Tag: goals

April 2023 Dividend Portfolio Update

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Time flies when you are having fun and feels like April was over before we could even get ourselves completely settled in and back on track.

As the markets struggled for direction so too did our dividend portfolio. At times it seemed like April was going to be a banner month as earnings overall were turning out somewhat better than expected. Then our account took a hit with the earnings release for Abbvie (ABBV) which is the largest position in our portfolio. The subsequent drop in the stock price was a bit odd as the numbers were actually pretty good, but the erosion in the sales of their flagship drug after losing patent protection was just too much and the stock sold off.

Over the last couple of trading days the markets rallied and ABBV recovered a small portion of the drop. Our portfolios roller coaster ride ended slightly in the positive for the month which we are always happy to see. Of concern going forward is the continued volatility, continued fed incompetence and yet another bank failure which could have further negative impact on the economy and the markets.

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March 2023 Financial Update

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Free at last! As we mentioned in our March Dividend Portfolio Update we are finally back on the road and settled in Utah once again. Most importantly, we are free from the work-camping hell we found ourselves in for the last five plus months.

We will be doing another blog on the experience, but in short there were many issues we, and every other work-camper, had with our time in Mesa as it turned out to be a terrible experience.

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March 2023 Dividend Portfolio Update

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Yay, March is over and we are back on the road! I’ll save the details for our larger financial update and we apologize in advance for this hastily thrown together dividend portfolio update.

We just left our winter quarters and have relocated in Utah and because of the work schedule we had in Arizona there are a lot of things we need take care of and a lot of things we need to catch up on before we can get back to our regular lives. So in this update we are going to cut right to the chase and dive into the details.

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February 2023 Financial Update

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Another month in the books and I don’t know about you, but it seams like February went by at a lightning fast pace! Didn’t we just publish our January update?

But you won’t hear any complaining about time passing quickly from us. At this point we are itching to get the heck out of this place and move on to our next destination in Utah. We desperately need to get back on the road! Even more so, we need to put all of the negativity that has consumed our time here and pretty much ruined our work-camping experience behind us!

I have to admit, this months blog has been very difficult to write as there is so much we want to say about our current situation and the experience here. Not only would it be therapeutic to vent a little, it would also provide some food for thought to those of you that are looking at work-camping opportunities. We detailed some of our frustrations in last months blog mostly about how we were misled about the job responsibilities as the actual job we are doing is not what was sold to us during our interview. But there is so much more going on that we would like to express. We just can’t detail this stuff at the moment as we need to wait until we are either gone or closer to leaving this place.

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February 2023 Dividend Portfolio Update

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There is only one word that can sum up our dividend portfolio for the month of February, “blah”!

We could probably end this blog quickly as this was just one of those months where nothing exciting really happened. The only exception is that our dividend from ABBV hit a small milestone and continues to be our top performer. February is typically a slow dividend month in general and our contributions to the portfolio were abysmal on top of that. While we managed to eke out some small year over year growth it wasn’t very impressive as you will soon see.

Even more frustrating is that there are so many opportunities to pick up shares of some great dividend companies right now with JNJ, MMM and others trading at low levels. But it’s no money, no funny time for us as our income sources for funding this account are as dry as death valley in July and there is no

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January 2023 Dividend Portfolio Update

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January was a nice month for our dividend portfolio holdings and the markets in general. While progress in the account is very slow going it’s fun to watch the account grow ever so slightly each month.

In the past we would usually post every couple months at the most as the portfolio was mostly out of sight out of mind and didn’t garner much attention until we either had money to invest or saw a statement. Now that the portfolio has grown to become a larger part of our overall investment picture we have started paying more attention to it and also started creating some tracking spreadsheets. As an accountant this is the fun part as I personally love doing monthly and annual comparisons and even some projections if the mood hits me.

Now that we are over a year into this experience it’s fun to gather some of this data and see how our journey is tracking, which helps in the motivation department as well. We started adding some comparison information into our last update, which you can read here, and starting with this update we will add more data and attempt to provide consistent monthly updates on the portfolio and our holdings going forward.

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January 2023 Financial Update

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The first month of the new year is already in the books! Hopefully the adage “as goes January, so goes the year” holds true after a nice start to 2023. Obviously there is a long way to go and many hurdles stand in the way of positive returns for the full year, but a good start is always welcome!

As we enter our fourth month in Mesa, AZ it is clear to us that we will never agree to this type of work-camping structure in the future. We covered the different types of work-camping structures, and our current agreement, in our November 2022 Financial Update blog if you would like to take a look back. We won’t rehash all of that here, but let’s just say that the longer we stay here the more obvious it becomes that it’s not worth what we get in return. And the rate increase that took place at the start of the new year is only making matters worse.

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