Category: <span>Articles</span>

Forward Dividends Push Past 10,000 After AT&T (T) Purchase

October 25, 2017 by All About Interest

That’s right, I’ve made it past a huge milestone today of 10,000 in forward dividends. That means my portfolio will pay out over $10,000 in dividends over the next 12 months not counting any additional purchases or increases to dividends.

I had a trigger set up for AT&T when it hit a certain yield put that went off today. I decided to take advantage of weakness and purchased a full-sized position of 200 shares at a cost/share of 34.01. I see a lot of support at this area for AT&T and another .01 dividend increase should happen fairly soon. CFRA, formally S&P Capital IQ, has them rated as a buy with a 12-month target of $42. I see upside potential here and a nearly 6% dividend to boot. I’m happy parking some money here for a while.

Below is from my dividends tab. Now, I don’t post nearly as often as I used to about my trades, and I hope to change that, but I do keep my portfolio and dividend page updated in real-time. I use my google sheet to check my stock values all the time so these pages stay very updated. You can see in red the companies that have already increased their dividend this year with the purple highlights last year’s increase in that month.

You might also notice the dividend weight column. This is an interesting metric I like to look at as well. It might be concerning to some that nearly 30% of my dividend income comes from 3 stocks, MO, OHI and RDS-B. However, these 3 companies only make up 18% of the value of my portfolio. So you can see how the high/low yields can drastically change the dividend weight. For instance, V is currently a 5.79% weight in my portfolio for value but only 1.24% of the dividend weight due to the smaller yield.

How is everyone else doing? My next stop will be $1,000/mo in income or $12,000 year. I hope to hit that mark in the springtime.

Update on Options Activity

October 23, 2017 by All About Interest

Below are the actual trades:

Date	Action	Ticker	Expiration	Strike	Call/Put	Qty	Price	Net	close Price	closeout
7/6/2017	Sell	MO	1/18/2019	90	Put	1	$19.00	$1,894.55	28.5	-$955.45
7/6/2017	Sell	MO	9/21/2018	75	Call	1	$5.15	$509.55	2.12	$297.55
8/11/2017	BTC	MO	9/21/2018	75	Call	1	-$2.12	-$217.45
7/6/2017	Sell	BDX	1/19/2018	210	Put	1	$18.00	$1,794.55	4.9	$1,304.55
7/6/2017	Sell	MDT	6/15/2018	97.5	Put	1	$11.25	$1,119.55	11.25	-$5.45
7/6/2017	Sell	JNJ	6/15/2018	150	Put	1	$19.50	$1,944.55	10.2	$924.55
7/20/2017	Sell	V	6/15/2018	115	Put	1	$17.50	$1,744.55	10.5	$694.55
7/20/2017	Sell	V	1/18/2019	130	Put	1	$31.75	$3,169.55	23.64	$805.55
8/10/2017	Sell	ESV	1/18/2019	15	Put	1	$10.50	$1,044.55	9.81	$63.55
8/9/2017	Sell	Teva	1/18/2019	37.5	Put	1	$19.30	$1,924.55	20	-$75.45
8/9/2017	Sell	Teva	1/18/2019	30	Put	1	$12.20	$1,214.55	15.42	-$327.45
8/10/2017	Bought	Teva	9/1/2017	17	Call	2	-$1.28	-$261.45		-$261.45
8/10/2017	Bought	Teva	9/15/2017	17.5	Call	5	-$1.37	-$690.45
9/12/2017	STC	Teva	9/15/2017	17.5	Call	5	$2.29	$1,139.55	2.29	$449.10
8/8/2017	Sell	GIS	1/18/2019	67.5	Put	1	$12.30	$1,224.55	16.19	-$394.45
8/2/2017	Sell	MO	9/21/2018	80	Put	1	$17.50	$1,744.55	17.25	$19.55
9/7/2017	Sell	MO	1/18/2019	90	Put	1	$18.50	$1,844.55	28.5	-$1,005.45
10/17/2017	Sell	V	12/20/2019	160	Put	1	$52.52	$5,246.55	52.8	-$33.45


TOTALS								$26,390.90		$1,500.35

The last update on trades had generated $7262 in revenues. I’m approved for “naked” options trading meaning I can sell puts on companies I don’t own and without having the cash to purchase said security. This update shows I’ve generated $26,390 in revenues. The closeout column is what my total profit will look like if I closed out all trades today.

Note: These profits won’t include dividends which I do receive from investing in other dividend paying stocks with the revenue.

My BDX put is killing it, I could close out with nearly a $1300 profit in a short amount of time! The MO puts are killing me though. However, I like Altria for the long-term and if I get assigned shares I’ll be ok with it. I had a couple of speculative calls expire with Teva for a loss of $261.45. However, I earned $449.10 on another 5 calls I bought and then sold on 09/12. Teva remains a large speculative position for me. I don’t see them going bankrupt but I do see shares under pressure until the new CEO can get things going again.

My V puts continue to do well. V is a wonderful company and I believe shares will continue to beat the market for a while. This is why I’ve sold 3 large deep in the money puts for a nice revenue stream. The first two puts would profit about $1500 if I closed them out today.

So what happens in the case that one of these companies is lower near expiration? Well, I have a few options.

a. I can do nothing and I’ll be required to purchase 100 shares of said security at the strike price. It’s sort of like I’m buying the company right now at a discount.

b. I can decide to purchase back the put for more money at a loss of approximately ($71/share – current share value) x 100.

c. Third option is to “roll” the put forward. What this means is that I simultaneously purchase the put back and sell another longer dated put so that I haven’t lost any money.

Well the good news is that I’m in the positive on these trades. This is in my speculative account but I still target mainly dividend paying companies that I want to own or already own anyways. Any profits will go directly into purchasing more shares of solid dividend-paying companies.

June 2017 CCC Dividend Stock Rankings

June 26, 2017 by All About Interest

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these and the market is up quite a lot so it will be interesting to see the outcome.

What I Did

I decided to take the CCC spreadsheet and rank the stocks based on their 10-year YOC. If you are unfamiliar with what Yield-On-Cost is (YOC) then refer to my get started tab or see below for an example. If you don’t know about David Fish’s Champion, Challenger and Contender (CCC) spreadsheet then you are doing yourself a disservice, the link is also on my “get started” tab. It’s important to know about yield no matter which kind of stocks you are trading, for example even if you’re working in the forex market you need to Learn how to trade properly, including all of the technical terminology, in order to make the most of your investment. Here’s an example of yield and its effects.

Let’s say you purchased a stock at $10/share in 2013 that paid a 4% dividend or $0.40/share. In order to achieve a 10-year YOC of 10% that stock would need to pay out at least $1.00/share by 2023.

You may wonder why I care about a 10-year YOC instead of just the 1,3,5 and 10-year CAGR’s. The main factor that the CAGR leaves out is the starting dividend yield. The starting dividend in combination with the dividend growth rate will greatly influence your returns.

There’s a variation of this screen used alot by members of the Seeking Alpha community and it’s coined the “Chowder Rule”. This can also be found now on the CCC sheets. The rule basically adds the starting yield with the dividend growth rate (5-year CAGR) and looks for it to be higher than a certain number. While this can be a useful screen, there is still a discrepancy between dividend payers that have different growth rates but still arrive at the same number. For instance, a 3% yielder with 5% growth would get the same grade (an 8) as a 5% yielder with 3% growth. To me this is like adding apples to oranges. Holding a lower yielding stock with a higher growth rate will at some point provide higher returns assuming the growth rates don’t change. My 10-year YOC would give this 3% and 5% yielder a 4.9 and 6.7 respectively.

Why I Did It

The purpose of this screening process will be to identify companies that have a high expected dividend growth rate combined with a starting yield that would produce greater returns. These companies may be good candidates for further research.

How I Did It

The first step was to sort all stocks by their current dividend yield and eliminate any stocks not paying at least a 2% yield.

Next I sorted all columns by TTM P/E and eliminated every stock with a TTM P/E over 20. I do realize this eliminates a lot of REIT’s, MLP’s, and telecom stocks. I’m ok with this since I’m not really targeting these stocks right now. Then I decided to eliminate any Champions with a 10-Year CAGR < 5%, followed by any Contenders with a 5-Year CAGR < 7 % and finally any Challengers with a 3-year CAGR < 7%. This screen eliminates a lot of slow growing companies like utilities. This last screen dropped the list of Champions, Contenders and Challengers to 12(-16), 41(-11) and 122(-10) respectively.

Next I took the latest CCC sheet and added some new columns to calculate a 10-year YOC using each stock’s 1,3, 5 and 10-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR). I will call these new metrics 10YOC1, 10YOC3, 10YOC5, and 10YOC10 for simplicity.

After sorting, I looked for any companies that had a 10YOC1, 10YOC3, 10YOC5 or 10YOC10 of 10% or higher. I applied this to the list of Champions, Contenders and Challengers.

Next, I wanted to look to see if the DGR was increasing or decreasing. I highlighted in red the 10-year YOC’s of companies that were both reducing their rate of increases and still under 10%.

This is a previous example of how it looked:

Companies got credit for increasing their dividends at faster rates. For example: The 10YOC5 for AWR in the example above was 4.97 and did not get highlighted in red because its 10YOC5 was higher than its 10YOC10 of 4.09.

Next, I decided to remove any company that had a 10YOC1 in the red for Champions and a 10YOC1 or 10YOC3 in red for Contenders and Challengers.

For the Example Champions list above this removed LEG, MDT, NUE and WMT.

This new round of elimination dropped the list sizes for the Champions, Contenders and Challengers to 2(-6), 13(-6) and 48(-37) respectively.

My Results (since the results were so small I decided to not eliminate Champions & Contenders based on P/E ratios this month)

Here are the 112(+9) candidates plus additional candidates not ruled out based on P/E left that may be worthy to do further research on:

Champions

Contenders

Challengers

On the Champions list, WOW, there’s only 2! Medtronic (MDT) and VFC Corp. This isn’t a surprise as retail stocks have done poorly as well as healthcare stocks after Trump took over. I do own MDT and have been thinking about adding to it. VFC stock also looks compelling.

Then there’s the Contender’s list with names like IBM and CVS which I own. I’ve added some CVS this year already. There’s also some other bank names I’m not too familiar with worthy of looking at.

The Challenger’s list is still large with all the financials and REITs. A lot of the banks have had 5 years since the Great Recession and are back on this list. I may have to add an additional screen soon for the challengers. There’s some solid companies on this list and if you find the right ones you will be handsomely rewarded. I’ve added some AMGN not too long ago. I’m not too familiar with the others besides CSCO and ABBV.

Keep in mind that this is just a starting point and I feel these companies need further research before making an investment.You can find previous months by following my CCC Rankings label.

*photo courtesy of ESPN

A Baby’s First Stock

June 15, 2017 by All About Interest

One of the reasons for a lack of much posting has been the birth of our first child, a healthy baby boy. And what better way to start him out than to purchase his first shares of stock because setting your children up for the future is the best thing you could possibly do for them.

I opened a portfolio and purchased stock in three companies that I think have been beaten down lately and offer not only fair value but decent dividends as well.

The first company is of course, Carter’s, CRI. Maybe you’ve heard of Carters or Osh Kosh B’Gosh? If not then you don’t have any kids. These brands dominate the baby clothing category. Carters stock is sitting near $85/share down from over $110/share as a 52-week high. Shares yield nearly 1.8% with a low payout ratio of 27%. They are a dividend challenger, having paid increased dividends for 5 straight years! They also just purchases another company called Skip Hop that should add additional profits to the bottom line. CFRA (formerly S&P Capital IQ) currently rates them a 4-star buy with a 3-year CAGR of 16%.

This next stock is currently a 5-Star screaming buy from Morningstar. It’s one of only 9 stocks currently ranked 5-stars. Everyone knows and has purchased this brand, Hanes! Hanes owns Hanes brands obviously which is better known for their underwear and Michael Jordan commercials, they also own Champion, Bali and Playtex to name a few. The great thing about Hanes is that their brands are everywhere and they don’t need their own retail footprint. They sell mainly online and through major department stores. You’ll even find their stuff on Amazon. The stock is rated a 3-star buy from CFRA with a 3-year CAGR of 17%. HBI currently yields 2.6% with an extremely low payout of 10%. They are also a dividend challenger, having paid out higher dividends for 5 straight years.

Now this third stock is probably more well known within the DGI community as a popular stock. It also has a much larger market cap in comparison. The stock is Disney. DIS currently yields 1.5% and is a dividend challenger. They have paid higher dividends for 7 straight years. Morningstar gives them a 4-star raiting as well as CFRA.

I’ve purchased equal dollar amount in these three stocks and plan to make small contributions to the account on a weekly basis. I’ll be tracking the performance and adding new position or dollar-cost-averaging in current ones.

I thought what better way to teach a child dividend growth investing than to purchase stock in companies that he uses products from. The retail sector has taken a beating lately and I figured I’d pick up a couple stocks there that I believe will still be around when my son goes to college. These stocks have been added to my portfolio tab for tracking purposes.

Happy New Year and Welcome Rental #2

January 3, 2017 by All About Interest

I know, I know. I haven’t been on top of updates much lately. As part of my New Year’s resolution, I plan to get more organized and start tracking my finances much better. That was, of course, the whole purpose when I started this blog. I wanted to put out there all my investments to hold myself accountable. I haven’t stopped investing and I always keep my portfolio updated but I plan to keep this site more updated in real time with what’s going on.

I hope everyone had a fabulous 2016 and wasn’t too hung over like I was for New Year’s day. On to bigger and greater things in 2017!

To start the year off right I purchased another rental in December. I was looking for one in the east Texas area that would cash flow pretty well. Here, there isn’t as much price appreciation as when I was purchasing in Austin but the cash flows should be better.

My plan is to add two or three additional rentals this year and get plans in place for building storage units for my newest idea, a storage business. unts rental #2. Below is break-down of what the numbers look like:

3 bed/2 bath brick home – approx 1800 sq. ft
Purchase Price – $103,745
Down Payment – $25,936.25 (25%)
Closing Costs – $2,984.75 (just under 3%)
Repairs – $1255
Total Cash Costs – $30,303.60
Financed – $77,808.75 @ 4.125%
Monthly Taxes – 162.75
P&I mnthly – 377.10
Property Ins/month – $62.17

Total Expenses w/o maintenance – $602.02
Maintenance/Vancancy (20%) – $220.00
Total monthly expected expenses – $822.02

Expected Rent – $1100 (on market for $1200 currently)
Profit before m/v – $497.98/mo
Profit after m/v – $277.98
Cash on Cash Return (before m/v) – 19.8%
Cash on Cash Return (with m/v) – 11.05%

As you can see, if it rents for my expected amount then my returns are looking pretty good. Wish me luck! I’ll keep you updated. Oh and the picture is from Mexico City.

Latest Purchases

November 9, 2016 by All About Interest

It’s been almost 3 more months since I’ve written a post. That’s just crazy! Things are finally normalizing where I’m not working every day at the restaurant. I’m starting to come up with a more consistent investing plan over the next 6 years. Stay tuned!

I Bought:

Sept: ($-28,369.25)

$900 of SBUX
$800 of CAH
$300 of DIS
$200 of RDS-B
$150 of ESV
$150 of TEVA

Sold 33 shares of CAT – $2703

In Etrade account for Sept:

Sold 200 KMI @ 21.8846 = $4376.92
Sold 44 LMT @ 240.5925 = $10,586.07
Sold 105 GIS @ 65.214 = $6,847.47
Sold 51 CLX @ 122.6625 = $6,255.79
Sold Total = $28,066.25

Oct: ($-9,501)

$300 of CAH
$650 of SBUX
$600 of DIS
$400 of RDS-B
$400 of TIF

Sold PEP (2230), MCD (2210), CVX (3576), APD (3835) = $11,851

Notes:

Lots of shares in my sharebuilder and E*Trade account were sold, approximately $37,500 net. This was for two main reasons. First, I owed more on my extended 2015 tax return than I thought. This is now taken care of. Second, I’m in the process of buying a second rental property and needed the extra cash in my account for that purchase. I sold shares in companies that had run up significantly from my purchases price. I was also anticipating a weaker market going forward with election season and the ability to hopefully purchase back shares at a better discount. I don’t plan on having to sell off shares like this again.

SBUX is a new position for me. It’s a great company selling an addicting product. What’s not to like?

I’m been building up a position in CAH. I think the generics selloff has created some buying opportunity, namely in CAH and TEVA. I’ll continue to nibble away while shares of depressed.

DIS is still a small position and I’ll slowly averaging down from my original purchases.

TIF is a fairly new position, the price popped from my initial purchases but I’m still dollor-cost-averaging when I can.

I’m looking at buying some CVS at these prices. What are you buying?

In Recent News:

I mentioned I’m in the process of purchasing another rental property. This will be rental property number 2. It’s in a small town and taking a while to get an appraisal done on it. I’ll post details on the transaction once it’s completed, hopefully by mid December.

I’ve hired full time waitstaff and don’t have to bartend much any more. I’m mainly overseeing and managing the business.

My one rental that was re-leased for a $100 increase had their lease extended until 04/30/17. It was originally going to be up in October. I’ve had the same tenants for a while.

My last business has been exited and I’m receiving proceeds over the next 6 years that I will need to invest and grow my income with.

It’s about time I invested some of this money. It’s just been sat there for longer than it should, all while it could’ve been invested into something worthwhile that would’ve helped to grow my income.

The beauty of investments though is that there are so many things that you can invest your money into that you can be spoilt for choice.

Do you want to invest in a z15 antminer that will enable you to mine and trade cryptocurrency? Do you want to invest in real estate or the stock market? The options are limitless – so I best hurry up and decide where I want this money to go and fast.

Picture:

The picture is from a recent trip to Mexico City at the Teotihuacan ruins. I’m standing in front of the pyramid of the sun. What an amazing place!

A New Year And A New Beginning

January 1, 2016 by All About Interest

happy-new-year-2016

As many of you have noticed, I’ve been out of action for a while. There have been a lot of personal and financial changes. 2015 was a big transition year. I’m not technically “starting over” completely. I did lose a lot of my net worth though.

How did this happen you might ask? One word: DIVORCE. It’s a nasty word but that’s the main reason for the hiatus for the better part of last year. To be honest, it hit me more than I ever thought it would. Over the years, I have seen the majority of my friends hiring someone like this denver divorce lawyer because they had seen their marriage break down, and I for one never thought it would happen to me. I didn’t know how to react, my thoughts weren’t my own. It must be hard and given that it is an understandably sad situation, it would be better if they went through a divorce attorney consultation. I guess I was just blessed that I had people to talk to who knew exactly what I was going through and feeling, so that made me feel a bit better, but it didn’t fill the big hole that had now been left in my heart.

I’m sorry for rambling on like this. But I will feel a lot better if I tell you what has been going on in my life because there are thousands more people like me who are going through, or have gone through a similar thing. So, for some of you that may have hit close to home, especially if you’re thinking about getting a divorce. That is why you’ll want to look into law firms, like peters and may and many more family law practices are there to help you in a time of crisis. Trust me, you will feel better for it.

What’s more important is what I’m focusing on right now; that’s growing my passive income stream.

This passive income stream is currently a little over $1000/month and has three components:

1.) Individual Dividend Paying Stocks

My portfolio has taken a bit of a hit but I plan to be as diligent as every and to consistently invest into dividend growth stocks as I’ve always done. I’ll also be posting my new trades again as usual on a weekly basis at least. I’m currently contributing $900/week to my Sharebuilder account to build it back up to where it was. My portfolio basically got set back for about two years. After the 75% dividend cut from KMI, I’m currently at a 12-month forward dividend income of $8468 or $705/month. That’s not too bad to be starting over with.

2.) Real Estate

I’ve sold off a property and lost one in the divorce so I just have one rental currently that’s earning $274/month in profits. However, I recently purchased a historical building that has a bar on the first floor and a living area upstairs. It was built in the 1800’s and is already fully renovated. This is the building I’ll be opening up a bar out of. So a lot of my extra cash has gone here. I’m hoping to have it fully running sometime in March and I’ll be posting updates. This will be a new source of income that I’m looking forward to. Luckily this was not part of the divorce, otherwise, that would have been another thing to contend with. If one of us breaks the divorce decree that can cause further legal issues, and I certainly do not want that. If you are going through something similar, you may want to check out a Sisemore Law Firm like thetxattorneys.com so you can understand what I’m saying in a clearer legal way.

3.) P2P Lending (I recently started a Lending Club account)

I love the concept; I have a small account but am adding $250/week currently and I’m seeing over 16% returns so far. I’m sure this number will come down as there are some defaults on the account. I’m mainly focusing on higher interest loans for now. Any tips would be helpful. I also want to check out Prosper but not sure if they are in Texas yet. The reason I hadn’t invested already in Lending Club is because they weren’t in Texas yet and I didn’t like buying notes on the second-hand market.

So What’s next you may ask?

What I’ve been working on is getting back on track financially. It’s been a tough year for me but I’m finally anxious to start writing on my blog and letting you guys know what is going on again on a regular basis. My portfolio weights are all out of whack but I’m working on that now. I’m also anticipating a large tax bill and will keep purchases a little light the first half of the year but hope to increase them the second half. I still have a lot of time to buy and diversify.

Lowering expenses, earning more income and building more passive income streams are what I’m working towards. I will be eating out less and cooking at home more. I’ve also stopped going to Starbucks every single day. Every few dollars count!

I’m excited for a brand new start and will be sharing my journey with you guys. I appreciate anyone that’s been following along. I’ve not lost commitment; only a little money. This can be replaced with a little bit of time, savings and consistent investing.

I’m fully dedicated to an early financial independence and hope to see you all there some day!

I hope everyone has a Happy New Year!

How Safe Are Your Dividends?

November 9, 2015 by All About Interest

Does anyone else take a look at their dividend weights versus the actual weights of stocks in their portfolio? There could be some additional hidden risks to your income stream because of high yielding stocks.

If you read My Business Plan , I’m targeting 40 stocks in my final portfolio having an average weight of 2.5%. Right now in my building phase I don’t get too alarmed unless a position is greater than at least 5%. This doesn’t mean I sell some of that position but instead I try and bring up the weight of other positions with new purchases. Over time I hope to smooth out these portfolio weights.

Take a look at the tickers BBL, BP and KMI. Below is a snapshot from my portfolio. Notice that my portfolio weight for these three stocks are 2.95%, 5.14% and 6.28% respectively. At first glance, BBL doesn’t seem alarming at all, it’s barely over the 2.5% average I’m targeting. The other two are a little rich here at over double my target weight but I’m not overly concerned as I was working to add to energy positions while they were depressed.

portfolio_weights

Now take a look at the snapshot of my dividend page. Notice that my dividend weights for BBL, BP and KMI are 6.72%, 9.39% and 12.78%. Now this is a lot more alarming. I have 3 stocks that make up 14.37% of my portfolio but they contribute 28.9% of total income!! Now this is something a lot more concerning.

dividends

At first glance it didn’t look too bad but when I look at the income I’m relying on, it’s a whole different story. The chances are probably small but they are much higher now than just a couple of years ago for one of these companies slashing dividends. If I had to guess, I’d say BBL would be first followed by KMI and then BP. There’s a reason KMI is yielding nearly 8%, they have a lot of debt and are being drug down with other energy stocks right now. They have already given a little lower guidance in dividend raises. BP is in the same energy mess and even BBL has some energy exposure along with other depressed commodity prices. Nobody knows for sure how long this cycle for lower gas prices and commodities will last.

Honestly, this does make me a little nervous. If this were my final built portfolio, meaning I wasn’t contributing any more, I’d be extremely worried right now. Luckily, my portfolio has a long ways to go and I plan to smooth it out with new purchases. This does lessen the worry somewhat but it’s still a concern and I’ll be keeping a closer eye on this.

What would happen if KMI and BBL cut their dividends in half? Well, I’d lose immediately 9.75% of my income stream! That’s nothing to laugh at. It’s certainly not something I would want to stomach if I was already living off dividends. Heck, I’d feel that hit right now.

This is why it’s important to diversify. I have a long ways to go in building my portfolio but I like to keep track of my portfolio diversification. Dividend weight is just another form of diversification that I believe is important to keep an eye on.

Simple Google Docs Stock Portfolio

October 28, 2015 by All About Interest

I’m still getting emails on what I’m using to pull my stock information automatically into my Google spreadsheet. I previously posted a couple of articles that were well-received on creating a Google Docs portfolio. You can find those articles below. I’m currently using a simpler method since I was having issues with Google Docs pulling in all the information, sometimes I’d get a cell that said “loading”. This might be fixed with the new Google Docs updates but I already switched over to this new method.

I’m going to give access to a sample google docs portfolio at the bottom of this article.

Using Google Docs For Your Portfolio

Automatically Import DGR from CCC Sheets into Google Docs

I’ve created a sample portfolio based on the first 10 stocks in my current portfolio:

Portfolio_first_10

The ticker is the only thing I have input mannually, that is, column A.

I hold stocks in multiple brokerage accounts and I’ll go over how I’m pulling that information from other sheets first. The columns calculated from other sheets are B-G. Feel free to skip to H if you want the new formula I’m using for the rest of the columns and keep all your stocks in one account. I have three other tabs that I keep separated by brokerage company. Those tabs are etrade, schwab and sbuilder. The columns are in a similar order on those pages. Basically my main page is summing and averaging these shares together since I own the same stocks in multiple accounts.

Cell B2: =SUMIF(etrade!A$2:A$21,A2,etrade!B$2:B$21)+SUMIF(Schwab!A$2:A$12,A2,Schwab!B$2:B$12)
+SUMIF(SBuilder!A$2:A$32,A2,SBuilder!B$2:B$32)

Cell C2: =SUMIF(etrade!A$2:A$21,A2,etrade!G$2:G$21)*sumif(etrade!A$2:A$21,A2,etrade!S$2:S$21)
+SUMIF(Schwab!A$2:A$12,A2,Schwab!G$2:G$12)*sumif(Schwab!A$2:A$12,A2,Schwab!S$2:S$12)
+SUMIF(SBuilder!A$2:A$32,A2,SBuilder!G$2:G$32)*sumif(SBuilder!A$2:A$32,A2,SBuilder!S$2:S$32)

Cell D2: (this is the % away from my cost basis, the colors are from conditional formats which are pretty self-explanatory): =(H2–C2)/C2

Cell E2: =B2*H2

Cell F2: =E2/E$13

Cell H2: =ImportData(“http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=”&A2&“+”&A3&“+”&A4&“+”&A5&“+”&A6&“+”&A7&“+”&A8&“+”&A9&“+”&A10&“+”&A11&“&f=l1wj6rdqyj1p“)

The part in red is a series of tags that will allow you to pull the information you want from yahoo finance based on this chart below and can be modified to your liking:

Yahoo_Tags

I’ve also got a tab that keeps up with your dividends and looks like this:

sample_dividends

I’ve also included tabs that keep up with your portfolio weights and have a graph based on sector weights, geographic diversification and market weights. Here’s the sector weights graph below for this sample portfolio.

sample_sector_weights

Without further ado, here’s the new simplified version of my google docs portfolio:

Link to sample portfolio

Feel free to download and modify the sheet as needed. I welcome any comments or suggestions. If you do find this helpful, I encourage you to like my Facebook page and follow me on Twitter.

A Penny Saved is a Penny Invested

July 13, 2015 by All About Interest

penny_saved

I’ve recently begun a Get Started series that aims at providing some good information for investors starting out but also good reinforcement for veterans out there as well.

I figured one of my first articles should be about saving money since you technically have to save money before you have any to invest with. A good place to start is energy comparison to make sure you’re getting the best deal on your energy bills. But your efforts to save shouldn’t stop there, in fact, that’s just the start! If you hail from the UK, you may want to consider searching car insurance companies UK, to see you could be financially better off elsewhere. There is certainly no harm in looking!

You all know the old adage, “A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned.” Well, it’s also a penny that can be invested!

So here’s a few beginning tips for saving money:

1.) Stop going to Starbucks!

Sorry any SBUX investors out there. You can brew your own coffee at home in less time than waiting in line to get coffee. Even the more expensive K-CUPS or my favorite, the Nespresso machine, are far cheaper options over time. You can save $2 a day, $14 a week or $728/year very easily by not paying retail prices for coffee.

With $728, you could buy 18 shares of Coca-Cola (KO) which would produce an income $23.76/year which will keep growing. That’s about $2/month, and would pay for one of your cups of coffee each month already.

2.) Get rid of cable TV!

Ok, so this one may be a little harder for people to do. However, I just got rid of it myself and I don’t miss it at all. I was spending nearly $100/month on DIRECTV. I didn’t renew and instead bought a pair of HD antennas to pick up free local channels in HD. That cost me about $30 and is a one-time fee. I also am trying out Netflix, Hulu Plus and already have access to Amazon Instant Video since I’m a Prime subscriber. I’m on a trial at Netflix and will likely just keep my Hulu Plus for TV shows and watch movies on Amazon Instant Video. Hulu Plus is only $7.99/month. If you are a big Game of Thrones fan, you can even purchase a subscription just to HBO through the HBO GO app. So you don’t have to deprive yourself of your favorite shows or movies and can save lots of money here.

I’m going to save about $80/month. This is $960/year. With $960, I could buy almost 100 shares of McDonald’s (MCD). These 100 shares of MCD would produce annual income of $34 and growing.

3.) Shop internet plans!

Let’s face it; if you’re reading this article then you pay for internet most likely. There’s many providers and the plans are all different. If you don’t know your interenet speed then you can go to one of the many speed testing sites like speedtest.net.

I just tried out AT&T DSL and it was not only more expensive but a lot slower than Time Warner Cable that I’ve had before. I switched back to Time Warner and my bill has gone from $50 to $38/month for 50mb/s downloading speed versus about 8mb/s with AT&T. I did some negotiating to get that rate but they said to call in once a year to keep it. I also have my own modem so I don’t have to pay a leasing fee to them. It’s really not that hard to save if you just ask.

Savings of $12/month or $144/year. I can buy nearly 4 shares of BHP Billiton plc (BBL) which would produce nearly $10/year in income.

I had a friend who made plenty of use of this fantastic broadband price comparison website. If you’re interested, check out these broadband packages.

4.) Use a water filter!

Everyone must drink water so this is an obvious area to save in. I personally use a Brita pitcher myself. No more paying $1-$2 for a bottle of water. Seriously, that has to be one of the biggest markups ever right?

Your savings will depend on how much you spend on bottled water. I’m estimating that I’m saving at least $40/month after paying for the filters.

I purchased these filters on Amazon; 3 for $14.88.

That’s $40/month or $480/year I’m saving. I could purchase almost 3 shares of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). These 3 shares of IBM would provide $15/year in annual income to start with.

5.) Shop online!

I seriously am always checking Amazon’s price when I’m at a store. If it’s cheaper on Amazon, then I’ll wait a couple extra days to save the money.

This actually just happened. I love cooking omelets and saw this omelet pan that looked awesome selling for $20. I looked it up on Amazon and it was only $13. It’s one of those double sided omelet pans and I can cook an omelet in about half the time now.

Joie Whisky Egg Non-Stick Double Sided Omelette Pan, Silver, Small

I also love getting a deal and will shop on Ebay a lot in order to find a product at a better price.

This category can greatly vary per person. I estimate I save at least $40/month or almost $500/year on purchasing items just through Amazon. That’s 5 shares of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) I can buy producing another $15 in income.

6.) Cook at home!

I’m starting to do this a lot more often myself. Not only am I able to eat healthier but I am saving money and know exactly what ingredients go into my food.

My savings here are much higher because I’m used to going out to eat a lot. I probably now cook at least 80% of my meals versus about 20% a year ago. The only drawback is that I’m now shopping at Whole Foods for fish which is not that cheap. It’s cheaper than eating out but I could save more by going to a larger chain grocery store. However, I like the quality of produce at Whole Foods. They are also headquartered in Austin, TX. Heck, I might even invest in some of their stock eventually.

I’m easily saving at least $200/month or $2400/year cooking at home. With $2400, I could buy 50 shares of Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM). These 50 shares would provide me with $56/year in annual income.

7.) Save on home energy costs!

Replace your lights with LED’s. If you have any lights that run for at least an hour/day, then you really should look into replacing them with LED’s. I’ve written about replacing most of my house with LED’s previously in a post titled, I’m Replacing All My Lights With LED’s.

I also replaced an older pool pump with a new and much more energy efficient one saving me $720/year. You can find that post here – New Pool Pump Installed.

This $720 could buy me over 7 shares of PepsiCo Inc. (PEP) producing about $20 in annual income.

8.) Find cheap entertainment!

There’s many options for this. I will mention a few that I currently am fond of. First, I really enjoy watching movies but I am ok waiting for them to be available through one of the streaming services like Amazon Prime Instant Video, Netflix or Hulu. I’m also very competitive and really into playing a lot of games. One of my favorite online games, that’s totally free, is called League of Legends. If anyone wants to play, let me know. The game is always changing and gives me plenty of free entertainment. If you want to get really competitive or just want to practice without messing up your original account you can always buy unranked lol accounts so you can enjoy your playtime without having to worry about losing. I also invested in a bicycle about a year ago. Not only is it good exercise but it’s also fun to ride around in. Reading is also great, cheap entertainment. I read lots of articles every day on investing and various other topics. There’s a plethora of online material available or you can still pick up a good book, those still exist you know.

Here’s a few other ideas that I haven’t fully explored yet but am planning to:

Get a cheaper cell phone plan
Get a more economical vehicle
Find a cheaper apartment
Use my bike or walk more often

So what are some ways you are saving money?