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 Ai...

For the month of July here are the companies that passed my stock screen and offered enough value to me to either add to or become a partner in their continued dividend growth. Stock Quantity Price Forward Dividends AFSI 2 15.87 $1.36/yr MO 1 65.60 $.66/yr WSR 100 12.79 $114/yr Whitestone REIT (WSR) is not a dividend growth stock.  It is a REIT that pays a monthly dividend of $.095.  Why did I buy this?  To be honest I chased a monthly high yield stock.  Sometimes I fall prey to quick money.  Looking back it is way over priced and has NOT increased it's dividend payment ever.  With that said it will not keep up with inflation over time.  At most I can hope for is capital appreciation.  For now I will hold on to it.  The dividends received from it will be used to purchase dividend growth stoc...

Murphy Oil (MUR) is the first cut of the year for me and last one since KMI.  It was purchased when I was a Motif customer group together with 9 other dividend growth stocks in a November purchase (see Motif below).  There is always a risk when you play in the energy area.  Almost all have either frozen or cut dividends.  Who would have guessed that oil prices would stay this low for an extended period of time.  My fuel costs for this year are at an all time low allowing me to save more.  Unfortunately my portfolio only has room for dividend growth stocks.  I used one of my free trades from Merrill so overall I broke even on my short run with them.  Bye bye Murphy Oil I won't miss you. Did any of you drop them with the dividend cut?   I am curious if the yield was enough to keep you with the company. Happy investing, Dividend Family Guy  

One of those odd months where I had more dividend come in my smaller taxable account vs. my IR. Here is a quick breakdown. The biggest company being Windstream where I have a large percentage of it in my taxable portfolio. I did switch this dividend to not be automatically reinvested. Instead it went to cash and I used it along with my remaining cash to purchase shares of MCD when it had a good dip this month. I haven't written about McDonald's yet but there are plenty of articles already out there on it. I did not have a goal for total dividends set for this year since this is the first year I am actively investing in a dividend portfolio. Regardless I am doing quite well with $627.62 of income from my taxed account. This is light-year's past my total dividends from last year. The IRA is doing better at $1,168 but if I were to lose my job or retire early that income doesn't do me much good until I can withdrawal it penalty free. What was your best buy this mon...

There have been so many articles flying around about IBM and whether it is sinking or swimming. So I read all of those and then started looking at the numbers. They look good to me so I initiated my first position in IBM and picked up a small number of shares. Even with recent price declines the price is up there. I caught it at $163.79. It has dropped a little bit since then which makes me a little sad. What makes me not sad is the history of the great company. The dividend contender has been raising dividends at least back to 1995 for a run of 19 years. That has averaged a dividend growth rate of 19.4% over the past 10 years and it is slowing down over time. The current year is only 12.1% which is still double digit growth that easily keeps up with inflation.  They are pretty far down my ranking system coming in at #192. Mostly from the value at the time I put it together with September information. That was back when the price was $189. The big thing that caused the h...

Usually this post is about recent purchases.  I had more than I expected thanks to a blunder on my part.  With ShareBuilder they have these automatic investment plans.  Depending on what schedule you have selected it will purchase your plan that Tuesday.  Unfortunately I had it set to When funds are available .  So my plan kept an eye on my balance and kept on purchasing until I caught it.  Nothing like an email while you're at work that you just purchased more stocks you never intended to buy at an unknown price.  I had to wait until I was out of a meeting then raced back to my desk and secretly logged into my account to see what was going on.  Needless to say it is now turned off.  What did I get (twice)?  Well let's take a look. Date Company Shares Price Entry Yield 9/23 NUS 11.8624 42.15 3.3% 9/23 HMN 17.2117 29.05 3.17% 9/30 NUS ...

The Buy On August 5th I bought 12 shares of ConocoPhillips at $80 or an initial yield of 3.65%.  After my review of COP and looking at my alternatives I decided this was a good buy for the price.  This purchase will increase my annual revenue by a good $35 dollars.  This brings my number of positions up to lucky number 13 in my taxable account.  While I did not have enough cash from July I do have some cash saved from earlier in the year to use for the next couple of months.  When that runs out hopefully I will have my budget in better shape and have saved more. COP ConocoPhillips is a major international company in the energy field.  Their diversification in the many areas of energy production and transportation play well nicely with the energy companies I already hold.  This I my first energy conglomerate while the others I hold are more specialized.  Dividend Life did a compare on the stability of the dividend vs. XOM.  XOM won...