Starting Anew

Hello there! It’s been awhile since we have posted a blog. It’s been even longer since we posted a blog that wasn’t a financial update of some sort. Over eleven months as a matter of fact. In that blog we wrote about buying our property in Texas and being excited to start building our home. Little did we know at the time we were in for a wild ride.

As we started our home building journey it quickly became clear that our original plan was not going to work out. The builder we had at that time was becoming very difficult to deal with. After discovering some questionable line items on our build budget that relationship came to a very abrupt and contentious end.

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September 2024 Dividend Portfolio Update

Welcome to our September 2024 dividend portfolio update. This month was a continuation the last couple of months with the markets eventually heading higher after a sluggish start.

The only difference this month was that we hit a point on one of our positions where it was time to cut bait and run. That position was 3M (MMM). After looking at some of the personal finance folks on social media it seems we were not the only ones looking for some sort of exit point on this stock.

We entered this position in 2021 and rode the downfall through lawsuits, lower earnings and eventually a dividend cut. The company finally seems to be getting on better footing, but it no longer fits in with our plan. With the stock making highs it was time to sell out.

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July 2024 Financial Update

Welcome to our July 2024 financial update! It’s only been a couple of weeks since we posted our June 2024 financial update blog, but a lot has happened in that time.

It looks like we really getting down to the nitty gritty with our Texas home build. Last we saw the interior pieces are starting to come together. And as far as we can tell, at least through FaceTime, everything appears to be working out as planned. That’s a little weight off our shoulders. Not being on site to see everything person had us second guessing some things.

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June 2024 Financial Update

Welcome to our very late, and probably brief, June 2024 Financial Update. Better late than never I guess!

We were hesitant to even write this blog given how close we are to another month end. However, with everything we have going on there is no telling when we will be able to get to that month end blog either. So we are using this brief window of free time to give our update.

Since our last update we have traveled back and forth between Utah and Texas twice. Both trips required a lot of our attention as our home build is really getting down to the details. This stage is both exciting and a little scary. Our design choices starting to get implemented into the house so hopefully everything comes together as planned. The problem is that we are now 1,200 miles away and can’t be there to make changes on the fly if something doesn’t pan out. Hopefully when we get back there we don’t have an “oh shit” moment.

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June 2024 Dividend Portfolio Update

With another month drawing to a close it’s time for our June 2024 dividend portfolio update. June is normally a large month for dividend distributions which we look forward to. But, for some reason many ETF’s and mutual funds are not funding distributions until July 1st this year. Maybe it has something to do with the new holiday in June?

We will have to keep this in mind when we review our numbers for June and for July as both months be skewed as a result of this anomaly. For our June 2024 dividend portfolio update we will be missing payouts from QYLD and SCHD. QYLD isn’t a huge deal as their payouts can be all over the place. However, SCHD is one of our largest holdings and the distributions are a pretty significant amount for our little portfolio.

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May 2024 Financial Update

Welcome to our very belated May 2024 financial update. It seems that all of the cross country travel and probably some stress finally took its toll. Traveling was nice when we were doing it in a big luxury RV. We always had food and snacks in the refrigerator readily available. And when we were tired we would just hit up a rest area and sleep in our own bed. Traveling in a car with three people that is packed full with stuff is a completely different story however.

With our son completing college and getting ready to start his new career we had to empty his college apartment. For a minimalist person he had a lot of stuff! The car was completely packed and every nook and cranny was filled. And with his entire life in the car we didn’t want to leave the vehicle unattended. So with the exception of our three day stay in Texas to check on the our home build we ended up sleeping in the car, sitting upright when we stopped for the night. Not very much fun at all!

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May 2024 Dividend Portfolio Update

After a wild month it’s time for our May 2024 dividend portfolio update!

May is always kind of a wild card month and it’s not unusual to get the type of swings we had. Sell in May and go away? Meh! Our dividend portfolio reached another all time high once again. Then it came crashing down shortly after and we thought that was that. Of course we were wrong because it stabilized, rebounded and bam! Another all time high at the close of the month! It was quite the roller coaster!

While it was a fun ride we took a pretty significant hit to our PADI as you will see. The expected MMM dividend cut finally happened which is a setback. It pretty much wiped out half of the progress we made this year trying to reach our $1K PADI goal. It’s a little bit of a bummer when we can only take baby steps to begin with. So while the month was positive it wasn’t great because of this set back.

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