Current Events > I've started investing in stocks a lot more in recent months

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm trying to build up a lot of shares in dividend stocks as a means of having a decent passive income stream 5 to 10 years from now. I hope it works out. Panasonic has been paying me about $1.54 every 6 months for having 11 shares of their stock. I finally took some time to do the math if I had thousands of shares of their stock as well as others. My portfolio is more diversified than it has ever been. Also, having a focus on dividend income has finally broken my obsession with whether stocks are up or down on a particular day.

When I first started investing back in 2016, I had absolutely no patience for it. I was sitting at work smashing the F5 key every few seconds to see if my stocks were up a few cents or down a few cents. I'd be trying to sell my shares after they went up like 10 cents in order to earn some tiny bit of profit, but doing a terrible job of trying to time day trades manually.

I really wish I had held onto what I had. I had about $10,000 in Google back when it was at $700 and about $5000 in both Amazon and Apple when they were much cheaper. I ended up selling it all at some point because I was so obsessed with it.

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what are you using to manage this? I got a good chunk of savings I need to invest and been researching options...

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CableZL posted...

Panasonic has been paying me about $1.54 every 6 months for having 11 shares of their stock.

Ew that's virtually nothing.

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BuckVanHammer posted...

what are you using to manage this? I got a good chunk of savings I need to invest and been researching options...

I just have an etrade account.

Hexenherz posted...

Ew that's virtually nothing.

Yeah, but logically if I end up building that up to 11000 shares of their stock, that's $1540 every 6 months. 22000 shares, $3080 every 6 months.

My goal is to build up over time so that I'm getting thousands of dollars per quarter in dividends to supplement my income. Pie in the sky goal is to match my income from work with dividend income.

If that happens, then I can just decide whether I want to keep working or not. If I can get there, then my work income is just bonus and that would mean financial freedom. If I still enjoy what I do, I'd probably keep working just to keep investing more and more. If I don't enjoy it or I don't feel like it's worth it, I could just live off of dividend income.

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I just checked GAIN (though I don't know if I'd recommend buying into it just yet, it's been rocky since the pandemic started even though it was doing pretty strong before then). They pay dividends on a monthly schedule, last month it was 7 cents a share, which, at 11 shares, would equal out to $4.62 over 6 months.

There are lots of companies that pay much better than Panasonic that are more stable, too.

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Hexenherz posted...

I just checked GAIN (though I don't know if I'd recommend buying into it just yet, it's been rocky since the pandemic started even though it was doing pretty strong before then). They pay dividends on a monthly schedule, last month it was 7 cents a share, which, at 11 shares, would equal out to $4.62 over 6 months.

There are lots of companies that pay much better than Panasonic that are more stable, too.

Yeah, I have stock in a number of other companies that pay dividends and I've been looking into more dividend stocks to invest in.

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My portfolio right now:

Dividend stocks:

IBM
AAPL
WMB
TRP
FRO
CSCO
HPE
PCRFY
CLX

Non-dividend stocks:

TSLA
YETI
NIO

TSLA has been the primary driver of the growth in value of my portfolio overall, but having a focus on dividends helped to end my obsession with what the value of any stock is at moment to moment.

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I'm sure someone will speak out about these but if you want just a decent dividend return with relatively low risk then regulated public utility companies like Duke or Dominion are pretty good - they provide essential services that are always going to have customers and can pay not-so-bad dividends out because of predictable profitability.

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I don't like dividends too much because you get taxed on it every year. When I'm old though, I plan on switching all my investments to dividend stocks though so I can live off that for the rest of my life.

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Squall28 posted...

I don't like dividends too much because you get taxed on it every year. When I'm old though, I plan on switching all my investments to dividend stocks though so I can live off that for the rest of my life.

Yeah but you still wind up with money you wouldn't have had otherwise and the dividends can just be reinvested into the stocks, too.

I'd rather make $200, get taxed $20 and come out with $180 than make $100, get taxed $10 and only have $90 >_>

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Squall28 posted...

I don't like dividends too much because you get taxed on it every year. When I'm old though, I plan on switching all my investments to dividend stocks though so I can live off that for the rest of my life.

All income is taxed, so I might as well get more money just for having money in their stocks. That's just about the easiest money you can make.

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