New Purchase!

Ok, so I said I'd be back on Monday and here it is Tuesday.  Not bad.  I'd call that a victory.

So I mentioned last week that I bought some stock.  I took my April money and made a May purchase.  Everything together I had just under $200 to spend.  So I put some more money into Realty Income Corp, to up my monthly dividend.



This trade took my cash down under $1.00 so I got in another share, but barely.

What does this do for my portfolio?  Well, now I've got 4 new shares of this guy.  At the current dividend of $0.1895 it gives me an added dividend of $0.76 per month.  With the other 4 shares I have it makes my monthly dividend on this stock $1.51.  Not bad.  That's $17.28 each year.  For doing nothing.  I like that.  But that's not all because reinvesting these dividends is going to compound.  Last month the dividend of $0.76 bought me 0.0161 shares so I'm sitting with 8.0161 at the moment.  So instead of $1.51 I'll get $1.516.

That half a cent in a dividend on my dividends and it is a beautiful thing.  I can't wait to get some bigger money in here and see that half cent climb.

End of the week I'll write my first post on how I'm earning this money.  Until then.

Is your money making you money?

April Wrap Up

Well, this post comes a little late because I'm a shitbag and life got in the way.  I've just been busy.  Work has been busy, and I've tried to spend more time at the gym.  Add on that I had a birthday, and had my mother in law in town for Mother's Day and the blog kind of got away from me.

Anyways, a regular post I want to do is to wrap up what I earned the month before.  So lets take a look at that broken down by day:



So these are my top two earners, as I've said before.  Swagbucks was really consistent.  This is because I get a bonus at around .80 so I always make sure to get at least that far.  Mturk is obviously a bit more inconsistent as it takes a lot more work.  When I have busy weekends I tend to not get to it at all.  My goal of $6.00 per day for these two was close, but I didn't make it.  (I had a rough start to May so I don't think I'll make it this month either, but that is for another post.)

So for these two sites alone I added almost $180 to my portfolio.  That's not too shabby.  Comes out to saving $2160 per year.  And at 3% that's going to net me $64.  Not the greatest numbers in the world, but once the dividends start reinvesting and it all starts compounding, we'll start rolling downhill and picking up steam.

I made a purchase this week too, so I'll be back hopefully on Monday to talk about it and see what it adds to my portfolio.  Have a good weekend.

Is your money making you money?

April Dividend(s)

So we're at the start of a new month.  I want to take the first blog post of every month and dedicate it to what I made in dividends the month before.  It will be a short post, especially at the beginning, but eventually I'll be able to look back and see what compounding and additional investment have done for my ongoing incoming.

I'm going to be focusing the first few months of additional capital on Realty Income Corp (O).  I'm doing this both for income and for psychological reasons.  They are known as the "Monthly Dividend Company."  Heck they even trademarked it.  And even if they named themselves that, it is true.  They pay their dividend every month, and they've done it (and raised it) for 20 years.  So putting my initial capital investments there will help jumpstart my portfolio, and the monthly payments (as opposed to quarterly dividends) will keep me motivated at the start until I can really start spreading the money around to more traditional dividend stocks.

So here is what I got paid in April:


So that is not the greatest start in the world.  A gain of $0.20 for the month.  It even came from a stock I bought before I started the blog.  I used a formula I found in a book to pick it.  But it is something that I didn't have before, even if it is only 72 thousandths of a share.  I'll be collecting 2 dividends in May, so this type of post come June will be slightly more exciting, but not by much.  Not too much to analyze here either.  I picked up 2 shares on 3/2.  I only had $60 to invest at the time.

But stay with me, I'll have more to say on this and other topics soon, and I'll even give a small book report on the book I used to pick VVI.  Have a great start to your week!


Is your money making you money?

What did I earn this week?

My second blog post and I already missed a deadline.  For no reason either, I thought about writing it and then just couldn't come up with a topic that didn't need a ton of research and graphics and...lets face it...work.

But here I am on Saturday morning and I want to share what I made this week.  At the moment I have two regular income streams for this project:  Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk) and Swagbucks.  Now, I'll have separate posts later on for these guys, with details about how I do it and what I think the best practices are, but I make about $1.50 per day on Swagbucks and anywhere from 0-$10 on Mturk.

So here is what I've made for the month, and what I've made in the last week is highlighted in yellow:



So for the month I'm looking at about $6/day which comes out to $180.  As you can see there are days when I'm well above that and some days when I'm way below.  This kind of goes to the heart of the project in that I just put in the effort I want some days.  If I want to go to the gym instead of working on making an extra buck I can do that.  If I want to go to lunch instead of spending my lunch break filling out surveys I can do that too.  I'm going to try to shoot for $200/month, but if I don't make it I'm not going to sweat it.  I might work hard the last few days if I'm close, but I'm not going to let it control my life.

So that is that.  Next week I'll get into the details of how I'm making this money.  I might get up a post tomorrow detailing my year to date dividends, but I've got a pretty busy day and I don't know if I'll have the half hour to devote.  We'll see.

Have a great weekend and I'll see you back here soon.

Is your money making you money?

The Beginning

So here we are at the beginning of a blog.  What is this one about?  Money.  I’m going to start and investing project and I want to document it.  I’m attempting to use the internet as side income and to use that income to learn about investing and make some money along the way.

I’m not going to do everything right.  And in fact I’m going to do some things intentionally wrong.  I’m going to trade more often that I should.  I’m going to have to eat fees that would otherwise have been saved.  

But part of the goal of this project is to turn investing into a game.  A lot of hay has been made about gamification, and I think it gotten taken to the extreme in some cases, but I want to gamify investing so that I find it fun and keep at it.  I don’t want to make $1,000 and get bored and quit.  I want to make $1,000,000 and do it in a way that doesn’t seem like work.  

Part of this process is going to include this blog.  I’ll document everything I do, everything I read, and keep you updated with the money I make from doing stuff, and the money that my money makes.  I’ll give you regular updates on my portfolio’s worth, how much money I made that month, and exactly how I made it.  Hopefully I’ll get on some kind of schedule.  I’m thinking I will take Sunday to recap what I made that week.  I’ll use Thursday to write about a book I’m reading, a stock that has my attention, or to document the ways I make cash on the internet.  And then I’ll make a post on the first of every month to document changes in my portfolio.  

Hopefully I’ll find some people to come along for the ride.  I’ll try to make it interesting.

 

So there is my current portfolio.  Not much to look at right?  Just over $300 and each investment in the red.  Well, the losses all stem from the trading fees.  And I'm not really concerned with that.  I'll explain why in a future post, but it has to do with keeping the game interesting.  I'll probably come back this week and try to explain why I picked up each of these stocks, but I'm going to warn you, it isn't the most interesting story or scientific at all.  But that is for another day.  

Thanks for coming along.

Is your money making you money?