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I invest for increasing income. I used to call myself a Dividend Growth Investor, but these days about 25% of my portfolio is in investments that are not expected to increase their dividends much at all.
My previous results since September when I first posted this:
Sep: +$102
Oct: +$141
Nov: +275
Dec: +$106
My income increases occur in 3 ways:
a) New investments - None of the figures I've mentioned have included new investments, but over last 3 or 4 years, we have maxed out our Roth IRA contributions at $13,500.
b) Reinvestment: Although I am retired, my wife is not but we have tapped our IRAs very little. Usually $5,000 or so yearly when something comes up. All the rest gets reinvested. There will be a period in between the time my wife retires and I turn 70 and claim SS, when we will have to tap the dividends (not the principle) but we plan to keep that at a maximum of 75%, so we reinvest 25% and keep increasing income.
c) Dividend Increases:
We had a phenomenal January. We had 3 dividend increases, and our income shot up $371. That will be way above the normal month. Normally we get an increase of about $100. My goal is increase by $1,000 over the course of the year excluding the bump from new contributions.
This is all part of plan that I've adopted over last 4 years or so. Several moving pieces. The closer I got to retirement, the more I appreciate Roth IRA's over Traditional. So we stopped contributing to traditional and contributing the max to Roths.
Any time we have to make any kind of withdrawal, we make it from the Traditional side.
In addition, we are doing conversions from the traditional to the Roth yearly. We dance right at the top of the 15% tax bracket, so we can usually convert anywhere from $9k to $15K and still stay within the 15% bracket. Since Jan 2014 when I started tracking this stuff we've gone from the Roth's being 2.71% of our IRA income to 43.89% as of this month.
So why am I so enthused about this? Because I am getting great results. These figures WILL include new contributions.
When I started tracking the income from the IRAs in Aug 2015, my income from the IRAs was $17,353. Jan 1, 2016 it was $18,794, Jan 1 2017 it was $22,423.
I took a long hiatus from investing. Got back into it in Spring of 2012 as my working career was winding down. I wish I had been doing this the last 20 years.
Some other points:
I stay nearly fully invested. All my money is working.
I only buy stocks, bonds, funds, etc. that pay dividends.
I don't try to time the market.
It is hard to know what to make of this. The standard way of tracking portfolio performance is total return. Here, the portfolio value could be sinking like a rock yet the OP has increasing income. Is that good or bad? You don't know unless you quote the total return.
we went over this many many times with the op . let him believe what he wants . it isn't worth the effort trying to show him any different . i offered to pay him higher dividends than he is getting since he does not care about total return i just keep his principal .
nah , i am done trying to enlighten them , let them think whatever they like . it's their money . it is just a shame they may infect others with mis-information as to how things work and what you need to pay attention to when it is your money
nah , i am done trying to enlighten them , let them think whatever they like . it's their money . it is just a shame they may infect others with mis-information as to how things work and what you need to pay attention to when it is your money
Where is the misinformation?
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nah , i am done trying to enlighten them , let them think whatever they like . it's their money . it is just a shame they may infect others with mis-information as to how things work and what you need to pay attention to when it is your money
