Friday, August 20, 2021

Mortgage Balance (UPDATE) - August 2021

           


If you have viewed our family's Net Worth Page, you probably already know that it does not include 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:
It's official! According to Zillow, our home is currently worth $1,145,600 ($48,771 in the last 30-days). Wow!! Yes, that is not a typo. In fact, our home value has gone up almost $150K in the last months. Not sure if everyone else is seeing the same but the housing market is out of control here in southern California. As mentioned in our post back in May, a nearby home in our community sold for an unexpected $1.4 million dollars! We can't believe the home sold for as much as it did! More importantly, we can't believe that we now "almost" own a home that is worth over $1 million! If things continue, we could be sitting on a million dollars in home equity by the end of the year!!



Mortgage Balance (As of August 1st):
$177,082 (down $4,535 from our July post)

Percentage Owed:
15.5% (down 0.7% since our July post)

Home Equity
$968,518 (up $31,735 from our July 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 5 years and 10 months (70 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 6 years and 6 months (78 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.

Sunday, August 1, 2021

July 2021 (Recap) - DIVIDENDS RECEIVED

 

Our family had decided to stop adding to our stock portfolio while were trying to cash flow our home improvements towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year. I'm happy to say that our home improvement project is now complete. We resumed active trading back in May. 

Although we no longer post full details of our buys and sells activities, we had 1 sell and 6 buys this past month.

Buys:
  • ARMK (Arimark)
  • NOV (Nov Inc)
  • IQ (IQIYI Inc)
  • RDS.B (Royal Dutch Shell)
  • EIX (Edison Internation)
  • LTC (LTC Properties Inc)
Sells:
  • LI (LI Auto Inc)
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, 7 companies/ETFs/Partnerships. The total monies received from those 7 companies/ETFs/Partnerships was: $244.70 

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


WELLS FARGO INVESTMENT ACCOUNT:

07/09/21 - MO (
ALTRIA GROUP INC): $38.70
07/15/21 - VER (VEREIT INC): $46.20
07/15/21 - OXY (OCCIDENTAL PETE CORP): $2.10
07/15/21 - LADR (
LADDER CAPITAL CORP CL A): $20.00
07/15/21 - CAH (CARDINAL HEALTH INC): $31.90
07/15/21 - BRMK (BROADMARK REALTY CAPITAL INC): $3.50
 
EDWARD JONES INVESTMENT ACCOUNT:
07/28/21 - CMCSA (COMCAST CORP CL A): $102.30

OVERALL DIVIDENDS TOTAL THIS MONTH: $244.40

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


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