Recent Buy

I wasn't really sure if I would be able to make any purchases this month. My big trip to New Zealand is coming up and I am going to be strapped for cash for a while. I do have a goal to make up my vacation costs but I am also fronting the money and my girlfriend will pay me back after she starts her new job. So, while I have plans to cover all these extra expenses, they won't come to fruition for until much later in the year leaving me short on cash at the moment.

Despite all this I did end up making a purchase and I think my cash situation will work out just fine. I purchased 30 shares of BAX at $66.7673 on Friday.


From Scottrade:

Baxter International Inc. (Baxter) is a global, diversified healthcare company. Baxter, through its subsidiaries, develops, manufactures and markets products that save and sustain the lives of people with hemophilia, immune disorders, infectious diseases, kidney disease, trauma, and other chronic and acute medical conditions. The Company operated in two segments: BioScience and Medication Delivery. It is engaged in the medical devices, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology to create products that advance patient care worldwide. These products are used by hospitals, kidney dialysis centers, nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, doctors’ offices, clinical and medical research laboratories, and by patients at home under physician supervision.

 Baxter International's peers include Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) and Pfizer, Inc (PFE). Below is a quick comparison between these three companies:

Symbol	P/E	% Yield	Years of Dividend Growth	5 yr Div Growth Rate	10 yr Div Growth Rate
BAX	19.1	3.06	8	17.7%	14.2%
JNJ	17.6	2.78	52	7.0%	7.4%
PFE	24.4	3.25	5	9.1%	5.4%

Obviously BAX does not have a long history of dividend growth but  since initiating a divided BAX has had a great dividend growth rate. One additional selling point is the plan to spin off the biotech side of the company leaving BAX to focus on medical technology. BAX has had a history of good spinoffs, which My Dividend Growth just wrote about.

Conclusion
I saw an opportunity to buy into a company I have had my eye on and I took it. BAX does not have a long history of dividend growth but has been increasing the dividend steadily over the last 8 years. While BAX does not have a long history of dividend growth it has had success with spinoffs in the past and I saw the upcoming spinoff as a potential for some added value.

What do you think? Do you own BAX?

Photo Credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

January Goals Update

Happy Saturday everyone! This is the last of my three monthly update posts where I will be discussing my progress on my goals for 2015.

GOALS

Financial

Expense rate under 45% of my net income.  F-

My first month started out as a real dud in the expense department, my expenses were actually higher than my income for January. This was due to purchasing plane tickets to New Zealand, and I am so excited about the trip so I don’t even care about the bad start right now.

Establish an emergency fund and automatically deposit some money into it each month. C

No progress in this department yet, if I want to open a Money Market account, as I was planning to do, I need at least $10k to open that account with my bank so I am still trying to decide how much cash to save up for this goal.

Invest $2,500 per month. A+

I invested over $4000 this month so it’s a great start to the year.

 

Open a Loyal3 account and start a small amount of automatic investing. C

No progress here yet, but I could flip the switch any time.

Pay for my vacations with overtime. A

I put in 15 hours of overtime in January and if I can keep that rate up I will be right on track.

Establish one new source of income. C

No update on this front yet.

Physical

Complete the Tough Mudder. C

I am already signed up for this one, so it will be happening.

Workout my legs 2x per week. B

My basketball schedule has eased up a bit so I should be able to work this in, but for January I worked out only 6 times instead of the requisite 8.

Complete a sprint triathlon. C

No progress on this front yet, plenty of time to plan this one.

Run at a faster Pace: complete a 15K in 1 hour and 24 minutes (9 minute/mile). D

No progress here either.

Reduce my percentage of body fat to 12%. D

I am actually not sure what my current percentage is but I don’t think it is good. 

Track my calorie intake every day and review weekly. A

100% success so far.

Personal

Read 6 Books from my Reading List. C

No progress yet.

Take an online class. D

Nothing here either.

Average one blog post per week. A

4 posts in January so right on track!

Travel somewhere new. B

Well we purchased the tickets to New Zealand and we are VERY excited.

Try meditation. C

I need to figure out a game plan for accomplishing this goal.

Try out one new hobby. C

Step 1: figure out what I would be interesting in trying, currently I have no ideas…

Date night with my girlfriend at least once per month. A

We made use of a Groupon for a new Italian restaurant and frozen yogurt afterwards.

Conclusion

Well I have real mix of progress on my goals, some good, some bad.There are also a lot of goals that I have not started yet, which is not a bad thing, these are yearly goals and and we are only one month in.

Photo: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

January Portoflio and Net Worth Update

Well the Seahawks didn't win...what a range of emotions on Sunday. But life goes on. Today's post is all about showing a snapshot of my current financial position as well as major changes to the portfolio.

Buys/Sells:
Surprisingly I had two purchases this month.This is the first time in a long while that I have been so eager to deploy capital.

I purchased 34 shares of HP on January 7th @ 59.268. Will I didn't buy at any local dip, my purchase was after a monumental slide that started in August. But Helmerich & Payne has recovered in the last couple of days so I'll have to reevaluated before making another purchase here.

My second purchase of the month was 35 shares of NOV on January 12th @ 58.22 after National-Oilwell Varco, Inc. opened with $2.6 drop in price. I jumped at the opportunity to buy in and the price has since gone down another $4 so I may need to average down here if I can spare some capital.

I am going to try to do a better job of writing about my purchases as they happen so I can share my experience in real time.

FRIP
Scottrade offers a Flexible Reinvestment Plan, where dividends from qualifying companies can be used to purchase shares in any other qualifying companies without any commission. So I take advantage of this every month and I usually use it to build up my positions in companies where my positions are lagging.
This month my dividends were used to purchase 5 shares of Kimco Realty Corporation (KIM). This feature has been on autopilot for a long time now so I need to evaluated where best to invest these small chunks of money.

Net Worth
Net worth will always be a secondary goal for me with generating passive income being my primary goal. But net worth is something I have started tracking. Given how much of my net worth is in stocks, my net worth will have a tendency to fluctuate frequently with the market but hopefully my net worth continue an overall upward trend over time.
Assets:

   - 401k:                   $73,180

   - Investments:        $65,756
   - Cash:                   $8,516

Liabilities

   - Student Loan 2:  $6,866

   - Car Loan:           $8,909

NETWORTH:       $131,678 up almost 10% from last month, partially to the inclusion of cash...

Current Portfolio:

Symbol	Shares	Symbol	Shares
VHGEX	173.82	JNJ	17
VWIGX	177.917	KIM	77
VTRIX	110.62	KMI	104
AFL	57.08	KO	36
BBY	1	MAT	59
BNS	36	MRK	43
CIM	68	NOV	35
CVX	15	OHI	65
DLR	74	SNE	10
GE	86	SPY	10
HCP	56	T	103
HP	34	TGT	31
INTC	94	VZ	30
IYY	20	WFC	48

Well, this is a pretty brief post but I kind of like that is direct, short, and simple. But overall it was a good month for my portfolio (two new additions) and my net worth.

How about you? Any good purchases in January?

Photo Credit: freedigitalphotos.net

January '15 Wrap Up

Well the first month of 2015 is already over. The new year has started off pretty well. I spent last couple days of 2014 and the first couple days of 2015 with my brother and his family in Utah, it was great to spend sometime with them, we miss having them close by. Work has started off busy so I have been putting in some overtime which will be a big boost for completing my 2015 goals. I am only playing on one basketball team right now which is a bummer but I think it will work out for the better, both on my body and my schedule. And the most exciting thing: we bought tickets to New Zealand!! I already can't wait for April to be here.

OH YEAH, and the Seahawks are in the Super Bowl! GO HAWKS!

With the new year I decided that I might try changing things up with this post. I felt like my monthly round ups were a bit long so I may try to break it up into separate posts: Budget, Networth, and Goals. We will see how that goes this month and I can make adjustments for next month.

Well onto my Budget:

Expenses:
My expenses are listed to the side. On each line I have the budgeted amount per month, the actual
amount spent for the month of January.

My total expenses were just over $4,300, which is probably my worst moth ever. But there is a clear reason for it: two round trip plane tickets to New Zealand. I was a little unsure about how I wanted to handle my travel expenses within my budget; I have a goal to pay for my travel through overtime which would be a good reason to keep it separate from my regular budget. But overtime and base pay comes in on the same paychecks so then I would have to separate out the over time. So I have decided to leave it as a part of my budget and track separately that my overtime will cover my travel expenses.

Without the plane tickets my expenses would have been $2,267 which is a pretty usual month. My groceries, dinner/drinks, clothes an rent/utilities were all a little high but I am not too concerned yet but I certainly need to tighten things up.

INCOME:
Paycheck: $ 4,363. I had 10 hours of OT this month so that was a small boost. I am currently contributing 20% of my income to my 401k so I could always reduce that to give myself a small boost in cash.

% Expenses = 108%  of income. YIKES. But again this is due to purchasing the plane tickets. Without those tickets my expense rate was 52% which is much more manageable but still still higher than my 45% goal.

Dividend Income:
 This month I earned $150 without lifting a finger, not bad. The following companies paid me this month:

Well that is all I have for right now, not the best way to start the new year budget-wise but hopefully I can pick it up. In my next post I'll discuss updates to my portfolio as well as my net worth.

How about you? How was your January?

GO HAWKS!!

-Nick

Photo Credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net