We just joined the 800K club!!

A BIG "Thank You" to everyone that has supported, and continues to support and visit our blog...whether you have been with us from the beginning or you've just recently joined the journey, we would like to thank each and every one of you for your support.  

We started blogging about our frugal family's journey roughly 51 months ago, on March 15, 2014. Our blogging journey started out as a hobby and simply a way to keep on track of our progress. Flash forward 4 years and roughly 8 month later, I am thrilled to announce that because of each and every one of our readers, we just reached yet another milestone.  Sometime towards the end of last year, our blog crossed over the 800K mark! Although we are not as active as we had been during the past, its humbling to see we still have some loyal followers whom continue to click on our posts to see how we are doing on our journey to financial independence. Old or new, we thank each and every one of your for your loyalty and support.    

It took approximately 15 months to reach our first milestone of 100,000 page visits to our blog. The next milestones took:

• 6 months and 28 days to reach 200,000 page visits 
• 7 months and 0 days to reach 300,000 page visits
• 4 months and 22 days to reach 400,00 page visits 
• 3 months and 17 days to reach 500,000 page visits
• 5 months and 20 days to reach 600,000 page visits
• 7 months and 15 days to reach 700,000 page visits

As you all may or may not already know, we have found a few side hustles that was simply more lucrative than blogging so we decided to switch gears about a year ago. Nevertheless, as of January 1, 2019, our blog had seen a total of 806,618 all time pageviews! 

Since I am somewhat of a stats nerd, below are some additional stats behind our 800,000 visits.

Top Referring Sites

Google searches and internal cross links within our posts play a vital role in our blog traffic. But we also want to recognize and give special thanks to our twitter followers, as well as My Dividend Pipeline, Captain Dividend,  Passive Income Pursuit, and Rockstar Finance for the traffic from your respective blogs. Lastly, although not present on the list above, I would like to also thank a few other fellow blogger and friends, Roadmap2Retire, Dividend Diplomats, and Dividend Hawk for your continued support and friendships.

Also, thanks to all that have tweeted or re-tweeted our posts.  Our additional presence and our followers on Twitter continues to keep our blog relevant. In case you would like to follow us on Twitter, we can be found under: @FrugalFamilyof4.  I'm proud to say that we currently have 1,971 followers on Twitter. That is 119 new followers since our last milestone post on July 9, 2018.

Most Popular Page Visits

Our top three most popular page visits are: 1) Dividend Stocks Portfolio with 28,915 page views; 2) Blogroll with 15,090 page views; 3) 2015 - Collection of Recent Buys with 14,098 page views and 4) 2017 - Collection of Recent Buys with 13,523 page views. 

Most Popular Posts

Our top three most popular posts are: 1) Stocks Added to Collection of Stock Analyses - December 2016 with 27,906 page views; 2) Stocks Added to Collection of Stock Analyses - November 2016 with 27,676 page views; and 3) P2P Accounts (Update) - August 2014 with 1,734 page views. Wow...What a drop from 2nd to 3rd! I'm thinking we might need to bring back the Collection of Stock Analyses!? What do you all think?

Top Page Views By Countries

We are tremendously grateful that our blog has seemed to have a worldwide presence as evident by the chart above.  However, the top page views to our blog came from the following top four countries: 1) United States leads the pack with 517,068 page views; 2) Germany is in second with 31,435 page views; 3) Russia is third with 29,707 page views; and 4) Canada rounds out the top four with 29,012 page views.  Canada and Russia are neck and neck!  It will be interesting to see if they trade places in the next milestone post.  You'll just have to wait and see. :)

Its fun to look at the stats and maybe even create a little friendly competition with them.  But the reality is, near or far, first or tenth, we truly value each and every reader.  Thank you for visiting!! Our blog and posts received the page views they did because of you (our readers and fellow bloggers).  Thank you for reading and/or sharing our post with others. We truly appreciate each and every one of you for the support!

THANK YOU FOR HELPING US 

REACH YET ANOTHER HUGE MILESTONE!!

Mortgage Balance (UPDATE) - January 2019

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 $856,408 (down $6,491 in the last 30-days). The housing market throughout California appears to be slowing down. We are seeing more inventory and houses staying on the market for longer. Normally, this would be seen as bad news to most, but my wife and I are contemplating the possibility of moving. We both have aging parents whom may eventually need us to help care for them. Our home does not have a down stairs bedroom so that would be a huge problems since we can't realistically expect them to climb the stairs each and every day in the old age. Our plans may take us on a different path this coming year. Stay tuned! ;)

Mortgage Balance (As of January 1st):
$244,164(down $2010 from our December post)

Percentage Owed:
28.5% (has remained the same since our December post)

Home Equity: 
$612,244 (down  $4,197 from our December 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 8 years and 5 months (101 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 9 years and 5 months (111 months) left on our mortgage. Nevertheless, I would like to have it paid off in roughly 8 years. If we accomplish that, I plan to use the money we use to pay our mortgage and aggressively build our passive income to help supplement our retirement and defer tapping into the 457K for as long as possible 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 5-7 years, we may consider using some of the 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.

DECEMBER 2018 - DIVIDENDS RECEIVED

Happy New Year everyone! Well, we were ahead for the year....up until this last month that is. haha. It was certainly painful to see our portfolio drop time and time again through the month of December, but we did take the opportunity to pick up some stocks from the sale prices found just about everywhere in the market. :) 

Up or down, we know we are fine because we are actually more interested in the dividends that we are in the stock prices.  After all, we hope to use the dividend income stream to supplement our family's retirement income. 

Below is a recap of the dividends/partnership distributions that we received from our family's dividend stocks portfolio –  DECEMBER 2018 (recap).

DIVIDENDS 

During the past month, our family received dividends/partnership distributions from a total of 15 companies/ETFs/Partnerships. The total monies received from those 15 companies/ETFs/Partnerships was: $160.34. 

Below is a breakdown of the dividends/partnership distributions received this past month:

WELLS FARGO INVESTMENT ACCOUNT:
12/03/18 - WFC (WELLS FARGO & CO): 3.01
12/03/18 - FTS (FORTIS INC): $8.52
12/03/18 - ENB (ENBRIDGE INC): $50.91
12/07/18 - CTL (CENTURYLINK INC): $13.50
12/10/18 - IBM (INTERNATIONAL BUSINE MACHINE CORP): $9.42
12/10/18 - XOM (EXXON MOBIL CORP): $16.40
12/10/18 - CVX (CHEVRON CORP): $5.60
12/14/18 - ESV (ENSCO PLC): $5.00
12/14/18 - O (REALTY INCOME CORP): $3.31
12/14/18 - IP (INTERNATIONAL PAPER CO): $7.50
12/19/18 - RDS.B (ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC): $13.16
12/21/18 - NOV(NATIONAL OILWELL VARCO INC): $2.25
12/26/18 - BLK (BLACKROCK INC): $9.39
12/28/18 - GILD (GILEAD SCIENCES INC): $2.85
12/31/18 - EDIV (SPDR S&P EMERGING ETF MARKETS): $9.52

EDWARD JONES INVESTMENT ACCOUNT:

N/A

OVERALL DIVIDENDS TOTAL THIS MONTH: $160.34

How did you all do? Hopefully you all continue to see your dividends growth month after to month, year after year! 

In case you interested, our family's dividend stocks portfolio 
may be found by clicking on the link below:

Dividend Stocks Portfolio