Friday, October 22, 2021

Mortgage Balance (UPDATE) - October 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 $1,198,100 (up $21,490 in the last 30-days). Wow!! Yes, that is not a typo. In fact, our home value has gone up almost $300K since the beginning of the year. 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 own a home that is worth over $1 million, and still climbing! And as of September of this year, we are now sitting on a million dollars in home equity!!



Mortgage Balance (As of October 1st):
$172,224 (down $2,482 from our September post)

Percentage Owed:
14.3% (down 0.4% since our September post)

Home Equity
$1,025,876 (up $16,682 from our September 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 4 months (76 months) left on our mortgage. Personally, I would like to have it paid off before I retire, and ideally a couple of years beforehand. 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. 

With my wife back to work, we are blessed that we now have more money to both invest and through towards the mortgage. We did some home improvement projects last year but this year has been all about building wealth and decreasing our mortgage payoff date. We are actively buying dividend stocks again and thereafter throwing unspent monies towards the mortgage balance. At a certain point, we may consider using some of the money from our dividend stocks account to wipe out the remaining mortgage balance. The dividend stocks account is roughly 60% of our mortgage balance so there isn't enough just yet. But the idea is to build the dividend stocks account while simultaneously decreasing the mortgage balance until both numbers are equal. At that point, whether we decide to do it or not, the option would exist to wipe out the mortgage using the dividend stocks account. 

Friday, October 1, 2021

September 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 and, as a result, seeing our monthly and forward dividends continue to grow once again.

Although we no longer post full details of our buys and sells activities, we had 1 sell and 5 buys this past month.

Sells (decrease in Fwd Dividends: $0):
  • LI (LI Auto Inc)
Buys (increase in Fwd Dividends: $163.20/yr):
  • PSX (PHILLIPS 66)
  • LTC (LTC PROPERTIES INC REIT)
  • IQ (IQIYI INC ADR)
  • OHI (OMEGA HEALTHCARE REIT INVESTORS INC)
  • PNW (PINNACLE WEST CAP CORP)
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, 14 companies/ETFs/Partnerships. The total monies received from those 14 companies/ETFs/Partnerships was: $324.62 

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


WELLS FARGO INVESTMENT ACCOUNT:

09/01/21 - WFC (
WELLS FARGO & CO): $6.00
09/01/21 - ENB (ENBRIDGE INC): $66.31
09/08/21 - ARMK (ARAMARK): $4.40
09/10/21 - LUMN (
LUMEN TECHNOLOGIES INC): $31.25
09/10/21 - IBM (INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINE CORP): $19.68
09/10/21 - XOM (EXXON MOBIL CORP): $52.20
09/10/21 - AEP (AMERICAN ELECTRIC POWER INC): $11.10
09/15/21 - BRMK (BROADMARK REALTY CAPITAL INC): $3.50
09/20/21 - RDS.B (LTC PROPERTIES INC): $28.80
09/23/21 - EDIV (SPDR S&P EMERGING ETF MARKETS): $47.89
09/24/21 - SU (SUNCOR ENERGY INC): $12.40
09/24/21 - LCEAX (INVESCO DIVERSIFIED DIVIDEND FUND CL A): $15.74
09/29/21 - GILD (GILEAD SCIENCES INC): $17.75
09/30/21 - LTC (LTC PROPERTIES INC REIT): $7.60

EDWARD JONES INVESTMENT ACCOUNT:
N/A

OVERALL DIVIDENDS TOTAL THIS MONTH: $324.62

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: