April 2023 Dividend Portfolio Update

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

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

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

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

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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RV Life Hits and Misses – Two Years On The Road

As we approach our second anniversary on the road we thought it would be fun to take a moment and reflect on our RV life journey as well as what we left behind. This exercise might also be beneficial to those folks considering taking a similar path by giving them some things to think about before taking the leap into RV living. Make no mistake, life on the road is great and it can be so much fun in the best of times. However, it’s not all roses and at times it will definitely keep you on your toes or have you scrambling to find a solution to problems that arise.

We will preface this by saying that we have absolutely zero regrets about our decision to sell nearly everything we owned in order to enjoy life on the road. But, there are some things that we do miss about living in a regular ol’ sticks n’ bricks home and having a plain life in the suburbs. On the flip side, there are many things that have made those sacrifices well worth it and life more fulfilling too. This is why we recommend people considering this lifestyle sit down and put together a serious list of pros and cons relating to their lifestyle and living situation before taking on this type of adventure.

Let’s take a look and reflect on the good and the bad, welcome to RV life hits and misses!

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January 2023 Dividend Portfolio Update

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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