Sunday, January 23, 2022

Mortgage Balance (UPDATE) - January 2022

                


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 $1,236,200 (up $2,842 in the last 30-days). Wow!! Yes, that is not a typo. In fact, our home value has gone up almost $330K 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, our family is now sitting on a million dollars in home equity!!




Mortgage Balance (As of January 1st):
$164,644 (down $2,575 from our December balance)

Percentage Owed:
13.3% (down 0.2%)

Home Equity
$1,071,556 (up $2,200)

   

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 7 months (67 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 1 month (73 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. 

Saturday, January 22, 2022

Mortgage Balance (UPDATE) - December 2021

               

This is a late post but work has been kicking my butt and I haven't really had much time to do anything other than work, family, a little bit of exercise, and sleep. I know there is no set time that a post needs to go out but regardless of how busy I get, I usually always try to do a monthly temperature reading on our family's finances. Our monthly mortgage balance update is one part of that temperature reading. So here it is, our December mortgage udpate: 

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 $1,237,000 (up $28,300 in the last 30-days). Wow!! Yes, that is not a typo. In fact, our home value has gone up almost $330K 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, our family is now sitting on a million dollars in home equity!!


Mortgage Balance (As of November 1st):
$167,219 (down $2,493 from our November post)

Percentage Owed:
13.5% (down 0.5% since our November post)

Home Equity
$1,069,356 (up $30,393 from our November 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 8 months (68 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 2 months (74 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. 

December 2021 (Recap) - DIVIDENDS RECEIVED

  

This is a late post but work has been kicking my butt and I haven't really had much time to do anything other than work, family, a little bit of exercise, and sleep. I know there is no set time that a post needs to go out but regardless of how busy I get, I usually always try to do a monthly temperature reading on our family's finances. Our monthly dividends are one part of that temperature reading. So here it is, our December recap: 

Our family had to hit the pause button on building our dividend income portfolio while we were trying to cash flow our home improvements last year and the earlier part of this year. I'm happy to say that our home improvement project is now complete and we resumed active trading back in May. Since we continued to make more purchases this past month, we saw our forward dividends increase roughly $128 This past month! I must admit that it is great to see our monthly and forward dividends continue to grow once again.

Although we no longer post full details of our buys and sells activities, we ha0 sells and 9 buys this past month.

Sells (decrease in Fwd Dividends: $0):
  • None
Buys (increase in Fwd Dividends: $127.98/yr):
  • IQ (IQIYI INC ADR) - none
  • CAH (CARDINAL HEALTH INC) - $68.70
  • AI (C3.AI INC CL A) - none
  • YUMC (YUM CHINA HOLDINGS INC) - $7.20
  • DIDI (DIDI GLOBAL INC SPONSORED) - none
  • IBM (INTERNATIONAL BUSINE MACHINE CORP) - $19.68
  • BMY (BRISTOL MYERS SQUIBB CO) - $32.40
  • KIND (NEXTDOOR  HLDGS INC CL A) - none
  • CRON (CRONOS GROUP INC) - none
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, 19 companies/ETFs/Partnerships/Cash In-Lieu. The total monies received from those 19 companies/ETFs/Partnerships was: $840.85 

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


WELLS FARGO INVESTMENT ACCOUNT:

12/01/21 - PNW (
PINNACLE WEST CAP CORP): $25.50
12/01/21 - PSX (PHILLIPS 66): $7.36
12/01/21 - HP (HELMERICH & PAYNE INC): $15.00
12/01/21 - ENB (
ENBRIDGE INC): $65.18
12/07/21 - ARMK (ARAMARK): $4.40
12/10/21 - LUMN (LUMEN TECHNOLOGIES): $31.25
12/10/21 - IBM (INTERNATIONAL BUSINE MACHINE CORP): $19.68
12/10/21 - XOM (EXXON MOBIL CORP): $52.80
12/10/21 - AEP (AMERICAN ELECTRIC PO INC): $11.70
12/15/21 - O (REALTY INCOME CORP): $4.18
12/15/21 - BRMK (BROADMARK REALTY CAPITAL): $3.50
12/15/21 - LCEAX (INVESCO DIVERSIFIED DIV FUND CL A): $13.57
12/15/21 - LCEAX (INVESCO DIVERSIFIED DIV FUND CL A): $459.45*
12/15/21 - LCEAX (INVESCO DIVERSIFIED DIV FUND CL A): $14.45**
12/17/21 - NOV (NOV INC): $6.00
12/20/21 - RDS.B (ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC ADR B): $28.80
12/23/21 - EDIV (SPDR S&P EMERG MKT DIVIDEND): $19.73
12/27/21 - LMT (LOCKHEAD MARTIN CORP): $8.40
12/28/21 - SU (SUNCOR ENERGY INC): $24.55
12/30/21 - GILD (GILEAD SCIENCES INC): $17.75
12/31/21 - LTC (LTC PROPERTIES INC): $7.60

*       LONG-TERM CAPITAL GAIN
**     SHORT-TERM CAPITAL GAIN

EDWARD JONES INVESTMENT ACCOUNT:
N/A

OVERALL DIVIDENDS TOTAL THIS MONTH: $840.85

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: