The Dividend Family Guy

Marching at the capital.  How proud I am of my daughter! I would like to say I am a buy and hold kind of guy but I am not.   Sometimes I sell if my portfolio is out of balance.   Sometimes I sell if the capital appreciation for a stock is worth 10 years of dividends at the current rate.   I look to reinvest my capital in something that will grow and pay more dividends in the future.   That pattern is performed in my tax sheltered accounts as I only plan to live off of dividends in my later years.   As for my brokerage I try to hang on to stocks longer to minimize my taxes. Besides my normal contributions to my 401k, below are the stocks I bought or sold.   Also included is how it affected my forward dividends. Stock Transaction Type Forward Dividends (yearly) Notes AmTrust Financial Services Sell -$534.48 6 quarters with no dividend increase Delta Air Lines, Inc. Buy

LED Bulb powered Santa With all of the holiday spending out of one's system it always seems easy to not buy anything in January.   By not buying stuff you are able to save a good bulk of your income.   With the new budget in place I set out to do exactly that. In an effort to be completely transparent with our money I created the budget and went over it with Mrs. DFG.   She had a few questions but overall was OK with it.   We both understand it is important to save for retirement (hopefully early.)   However with five children it can be challenging to create a plan where you are saving 75% of your income to reach FIRE.   This is especially true for the DFG as I am the sole income and will be out of work in a month. Category Spent FrugalMaster Notes   Housing/ Insurance $2,282 Still paying extra $700 in principle.   However after reading some Frugalwoods I may alter this.   Liquidity is king (debating)?  

The spreadsheet says I am saving! With the new year came a new budget.   I base my budget on 2 paychecks a month.   My current employer pays biweekly so I get a bonus 2 paychecks a year that go directly to savings.   This works in my favor not only because of those bonus paychecks but because it is helping me learn to live on less than I make.   That is always the way to a better life.   Live on less. So what did I change in the budget? 2018.1 Budget Category Change Notes   Housing/ Insurance $0 Still paying extra principle. 9 years to go Investments $0 Still maxing out 401k and IRAs Utilities -$110 Cell phone plan change Transportation $109 Cars are getting older so setting aside more cash Education $70 New category to save monthly for school fees when the kids start school.

The goal of dividend growth investing is to create an income stream from many companies that increase their dividend each year.  To protect the income stream they should also be a diversified set of stocks.  My portfolio has been a bit heavy in the financial sector which are usually the hardest hit in a recession.  Luckily last year was good and one of those stocks paid an extra dividend. Old Republic International Corporation (ORI) has been on the DFG watchlist for some time now.  While the dividend growth rate is less than spectacular everything else looked good to me.  So overtime I have been picking up more shares.  At the end of January they paid a special $1 dividend.  It is probably the closest I will come to winning a lottery so I am very happy. Here are the companies that paid dividends to DFG in January: AmTrust Financial Services Inc AFSI $133.62 Cardinal Health Inc CAH $55.49 Gladstone Investment

Company Name Symbol Industry No. Years Dividend Yield Sector EPS% Payout +/-% vs. Graham Chowder Rule Principal Financial Group Inc. PFG Financial Services 10 3.02 Financials 33.44 (10.4) 22.7 Altria Group Inc. MO Tobacco 48 3.75 Consumer Staples 33.00 108.1 12.1 Brinker International EAT Restaurants 13 4.18 Consumer Discretionary 54.87 n/a 19.1 Old Republic International ORI Insurance 36 3.54 Financials 39.79 (22.9) 4.9 Edison International EIX Utility-Electric 15 3.87 Utilities 55.25 2.0 14.7 National Healthcare Corp. NHC Healthcare Facilities 14 3.08 Health Care 60.00 8.9 12.2 Meredith Corp. MDP Publishing 25 3.30