Portfolio news – September additions

So for September , and the beginning of October I added the following share to my portfolio.

K + S Group

It’s a company that builds active in mining, food and agriculture. The stock price has been on a steady decline recently and is in my opinion, pretty cheap at the moment. Dividend now is around 2,9% of the share price. Which is good enough to buy the stock. It has been paying dividend for a good number of years now.

Watch list

Glencore is off the watch list as they had to cut the dividends and are in the process of reducing their debt. With the current commodity prices the situation is said to be hard for Glencore in the coming months. But the company isn’t just there to trade, it’s very much part of the whole logistical chain for the commodity business. That’s how they became such a powerhouse. They provide a valuable service which not just anyone can take over.

For the coming months the I will be watching Disney, Caterpillar and Shell.
Shell is cheap at the moment , especially if you count the dividend. Some people fear the dividend percentage is too high and Shell maybe has to lower or cancel it.
I don’t think that is going to happen. I also don’t think the slump in commodities will continue. Also oil is nowhere near finished as a fuel or base product for a lot of other products.

I might add to my Apple position as it still is very undervalued. The dividend yield is too low and most of the profit has to be made with a substantial increase in it’s share price. So this is also something to think about.

I am also looking further into the possibilities options offer to add some more revenue. I already sold some calls (covered) with good results, and I am now looking into getting more into options. For now I will just use it with caution.

First some more reading about the subject.

Dividend payments so far

Most of the stocks I own nowadays pay out dividend. Thought I share the proceeds so far, It may be not much but it is really fun to see them come in. Strange isn’t it.

The dividends without, and in Euro tax are :

12-02-2015 APPLE INC. EUR 1,32
20-03-2015 ROYAL DUTCH SHELLA EUR 8,66
27-03-2015 VANGUARD DIV APPRECIAT EUR 0,67
14-05-2015 APPLE INC. EUR 4,42
22-06-2015 ROYAL DUTCH SHELLA EUR 41,95
30-06-2015 ICAHN ENTERPRISES L.P. EUR 0,91
02-07-2015 VANGUARD DIV APPRECIAT EUR 0,75
27-07-2015 GENERAL ELECTRIC EUR 1,95
30-07-2015 DOW CHEMICAL COMPANY EUR 3,57
13-08-2015 APPLE INC. EUR 4,42

Total EUR 68,62

Also a few are in the pipeline to be paid out, I will update when they do.

Portfolio news – June/July additions

My latest additions are Dow chemical and Unilever, both were on the buy list for some time and with the new month coming both were bought. Apart from the obvious dividend payments they both are very well established in their markets. Dow has been paying out dividends for decades now and recently increased a buy back program. In the meantime they went ex dividend so the first dividends should roll in shortly.

Unilever has been on the list for a while now , solid and a bit boring company maybe.

The markets are never boring however and today proved it, lot’s of Greece stuff taking the markets down a notch. But that’s not too bad since you can buy stocks with a bit of a discount. Currently I am working on a nice way to show my portfolio on this site. Maybe I’ll start simple with just an overview. For now have a good day.

Dividend GE and Greece

Today I checked my portfolio and another little flow of Dividend came my way. General electric went ex dividend. Although it isn’t a huge amount of money. It’s a lot of fun watching it roll in.
Hopefully it will continue and I will be able to buy a lot more dividend paying shares as I go along.

I have been reading up on Greece and personally I don’t think this is going to end well, a lot is at stake but the Greek politicians got elected on the promise to lift the heavy burden of all the debt. The only way for them to get any credit from their voters is too be able to say. Look we postponed as long as we possible could and this is what we got out of it. Causing a lot of aggravation along the way.

Greece is small economically, but if they get away with it, what’s to say others won’t do the same. Given the time frame a solution must be reached. Problem is the damage has already been done. Let’s hope the Greeks get their country back on the road, and quickly. Before all the young people with brains live in western Europe.

My plan

Ok so after reading, reading, surfing on the web and finally some more reading I decided on a plan. For now I will keep it simple. I will try to save as much of my monthly income as possible. for the first few months I will aim at 50%.

The 50% will be divided by 3. The sums will be deposited on a savings account, paying of the mortgage and an investment account.

Given that I can only pay of 10% a year on my mortgage and since I have already been doing that for a while, I am almost there. I will continue to save so I can pay off a big chunk in the beginning of next year.

Saving one third seems a bit much I agree, but some cash at hand for emergencies and given the fact I lack in investment experience this will do for now.

The investment part will be my pension fund. I will only invest for the long term. Dividend paying stocks that have been doing so for a long time.
Well that’s it. The plan.

Now what, step 3

After thinking about my retirement plan some more , I started to look around the internet and found some interesting websites. One of them was Mr money mustache

It’s a blog and community on reaching your retirement, i.e. being financially independent as soon as possible. Well that’s interesting. Started with the first series of blog posts and got a bit carried away reading. And thinking, what if this actually works. What if I can generate nough passive income to work a day or two less. Finally I’ll be able to train more, run more races and even do some more travelling.

Ok ok hold on, not so fast. The basic idea is to consume much less, and cut your montly cost base. But hey I like consuming. Maybe I don’t buy as much unnecessary crap as most people, but I do enjoy a good restaurant, night out and a bit of luxury now and then.

I continued reading and found more interesting info. It is possible to reach financial independence between 5 and 7 years. That’s very fast indeed.

I already started but with a much longer time frame in mind, what if this is possible for me. I think I am going to crunch the numbers a bit more.

Google adsense

Well, I like Google use it a lot. Today I put a google adsense on my page. Let’s see if it generates something. Hopefully enough to someday buy 1 Google share ;).
Or buy some other shares which pay out dividend , since that is not something Google does.

For now let’s see what happens.

Apple dividend & additions to my portfolio.

Ok, so one of my first purchases in my account was Apple. Some time ago I lusted over a new Ipad , then I thought wait, let’s buy a few stocks. Since I don’t really need an Ipad.

This was before I was thinking about dividend investing and so sort. Now the coincidence is that last week I received some Apple dividend’s.

It’s not a lot but he it still beats the interest on my savings account. And I think it’s more fun.

Now I am thinking about getting more serious about my dividend income. I have a few ideas. First one is Shell ( RDSA) , which is an oil company. Since it pays a very nice dividend ($1,50 per year) I am thinking of buying a few shares. The price seems reasonable. Second is Unilever, dividend is € 1,14 per share, and it has most of the top ranking food brands out there. So maybe I will buy some next month.

This is still a work in progress, but nonetheless a fun exercise.

I also bought some Vanguard dividend appreciation ETF’s. Let’s see how that works out. Meanwhile I am figuring out how to make nice graphs and sheets to show you.

Now what, step 1.

A couple of days ago I wrote a bit about my own personal retirement gap. Long story short, not much is certain when it comes to my retirement.

Now what, let’s see. It got me thinking about the stuff I can control. So I opened up good old excel and started gathering all my financial info.

Boring but very necessary. So where does my money go. Not surprisingly most of the money goes to my mortgage, (health) insurance, electricity, gas and food (including eating out, drinking in bars etc.). Your basic stuff.

Luckily not all was bad, I have some savings and I tend to save each month. That’s were I did my first discovery. My mortgage costs me 5,4% every year. My savings account netted me 1% every year.

Stupid me , should have made extra payments to minimize my mortgage. which will save me money now and in the future.

Step 1 figured out. Paying off the mortgage.

That’s all good but it doesn’t give me an income in the future , if I pay off all of it the money will be in the house so to speak.

Now I have to figure out how to get a steady income that can pay for my basic needs now and in the future without having to work for it.

Retirement gap

There is such a thing as a retirement gap. The experts claim this is due to insufficient pension build up. Recently it came up as I was checking my personal finances. So there it is a potential financial gap in the future.

Question is, how big is this gap?

I can’t really figure this out. Because I don’t know what monthly income my current pension funds will buy me the moment I retire. How come ?

Well from what I understand , it has everything to do with the interest rates. And more importantly the interest rate the moment you (or I) in this case retire.

The moment I retire, the saved money in the retirement funds will become available to purchase a retirement income.

Which gives me a income based on the calculation “Amount of money in retirement funds * interest rate”. Which is good if the rate is 12 % and very bad if it’s 2%. I might oversimplify it at the moment , but this is what I understand so far.

OK here comes another part of the gap, problem is the interest rate which we calculate the amount of money to put in the pension funds with nowadays is 4%. Well we all know what we get in our savings account. Closer to 0,9%.

Which adds another gap to the gap. So I already save too little for an income of which I don’t know or I can’t calculate how high (or low) it will be.

So lot’s of confusion. This got me thinking, basically I have no way of determining how high my pension will be in the future or how much I will have to save in my pension fund for a nice cosy retirement.

Next question , what is a pension ? No expert here, but it seems to me we can define it as: Income without the need to work for it.

Sounds good to me, why wait for it until I retire ? Let’s start now.

Which I did, I will elaborate on this in another entry.