The Mortgage, paying off and how to begin.

Well, it’s getting less, and is making a significant impact on our monthly expenses . so far it saves about 115 Euro a month. Most people will say that’s not all that much.

It’s a nice dinner for two every month for example. Some money you can spend on something else than interest.
It gets more interesting if you save that money and pay your mortgage off some more. Let’s take an example.

For instance you have a 200.000 mortgage. Let’s take 5% interest. I know it’s lower nowadays but a lot of people are still around 5% from before the 2008 crisis.
In the Netherlands it was all the rage to have a mortgage where you only paid the interest and didn’t pay off the debt every month.

This works well if the market keeps going up and when you sell the house is worth more than the original price you paid.
Not so much now , and a lot of people are either waiting it out or some start to pay off. the latter being a very wise decision.

Back to the example , Let’s say you pay 20.000 which saves you about 1000 per year in interest. (not taking into account any tax benefits etc.)
Save that 1000 and pay off again at the end of the year or better monthly (if possible). Saves another 50. And next year you can pay off 1050 , saves 52,50.

Etc etc, well you get the drift. This goes pretty fast without costing any extra money per month except for the initial payment. You simply start. It’s that easy.

November – Dividend payments so far

It’s been a while since I last posted on my dividend payments. This is 2015 so far. Including everything in the last post.
I really like dividend’s when they come in , it’s simply a lot of fun. At the moment I simply reinvest my dividends in new shares which generate dividend.

I will probably never find the next big winner in the stock market, but I am trying to generate a steady growth. And with more stock comes more dividend.
There will some other payments that are coming in the next few weeks, I post them later.

The dividends without tax, in Euro are :

12-11-2015 APPLE INC. EUR 4,42
30-10-2015 DOW CHEMICAL COMPANY EUR 3,57
26-10-2015 GENERAL ELECTRIC EUR 1,95
15-10-2015 W.P. CAREY INC. REIT EUR 8,12
1-10-2015 COCA-COLA COMPANY EUR 2,80
29-9-2015 VANGUARD DIV APPRECIATION EUR 0,76
28-9-2015 ICAHN ENTERPRISES L.P. EUR 0,91
21-9-2015 ROYAL DUTCH SHELL EUR 42,27
10-9-2015 MICROSOFT EUR 2,63
9-9-2015 UNILEVER EUR 1,51
13-8-2015 APPLE INC. EUR 4,42
30-7-2015 DOW CHEMICAL COMPANY EUR 3,57
27-7-2015 GENERAL ELECTRIC EUR 1,95
2-7-2015 VANGUARD DIV APPRECIATION EUR 0,75
30-6-2015 ICAHN ENTERPRISES L.P. EUR 0,91
22-6-2015 ROYAL DUTCH SHELL EUR 41,95
14-5-2015 APPLE INC. EUR 4,42
27-3-2015 VANGUARD DIV APPRECIATION EUR 0,67
20-3-2015 ROYAL DUTCH SHELL EUR 8,66
12-2-2015 APPLE INC. EUR 1,32

Total EUR 137,56

Portfolio news – October additions

This month I added Nedap to my portfolio, Nedap is a Dutch company which designs and builds solutions for energy , healthcare , transportation solutions etc. The dividend yield is around 4% at the current share price. It’s by no means a fast company which I very much prefer. It has been growing steadily over the years with solid results. Since they are active in markets which will grow in the future I am very confident they will be able to keep paying the dividends.

Some figures : The cash flow per share is 4,25 in Euro. Dividend over 2014 1,25 per share. Earnings per share 2,67.

I think this is a good and welcome addition to my portfolio.

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.

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.