July 2018 Results

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With the first full month under my belt, so to say, I have some actual results on Trucking For Dividends. For starters, I did actually make a couple bucks in dividends, $2.18 to be exact! This represents a whopping 90.83% increase over June. Keep in mind that I started this portfolio on June 11, 2018, so that statistic really isn’t all that important.

I started this journey with 40 odd stocks and an ETF last month. I grew my portfolio to a staggering 110 +/- positions and with a cost basis of $370! I also said last month that I didn’t know what I was doing yet, but that I needed to trim the number of holdings down. I am currently at 64 unique positions in both my STASH IRA and my M1 Finance taxable account.

I will eventually be moving my IRA over to M1 Finance, hopefully before September is over. I’d prefer to not pay Stash $2.00 a month to hold my positions for me. Now, before anyone chastises me for my balances, please note that I know my IRA should have a much higher balance than my taxable accounts at this time, but hindsight is 20/20 and I am working on maxing out my IRA contributions.

So, with all that rambling being said, I will say again, between my IRA (which I will include from now on in these blog posts), and my M1 Finance account I have 64 unique positions. I will only sell a position off if it no longer meets my criteria:

• Must pay a regular and consistent dividend.
• Maintains or increases its dividend payment year over year.
• Using the BetterInvesting.org model for growth and income (as best as I understand), have a “Buy” or “Hold” rating with an upside downside ration of at least 3:1.
• Portfolio will be evaluated and adjusted on a quarterly basis.

You will notice that I changed a graph, added my IRA (Stash Retire) account, show a prediction of future dividend payments, and made a few other minor changes to this recap of my spreadsheet. As all good things, it is a work in progress.

I have opened and made contributions to both my STASH Retire account a total of $366.71 between June and July. While I have yet to be paid a dividend in that account, I do have an “unrealized gain” of $0.44 (0.12%)!!! WOOHOO!!! Off to a great start!

As far as my taxable M1 Finance account (all the other “portfolios”), I added $459.61 to my cost basis. This cost basis includes paid dividends that have been reinvested. The exciting part of this portfolio is actually seeing income paid to me, $2.38 Year to date!!! I am actually making money while I sleep!!! This is cool!!! I didnt even do anything except buy some pieces of some companies!

I know that a total value of $1180 across 64 stocks & ETFs is spread thin. I am still working on fine tuning my holdings (the goal of 50-60 still stands), as I continue to add money whenever I find some that isn’t claimed by a bill of one type or another. That being said, I am sending most of my money to those nasty credit card companies. Once they are paid off, a little over $500 a month will be freed up to begin Trucking For Dividends! I cannot wait for that day to see the explosion my accounts.

I am still at an impasse on how I want to apply new monies and dividends. With the M1 Finance and with STASH Retire, all dividends are applied to the cash account. I can then spread the paid dividends and new money however I wish. However, in M1 Finance, I have a few options with the cash account. I can either manually invest the money into individual stocks and ETFs with a minimum of $10 per transaction, or I can set it to “autoinvest” which will act to rebalance the portfolio based on set percentages of each piece. For now, sometimes I set the cash account to “autoinvest”, and other times I manually invest the funds. I just cannot decide.

So anyway, until next month, keep on trucking!