Today I'll continue telling you how I ended up buying almost $200k in dividend stocks recently. In case you missed part 1 and want to catch up, see How I Added Dividend Stocks to My Portfolio, Part 1. In that post I set up the background (my interest in dividend investing), how I educated myself on dividend investing, and how I developed a set of criteria I wanted to see … [Read more...]
How I Added Dividend Stocks to My Portfolio, Part 1
Warning: I need to put this upfront just to be 100% clear to all readers. This post is about what I've done investing-wise. It's not about what you should do investing-wise. I do not know your goals, financial situation, or any one of a hundred other details that would even slightly qualify me to offer any investing advice to you. As such, this post is not meant as … [Read more...]
How I Picked My Properties and a Rental Income Update
It's been over four years since I shared the Financial Details of My Real Estate Investments. I've been wanting to give an update for some time and since I've just completed the process of getting all my numbers together for tax purposes, I thought this would be the year to do so. In addition, I thought I'd share the highlights of the process I used to select my … [Read more...]
The Gift of the Struggle
I was surprised at the small but vocal minority who felt my kids should get more from our estate plan. I'm not going to feed the trolls by responding to their comments, but today I do want to discuss a related topic. I'm calling it "the gift of the struggle." Before we get in too deep, let's begin by defining the phrase. What is the Gift of the Struggle? When I say … [Read more...]
Retirement Update: 3.5 Years
Here we are again -- time for another retirement update where I share what's going on in my life! For the record here's the last one. You may want to read it as some of the items mentioned in this post will assume you know what's in the former post. The past three months have been full of excitement, so let's get to the details! Life I spent a lot of time with my … [Read more...]
Our Meeting with Two Financial Planners
As noted in My Third Experience at a Direct Mail Retirement Seminar, my wife and I accepted an invitation to meet with Dustin (financial planner) and Gregg (Chief Investment Officer) from Accelerated Wealth. They had done an impressive enough job at the presentation to convince us it was worth an hour, plus I had a few questions I wanted to run by them, so why not? In … [Read more...]
My Third Experience at a Direct Mail Retirement Seminar
I know, I know. I'm starting to get hooked on these things! Ha! In case you haven't been following along, I've written about the first and second direct mail retirement seminars my wife and I have attended. After the second one, I didn't know if we'd go to another one, but turns out we did! I'm glad we did since this was a good one for a few different reasons. But … [Read more...]
My Latte Factor
Anyone love coffee? ;) For most of my life, I was not a coffee drinker. I preferred my caffeine cold in the form of Diet Coke. And then fate stepped in... But before we get to that, let me say that the following is a guest post I originally wrote for Get Rich Slowly. It was written over a year ago and since then, I have had to change my coffee-making methods. So at the … [Read more...]
How to Become Financially Independent in Five Years
Back in October I was part of a panel discussion on the What's Up Next? podcast. Three of us "older" bloggers joined Doc G and Paul to discuss the subject "Is it ever too late to pursue financial independence?" The episode will soon be released but if you want to hear what we had to say, you can listen to it here now. In the discussion Doc asked a GREAT question (which … [Read more...]
Money Conversations On and Around the Pickleball Court
Everywhere I go there are money conversations!!! A while ago I talked about a money conversation I overheard in my health club's locker room. Well, now we take the talk outside to the pickleball courts (these are from the summer, of course, we're now back inside for the winter, playing at my gym). If you didn't know, pickleball is a very social game. There's a lot of … [Read more...]
