Friday, April 16, 2021

Mortgage Balance (UPDATE) - April 2021

       


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 $925,682 ($10,386 in the last 30-days). 


Mortgage Balance (As of April 1st):
$188,379 (down $2,193 from our March post)

Percentage Owed:
20.3% (down .3% since our March post)

Home Equity
$737,303 (up $13,868 from our March 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 an awesome rate of 2.875%.  My goal is to retire within 6 years and 2 months (74 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 7 years and 3 months (82 months) left on our mortgage. Nevertheless, I would like to have it paid off in roughly 5 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, 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.

Thursday, April 1, 2021

March 2021 (Recap) - DIVIDENDS RECEIVED

    

Our family had decided to stop adding to our stock portfolio while we try to cash flow our home improvements this past year. I'm happy to say that Phase II is almost complete, only a few loose ends to tie up and our home life can finally go back to a little normalcy. We may still keep the pause button on until after tax season because we are expecting to pay again this year. Glad our income has been growing these last two years but tax obligations have grown as well. But the beauty of a dividend growth stocks portfolio is that, even though we aren't buying, we are still getting a few dividend raises here and there. And as a result, our annual dividends continue to grow ever so slightly. :)

What is everyone else doing? Are you buying anything right now?   

Now for what you all came to see, below is a list of the dividends/partnership distributions that we received from our family's dividend stocks portfolio.

DIVIDENDS 
During the past month, 13 companies/ETFs/Partnerships. The total monies received from those 13 companies/ETFs/Partnerships was: $262.13

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


WELLS FARGO INVESTMENT ACCOUNT:

03/01/21 - WFC (
WELLS FARGO & CO): $3.00
03/01/21 - HP (
HELMERICH & PAYNE INC): $15.00
03/01/21 - ENB (ENBRIDGE INC): $63.01
03/03/21 - ARMK (
ARAMARK): $2.75
03/10/21 - IBM (INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINE CORP): $9.78
03/10/21 - XOM (EXXON MOBIL CORP): $52.50
03/10/21 - CVX (CHEVRON CORPORATION): $19.35
03/19/21 - LUMN (LUMEN TECHNOLOGIES INC): $31.25
03/25/21 - SU (SUNCOR ENERGY INC): $12.48
03/25/21 - EDIV (SPDR S&P EMERGING ETF): $9.50
03/26/21 - LCEAX (INVESCO DIVERSIFIED DIVIDEND FUND): $15.77
03/29/21 - RDS.B (ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC ADR B): $9.99
03/30/21 - GILD (GILEAD SCIENCES INC): $17.75
 
EDWARD JONES INVESTMENT ACCOUNT:
N/A

OVERALL DIVIDENDS TOTAL THIS MONTH: $262.13


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


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