Recent Purchase

Well, the markets are still running wild, and its been tough for all value investors to find deals.  However, I was able to get in on a slight dip this week in one of my favorite stocks:

I picked up 60 shares of Linn Energy (LINE) at 39.18 per share.  This will add $43.50 per quarter to my dividend income.  My projected dividend income for the next 12 months is now a staggering $21,368.01.  I don't think that I'll make 22k by the end of the year, but its still impressive none the less.  On deck for next week is my monthly dividend income update - its another good month! 

Happy Birthday!

Earlier this week, The Dividend Lifestyle Blog turned one year old!  Its been a great year, filled with ups and downs, but one thing is for certain - my finances are back on track, and its been a great experience being able to track my progress towards accumulating great dividend paying stocks.  Now, my monthly updates will include a look-back at at where I was 12 months ago to monitor progress.  As far as a purchase this month, I have a good amount of cash sitting in my account as of right now, just waiting on a good price on some certain equities to use it.

Why I'm hanging on to Chimera (CIM)

One of my stocks, chimera (CIM) is a real estate investment trust holding both agency and non-agency (not backed by the government) mortgage backed securities.  The non agency portion poses a lot of risk, and with interest rates so low plus a poor housing market, its tough to make a lot of money on such speculative investments.  Further, this particular REIT has failed to report results since the third quarter of last year, which has caused investors to become nervous and sell.

How has this affected me?  Well, I purchased CIM at $4.02 a share back in 2009, and at the time, it was paying a dividend of 11 cents a share per quarter.  Now, its trading at $2.38 and paying 9 cents a quarter.  Most dividend investors probably would have cut bait on this stock when the dividend cut, but I decided to stay the course.  Why?

Well, a few reasons.  Lets look at the fact that until earlier this week, CIM had failed to report results for almost a year.  I felt like the stock was oversold based on this results reporting, and it looks like I was right:  what they reported this week wasn't pretty - net income fell by 695 million in the past year, yet the stock went up 8.3% just due to the fact that the report was filed.  This tells me that there was certainly a "wall of worry" phenomena going on with this stock.

But simply reporting results does not make a good stock (obviously).  So what keeps me on board?  Well, I still have faith in the management.  CIM is owned by another mREIT, Annaly (NLY), which is one of the older, more successful REITs.  Secondly, the housing market cant stay down forever.  I honestly feel that with the help of decent politicians, we will finally get back to the old mantra of "if you can't afford a house, you can't buy one."  Not everyone needs to own a home, it shouldn't be a dream of our politicians!  I feel as we slowly get back to this line of thinking, less and less "bad loans" will be made to purchase homes, and companies that make money from these loans will recover.  Finally, its not like I'm talking about a lot of money here, the initial investment was only $6K.  I acknowledge its a risk, but certainly not one that can wreck my portfolio.  Trust me, if I took my portfolio to have it analyzed by an "advisor" they'd have far more problems with it than my investment in CIM.

What do you think?  Would you have sold before now, right now, or hang on like me?  

New Swag Bucks Gagdet

A few months ago, I wrote about a new stream of cash flow, here.  Since that, I've earned about 350 dollars from this, which is pretty good for just sitting around the house answering a survey here and there.  Today, I stumbled upon a new way to make some extra spending money, using swagbucks.  Its a lot easier than the survey taking (which isn't very hard), you sign up, install a toolbar, and do searches using the toolbar for the chance to earn "swag bucks."  You can also sign up for free offers on swagbucks.com, take surveys, watch movies, like on facebook, etc, all to earn swag bucks.

So what are swagbucks worth?  Well, there are a lot of gift offers, but for me, the only thing worth it are the 5 dollar amazon gift cards, which cost 450 swag bucks.  I envision buying silver/gold coins from amazon after amassing a few of these cards.

How many rewards do you earn for the different tasks?  As you could predict, the simple stuff, like using the search engine, watching commercials on the site, taking a one question poll, earn you anywhere from 1-10 swag bucks.  Signing up for the site and doing some short surveys earn you 50 swag bucks.  Signing up for free offers and trials can earn you anywhere from 100 to 1200 swag bucks.  One example of this is signing up for a free month trial of netflix for 1000 swag bucks (just remember to cancel it within the trial period if you don't want it).

Again, just a way to make a few extra bucks while lounging around the house.  Like I said, amazon has a ton of stuff on it that I can probably use, if I can't find anything, I'll simply buy a few more late issue coins/bars of silver.

If you feel like this article was useful to you and you want to sign up for swag bucks, please click the gadget on the right side of the page.

July Dividend Income Update

Wow, the summer is flying by, and its time for another dividend update!  July was a very good month, just a tick down from April due to a dividend decrease from CIM (I might write about this in the very near future).  Anyway, here are this month's dividends:


From taxable account:
ERH - $63.30
O - $10.23
NM - $18.00
GE - $17.00
CIM - $135.00
bank stock - 3798.00

Taxable Account total:  $4041.53


From Roth IRA:

ARR - $111.00
STB - $18.23

Roth IRA Account total:  $129.23


TOTAL FOR JULY:  $4170.76


As, I said, another great month, which lead to two really nice purchases in my portfolio.  Other than that, things are looking up - it looks like all of my financial goals are coming along, the job is going good, etc.  Here's hoping everyone is having a great summer!