokerage fund?

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  4. I love USAA and do almost all accounts through them. You really can't beat their customer service or insurance rates. My dividend stocks are in a brokerage account. As for my roth IRA, I do that strictly through Vanguard.
    Let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks,
    DivPartisan

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  5. Great month and these are my favorite articles. Talking and writing about receiving cold, hard cash from our favorite companies is why we do what we do. Keep up the great work!

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  6. I want to wish all of us the best....I started investing a little after I lost my job last year,so I am not where I was hoping to be at the moment...The good thing is I got all the the in the world to read about accounting and personal finance....Remember you allways have some thing its what you do with it that counts.
    Mantra and Partisan I love both of you all blogs....Keep up the good work..I will see you all in freedom.

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  7. How do you all valuate a stock???

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  8. KILYJAH,

    I am sorry to hear about your job. It is great to see that you are having a positive outlook despite the difficulty.

    As far as valuating stocks, I start by using Morningstar's rating system; then I look at it's PE ratio, balance sheet and YTD prices, and finally, I try and see what other investors think it's valued at. I would definitely say I need to improve in this area, but fortunately when you follow a buy and hold strategy, over the long run your entry price is not as substantial as day trading or some similar strategy.

    Thanks for reading,

    ReplyDelete