A Frugal Family's Journey: May 2016

Monday, May 30, 2016

Stocks Added to Collection of Stock Analyses - May 2016 (Week 21)

For those who are not yet familiar with our extensive collection of individual dividend stocks. The entire collection is currently comprised of 1,199 stock analyses (and still growing). The collection essentially provides links to various stock analyses that we found throughout the dividend blog community since 2013. Last year we added a total of 445 stock analyses to the collection. If you would like to view archives from previous years, please follow the respective links provided at the end of this post.

2016
Our currently readers already know that we recently began providing weekly updates. We started providing weekly updates back in November of 2015 and we are committed to continuing with the weekly updates throughout 2016. We hope the weekly updates not only provides more value to our readers but also helps ensure that we continue to keep our collection up to date. Our 2016 Collection is now comprised of 205 stock analyses to date.

May 2016 - Week 21 of 52:

Thankful for a second consecutive week where the balance of work and home life was once again manageable.

Below is a list of newly added stocks analyses for the 4th week of May:

Apple Inc (AAPL)

by Jason Fieber

Diageo Plc (DEO)

by Dividends Drive

Emerson Electric Co (EMR)

by Chuck Carnevale

Genuine Parts Company (GPC)

by Dividends Growth Stocks

HCP, Inc (HCP)

by Dividends Growth Stocks

PPL Corporation (PPL)

by Roadmap 2 Retire

Sherwin Williams Co (SHO)

by The Conservative Income Investor

Target Corporation (TGT)

by Dividend Growth Investor

United Parcel Service Inc (UPS)

by Dividend Diplomats

W.W. Grainger Inc (GWW)

by DividendTIME

Links provided directly in this post!

Please feel free to leave me a message if you prepared a stock analysis that I did not include in my post. I would be more than happy to add your stock analysis to both this post and our collection of stock analyses. Please make sure to confirm that it is a dividend paying stock and that it is a individual stock analysis.

My goal is to make this collection become the centralized source where one begins their research on a particular dividend stock company or at the very least, a source to confirm if a company stock is worth buying. Whether your a beginner or a veteran, I want this list to become an invaluable reference tool for you all. Best part, unlike other subscription based sites, I plan to keep this completely free for everyone to enjoy and benefit from.

Feel free to share with all of your friends and family!

Click on Link Below

2016 - Collection of Stock Analyses

(Archived 2015, 2014, 2013)

Also don't forget to check out our:

Collection of Recent Buys

Sunday, May 29, 2016

RECENT BUY : (NYSE: TGT)

WE RECENTLY PURCHASED THE FOLLOWING

Target Corporation (TGT)

Purchased 10 shares of TGT on 5/19/2016 at $67.25
Total Spent: $672.50; added $22.40 in forward dividends.

Our family has been on the sidelines since early February. Although it is nice to stock pile to cash, I must admit it feels so much better to be adding to those forward dividends. :) So on 5/16/2016, we did just that. We picked up 10 shares in Target Corporation (TGT) at our limit price set at $67.25. In all we spend $672.50 which added another $22.40 to our yearly dividends. And the best part, as reported in our April dividend stocks portfolio report, we had just sold 15 shares of Target Corporation (TGT) on 4/27/2016 and 4/5/2016 for $83.33 and $82.31, respectively.

Target Corporation (TGT) It currently pays more than 3% in dividends, has a low payout ratio in the low 40s, and has been growing their dividends for 48 consecutive years! Below is a ranking and fair value price given by S&P Capital IQ and Morningstar:

S&P Capital IQ ranks Target 3-stars, with a 12-month price target of $76.00 and a fair market value of $73.80.
Morningstar ranks Target 3-stars, with a fair market value of $74.00.

Company Description

From Google Finance:

“Target Corporation offers everyday essentials and merchandise to its customers. The Company sells a range of general merchandise and food through its store and digital channels. The Company's general merchandise stores offer an edited food assortment, including perishables, dry grocery, dairy and frozen items. The Company's digital channels include a range of general merchandise, including various items found in its stores, along with a complementary assortment, such as additional sizes and colors sold only online. The Company's brands include Archer Farms, Market Pantry, Threshold, Simply Balanced, Merona, up & up, Boots & Barkley, Room Essentials, Wine Cube, Circo, Smith & Hawken, Xhilaration, Embark, Ava & Viv, Spritz and Sonia Kashuk. The Company's exclusive brands include C9 by Champion, DENIZEN from Levi's, Nate Berkus for Target, Cherokee, Fieldcrest, Oh Joy! for Target, Mossimo, Genuine Kids from OshKosh, Shaun White, Kid Made Modern and Hand Made Modern.”

With our recent purchase of Target Corporation (TGT), the estimated forward dividends for our family's dividend stocks portfolio grew another $24.00, putting our yearly dividends at approximately $3,240/year (excluding our Edwards Jones account) and $3,625/year (including our Edward Jones account).

Since we already previously owned TGT, our family's dividend stocks portfolios (WF and EJ Accounts) the total stocks held remains the same with total of 53 different dividend paying stocks/ETFs and also 5 companies that either don't pay a dividend our has currently suspended their dividends.

Our family's dividend stocks portfolio may be found

by clicking on the link below:

DIVIDEND STOCKS PORTFOLIO

We also maintain an extensive list of stock analysis

that can be access through the link below:

COLLECTION OF STOCK ANALYSES

We also just started a list of Recent Buys by other bloggers

that can be access through the link below:

COLLECTION OF RECENT BUYS

HERE IS A QUICK FACT SHEET FOR THE STOCK I JUST PURCHASED:

Target Corporation (TGT)

P/E: 13

Payout Ratio: 42%
Dividend Yield: 3.30%
Dividend Growth rate (5yr AVG): 47%
44 consecutive years of dividend increases
Last Ex-dividend date: 5/16/2016

Next Ex-dividend date: approx. 5/16/2016
Have paid a dividend since: 1965 (51 years)
Pays a dividend 4 times a year.
Market Cap: 40.6 Billion
52-week high: $85.81
52-week low: $65.60
Purchased Price: $67.25

What are your thoughts on of recent purchase?

What are you buying?

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Stocks Added to Collection of Stock Analyses - May 2016 (Week 20)

For those who are not yet familiar with our extensive collection of individual dividend stocks. The entire collection is currently comprised of 1,188 stock analyses (and still growing). The collection essentially provides links to various stock analyses that we found throughout the dividend blog community since 2013. Last year we added a total of 445 stock analyses to the collection. If you would like to view archives from previous years, please follow the respective links provided at the end of this post.

May 2016 - Week 20 of 52:

Thankful for a second consecutive week where the balance of work and home life was once again manageable.

Below is a list of newly added stocks analyses for the 3rd week of May:

Abott Laboratories (ABT)

by DividendTIME

AT&T Corp (T)

by Dividends Growth Investor

Colgate Palmolive Co (CL)

by Dividends Growth Stocks

Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO)

by The Conservative Income Investor

Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM)

by Dividends Growth Investor

SCANA Corp (SCG)

by Harvesting Dividends

Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT)

by Dividends Growth Stocks

Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT)

by DividendTIME

Links provided directly in this post!

Feel free to share with all of your friends and family!

Click on Link Below

2016 - Collection of Stock Analyses

(Archived 2015, 2014, 2013)

Also don't forget to check out our:

Collection of Recent Buys

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

P2P Accounts (Update) - May 2016

On May 1st, our Lending Club account balance was at $7,412.09. We had $3,698.61 in available cash and out outstanding principal stood at $3,713.48.

As our followers may already know, it has been more and more difficult to find and buy notes that meet our criteria. We don't have the time to search for notes each morning as we once had so we now rely on the automatic investing tool. Unfortunately, we've just haven't had much success through automatic investing. So in September, since we had way too much money sitting idle, we decided to open a new Loyal3 account. We will still keep our P2P accounts but our plan is to continue to move idle cash back to our bank account and invest the money into our new Loyal3 account. We obviously need to do a better to job moving this idle cash because our available cash continues to grow each and every month.

From our outstanding notes, we did receive $25.55 in interest. Unfortunately, we had several charged-off loans totaling $30.45 this past month. So this past month, we actually saw a net loss of $4.89, further validating our reason and need to find a new way to grow our money.

Once again, the automatic investing tool for Lending Club didn't manage to pick up any new notes this past month. In all, our total continuous to dwindle down and currently stands at 295 outstanding notes (66 notes have settled since our February post). On the bright side, although our outstanding notes are not growing well, we have now seen a total of 989 notes paid in full. Oh well, it was good while it lasted. You know what they say, all good things generally come to and end at some time. :)

As you can see our 295 active notes are part of a very conservative mix with 71% of the notes being A Rated, 26% are B Rated, and 2% are C Rated. Even though we've seen 66 notes settle since February, this mix remains identical to our mix in February. Again, I'm not too sure why it doesn't add up to 100% but I assume that these number have been rounded down as they were closer to the lower number.

We are currently generating a Net Annualized Return of 5.35% (down .05% from February report) on our seasoned notes.

_____________________________________________________________

On May 1st, our Prosper account balance was at $10,266.80 ($71 more than our February report). We had $2,127.06 in available cash, $82.72 in pending payments, and out outstanding principal stood at $8,057.03.

All in all, our Prosper account is certainly seeing better performance than our Lending Club account, however, the struggle to find additional notes and having too much idle cash also exists for our Prosper account.

From our outstanding notes, we received $301.45 in payments from our active notes. From those payments, we received a total of $47.19 in interest and with one loan for $6.33 charged-off and $7.32 service and collection fees this past month. Surprisingly, we also managed to acquire $1,040.35 into new notes this past month. Still not happy with the amount of excess cash but it is leaps and bounds above Lending Club. We've essentially given up on Lending Club but hold some hope that our Prosper account can continue to thrive for a bit longer.

Similar to our Lending Club notes, the our Prosper notes are invested into a similar conservative mix. As you can from the pie chart above, majority of our notes are have an A or AA rating. Although we do have a few C rated notes, they make up a very small part of our investments.

We are currently generating an Annualized Return of 6.59% on our seasoned notes and 6.27% on all notes.

_______________________________________________________________

Below are the updated numbers that include both Lending Club and Prosper accounts:

Total Value of Both P2P accounts: $17,678.89

Estimate Average Interest Earned: 5.81%

Click below to view our peer-to-peer lending accounts history

PEER-TO-PEER LENDING ACCOUNTS

________________________________________________________________

NOTES CRITERIA:

Our family has been investing in peer-to-peer lending notes for approximately 3 years now. And because of past defaults, we have now refined our search criteria. As a result, we now take a slightly more conservative approach with the notes we invest in. Currently, we only invest in notes that fit the following initial criteria:

Amount requested is under $6,000;

Credit score of 700 or more; and

Monthly payment will be less than $250.

From those we evaluate (Employment Status):

The borrower's income (prefer > $50,000 but depends on amount requested);

Length of employment (must be > 2 years); and

Their occupation (certain occupations, known to be more secured, are more desirable).

We then look at (Ability To Pay):

Their credit history;

Revolving balance; and

Debt to income level, etc.

We do not invest in any notes where borrow is currently delinquent, of if they have had a public record within the last 12 months. We also do not invest in notes where the description provided is "Other." We feel that there is too much risk involve when the borrower is not willing to reveal why he/she needs the money.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Stocks Added to Collection of Stock Analyses - May 2016 (Week 19)

For those who are not yet familiar with our extensive collection of individual dividend stocks. The entire collection is currently comprised of 1,180 stock analyses (and still growing). The collection essentially provides links to various stock analyses that we found throughout the dividend blog community since 2013. Last year we added a total of 445 stock analyses to the collection. If you would like to view archives from previous years, please follow the respective links provided at the end of this post.

May 2016 - Week 19 of 52:

Finally had a week where balancing work and home life actually felt more manageable. It'e been a pretty busy April and May for this frugal family but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Part of the time, we've been planning our summer road trip/vacation. I'm not going to say that we are back to weekly update posts just yet, but hoping to get a few consecutive weekly posts in before we head out on vacation in June.

Below is a list of newly added stocks analyses for the 3rd week of May:

Alfac Inc (AFL)

by Sure Dividend

Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM)

by Dividends Growth Stocks

Chevron Corp (CVX)

by Sure Dividend

Eaton Corp (ETN)

by Dividends Growth Stocks

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)

by Dividends Growth Stocks

Prosperity Bancshares Inc (PB)

by Harvesting Dividends

United Parcel Service Inc (UPS)

by Dividend Value Builder

Verizon Corp (VZ)

by Dividend Growth Investor

V.F. Corporation (VFC)

by DividendTIME

Links provided directly in this post!

Feel free to share with all of your friends and family!

Click on Link Below

2016 - Collection of Stock Analyses

(Archived 2015, 2014, 2013)

Also don't forget to check out our:

Collection of Recent Buys

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Mortgage Balance (UPDATE) - MAY 2016

If you have viewed our family's Net Worth Page, you probably already know that it does not include the equity in our home. Although, we do realize that it is technically part of our overall net worth, we decided that since our home equity is not an asset that we can count on for income (unless we sell and buy something cheaper) we would exclude it from our net worth calculation.

For the purpose of this blog, we are more interested in documenting our loan balance rather than our home equity. With that said, we will use the current Zillow value as our estimated home value and use it to figure out the percentage we owe on our home. For those interested, we will include the amount of our home equity, but know that we are less concerned with the equity since we have no plans to cash out or otherwise sell our home. Our main goal is to pay off our home on or before my retirement date.

HOME VALUE:

According to Zillow, our home is currently worth: $773,367 (up $2,570 in the last 30-days). If you follow us, the reality is that whether our home prices rise or fall, it really doesn't mean much to our family as we have no intentions to sell or otherwise move. We are very lucky to be able to say that we love were we are and couldn't see ourselves living and/or raising our family any other place. :)

Mortgage Balance (As of April 1st):
$306,202 (down $1,862 from our last post)

Percentage Owed:
39.5% (down from .4% from our last post)

Home Equity:
$467,165 (up $3,229 from our last post)

Mortgage Background:
For those that have not read the Preface on our home equity, we currently hold a 15-year fixed rate mortgage at the incredibly low rate of 2.875%. My goal is to retire within 11 years and 1 months (133 months) so we are setting out to pay off our mortgage on or before my retirement date. Right now we are a few months behind the target retirement date. Currently, we have approximately 11 years -11 months (143 months) left on our mortgage. Nevertheless, I would like to have it paid off in another 10 years (or less). If we accomplish that, I plan to use the last few years to aggressively build our passive income to help supplement our retirement and defer tapping into the 457K as long as we can so it can continue to grow.

Right now we are not putting any extra money towards the principal given our low 2.875% interest rate. We feel that we could make our money grow faster by investing it and while keeping the money more liquid. At a certain point, maybe in 8-10 years, we may consider using money from our investment accounts to wipe out the remaining mortgage balance. Until then, we will continue to grow that money outside, rather than have it locked into our home.

Click on the link below to view our mortgage balance history:

Mortgage Balance History

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Stocks Added to Collection of Stock Analyses - May 2016 (Week 17 & 18)

For those who are not yet familiar with our extensive collection of individual dividend stocks. The entire collection is currently comprised of 1,172 stock analyses (and still growing). The collection essentially provides links to various stock analyses that we found throughout the dividend blog community since 2013. Last year we added a total of 445 stock analyses to the collection. If you would like to view archives from previous years, please follow the respective links provided at the end of this post.

May 2016 - Week 17 & 18 of 52:

Balancing work and home life is sometimes a hard feat. Unfortunately, that means that these updates (and blogging in general) have taken a back seat to life lately. We started out doing weekly updates but that is too challenging to manage. Regardless, I am committed to bringing everyone these updates at least 2 a month. :)

Below is a list of newly added stocks analyses for the 1st and 2nd week of May:

Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM)