Recent Purchase FGP

When I purchased intel last week, I also made another purchase:

I picked up 100 shares of FGP at $18.27 per share.  Ferrellgas is an MLP (I've written about those before) in the propane business.  They pay a quarterly distribution of 50 cents a share, and have been for several years.  This is a little bit more of a risky play, as their balance sheets look a little shaky, but I feel that the business model is strong, and the company will maintain the distribution.

As far as my portfolio goes, my projected dividend income for the next 12 months now sits at $21,741.  I probably could hit 22K by the end of the year, but I'm not going to push it.  I still have a fair bit of cash currently sitting in my investment account, so I could make another purchase soon.  Any suggestions?  Aside from that, october was another great dividend income month, and I'll be writing the update shortly.

Recent Purchase - INTC

As I said, I made a couple of purchases on Friday.  I'm going to talk about one of them here today:

I purchases 100 shares of intel (INTC) at $21.30 a share.  This is a new position for me, the stock has been falling for a few weeks now, so I felt like now was a good time to get in.  One of the major reasons for the price drop has been the slow down of PC purchases, as more people opt for using tablets and their smart phones for their computing needs.  However, I have faith in intel; I feel like they'll be able to get their chips into those devices as well.  Further, their competition doesn't have anywhere near the talent or resources that intel has.  The only thing that really concerns me with intel is this "take it or leave it" business model they cling to; I feel like it leaves the door open for a competitor to come in and work better with customers to create a better overall device.  However, there's no one in the space right now that poses a real threat to intel.

With a purchase price of $21.30, my yield is 4.2%.  The purchase will give me a dividend income of $90 a year, bringing my projected dividend income for the next 12 months to $21,541.17!  This figure also includes the recent CLMT dividend increase.

I'll shortly be writing about my other recent purchase.  Also, I still have some cash left in my account that I hope to use before the end of the month.

My Swagbucks Experience

I've been away for a while, but there are a few posts that I've been meaning to write, as I've recently made a couple of purchases.  But I wanted to write about swagbucks.  I wrote about signing up for swagbucks here.  I've now been using it for a few weeks, and I wanted to write about my experience with it.  Just so you know, I am in no way being paid for writing this article.

I would use swagbucks here and there, really only when I was sitting around at home and was doing something else, like listening to the radio.  My objective was to earn 4500 swagbucks, which would net me 10 X $5 amazon.com gift cards.  I got the lion's share of my swagbucks by signing up for a discover card, which got me 3600 points (I never did activate the card).  Other than that, I sort of very slowly accumulated the 4500 points required to get me the $50 dollars worth of amazon  credit.  It took me until about the middle of september to get there.

One thing that I noticed early on was that a $5 amazon gift card was 450 swagbucks, while a $50 amazon gift card was 6000 swagbucks.  Some quick math would suggest that the higher amount gift card was a swagbucks rip-off.  I actually contacted customer service about this, and they said it was indeed correct, they want a lot of people to be able to get the gift cards.  I figured, "ok, well, I'll just get 10 X 5 dollar gift cards instead of one 50 dollar gift card."  I knew that you could use as many gift cards at a time as you wished with amazon, so I was at least clear on that front.

While the swagbucks service rep didn't lie to me, she also didn't tell me the whole truth either.  It turns out that you can only request 2 amazon gift cards a day from swagbucks.  Ok, no problem, I'll just request 2 a day for 5 days.  Then, it turns out you can only request 5 in a calendar month.  So clearly, there is an advantage to getting just one $50 gift card as opposed to 10 $5 gift cards.  You wont find any of this on their website either (unless you try to order more than 2 per day or 5 in a month).  It ended up not being a huge deal, but it certainly left a sour taste in my mouth.

It took a few days to get the gift cards after I requested them.  Why there was a lag in time I don't know; they were just e-giftcards that were emailed to me.  Once I got all 10, I loaded them into my amazon.com account, and ordered a 1-ounce silver bar.  I got the silver bar a few days later, so no problems with amazon.

So, with all that being said, I have a few final thoughts.  It was nice getting a bar of silver for doing little to nothing.  That being said, my swagbuck days are probably over.  That customer service "white lie" left a real sour taste in my mouth.  It wasn't really a big deal, but my concern is if I were to keep doing this, would they change the rules while I was in the middle of collecting swagbucks?  If they did change the rules, would they even notify me of the change?  Anyway, I'd rather stick with global test market, I get a check about every other month for 50 bucks, its pretty straight forward, and its cash, not gift cards.

Anyone else have experience with these types of sites?

September Dividend Income Update

September was a pretty quiet month on the for investing for me, as I only made the one small purchase on the last day (GGN).  Dividend income was small too, however it was better than last quarter.  My dividend income:

Taxable Account:

DUK - $21.42
ERH - $75.00
O - $10.58

Total - $107.00

Roth IRA:

ARR - $111.00
STB - $19.05

Total - $130.05

Overall total - $237.05

Total for September 2012 - $73.77

Wow, my dividend income in my taxable account was up almost 50 percent from last year!  Its great to see this progress.

And next month will be more active, as I'll have fresh capital for my taxable account.

How was your month?