Opening Loyal3 account vs Extra mortgage payments

After reading other bloggers experience with Loyal3 for a while, I kept thinking about opening my own account but I was not sure if I have an extra income to invest.

Well, I was putting extra $300 toward my mortgage payments but since I have 3.5% interest rate I decided to start investing $200 into Loyal3 account.

At this point I believe it will be better for me to have cash invested in stocks, which I can pull out if I need to, especially if I pick dividend stocks. In a long run it is much easier to sell a stock than refinance a mortgage. Plus eventually I plan to turn my house into a rental property.

So far I bought 4 stocks, each $50 worth of investment - Frontier, Walmart, GAP and Store capital.

From now on I will keep track of my Loyal3 account here.

Thanks for reading.

September Passive Income Progress

Even if stock market doesn't make me so happy, this was my best month on dividend earnings so far! 

In September I was able to purchase RY (Royal Bank of Canada) and CHSP (Chesapeake Lodging Trust). 

I started tracking my passive income Summer 2014

2014 Passive income
June           $261.00
July            $209.67 
August       $235.62 
September  $212.97
October      $140.37
November  $207.05
December   $377.91

2015 Passive Income

January   $167.44
February  $279.29
March      $397.80
April        $202.48
May         $229.70
June        $368.21
July         $205.56
August    $254.16

Dividends received in September 2015:

BBL	83.08
CNP	$37.85
ESV	$4.53
F	$23.03
FTR	$28.49
HOG	$4.96
JNJ	$15.11
MAT	$31.88
MCD	$29.16
PEP	$15.54
PFE	$14.76
RIG	$6.05
RYAM	$1.19
RYN	$13.33
SE	$14.80
TGT	$11.27
UL	$16.68
WU	$9.65
Total	$361.36

If you look into September 2014 vs September 2015, I am very close to 100% increase and this is amazing! This year this is a second month when I get more than $300 in dividends. 

My dividend income 2014 vs 2015 so far:

2014	Jan	Feb	March	Apr	May	June	July	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec
	$48.61	$12.44	$63.58	$90.04	$65.67	$126.98	$122.68	$118.36	$185.28	$93.18	$123.70	$263.68
									Year to date		$1,314.20
2015	Jan	Feb	March	Apr	May	June	July	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec
	$78.69	106.39	333.50	150.77	128.34	298.21	118.30	122.05	361.36
									Year to date		$1,697.61

Additional passive income or free money from different financial institutions:

Interest:                                            $9.66

Points Discover Card                     $61.94

Points AMEX                                  $21.24

Various gift cards rewards

(Victoria Secret, JC Penney, 

Palais Royal, Lowe's, Best Buy)     $40.00

My total financial passive income for the month of September was $494.20

At this moment my goal is to have $1k in monthly passive income from dividends and other financial institutions. This month I am almost 50% close to my goal!

Thanks for reading and please share your thoughts and progress.

Project: Dividend Stocks for Teenager September update

I wrote how we started Dividend Stocks portfolio for my daughter before

Project-dividends-stocks-for-teenager Part 2

Project-dividends-stocks-for-teenager Part 1

Here is our first dividends month update.

In September her portfolio earned $49.81

EMR	$12.22
JNJ	$9.75
SE	$15.91
XOM	$11.68
interest	$0.25
Total	$49.81

Dividends were automatically reinvested.

Well, she does not pay close attention to her portfolio because we don't need to use this money yet and I guess it's good for now, since the market is not treating us very well at this moment.

I only mentioned to her that her stocks earned about $50 this month. 

This week purchase and watch list (9/23)

I purchased shares of RY (Royal Bank of Canada) today.

My watch list for tomorrow and Friday of this week:
EMR, WMT, RCII, CHSP, DEO, OHI

I might be able to rebalance my portfolio this week and this will give me some money to invest into new stocks.

Thanks for reading and please share your thoughts.

My weekly stock list (9/13)

I am thinking to choose between OHI, DEO and RY.

It looks like Barnes and Noble (BKS) is trading at lowest too.

I am excited to see that my daughter's dividends portfolio Project: Dividend Stocks for Teenager already paid some dividends last week, but I will post update at the end of the month.

What stocks are on your watching list right now?

Please share and thanks for reading.

August Passive Income Progress

I just came back from Florida, helping my mom moving into her new condo, she just purchased. We were too busy packing and moving but of course we still had a chance for a nice walk on the beach.









As I mentioned before I was saving cash to help my mom with a purchase of her condo, but I still was able to purchase 30 shares of BNS in August.

I started tracking my passive income Summer 2014

2014 Passive income
June           $261.00
July            $209.67 
August       $235.62 
September  $212.97
October      $140.37
November  $207.05
December   $377.91

2015 Passive Income

January   $167.44
February  $279.29
March      $397.80
April        $202.48
May          $229.70
June        $368.21
July         $205.56

Dividends received in August 2015:

BMO	$15.37
DRI	$18.86
KMI	$32.78
NE	$11.51
PG	$16.84
T	$13.06
TD	$13.63
	$122.05

The amount is almost the same as in August 2014 but some different stocks

ARCP	$18.75
KMI	$27.52
PETS	$17.85
PG	$16.09
RYN	$25.54
T	$12.61
	$118.36

My dividend income 2014 vs 2015 so far:

2014	Jan	Feb	March	Apr	May	June	July	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec
	$48.61	$12.44	$63.58	$90.04	$65.67	$126.98	$122.68	$118.36	$185.28	$93.18	$123.70	$263.68
									Year to date		$1,314.20
2015	Jan	Feb	March	Apr	May	June	July	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec
	$78.69	106.39	333.50	150.77	128.34	298.21	118.30	122.05
									Year to date		$1,336.25

Additional passive income or free money from different financial institutions:

I earned an interest                                $17.41

points on my Amex card                         $42.11
points on my Discover card                     $3.41
Amazon card                                            $1.82
Kroger card                                              $5.00

JC Penney/Palais Royal                        $30.00 
Ebates - earn $$$ for shopping online   $32.36

My total financial passive income for the month of August was $254.16

At this moment my goal is to have $1k in monthly passive income from dividends and other financial institutions.

Thanks for reading and please share your thoughts and progress.

Stock pics for upcoming week 8/24 and last week purchase

I finally was able to purchase 30 shares of BNS last week. 

At this moment I am saving cash to help my mom with a purchase of her condo in Florida, so unfortunately I can't buy much stocks, but at least my dividends automatically reinvesting and building up my existing portfolio.

Although I might be able to sell some of my non dividends and maybe some dividends stocks, which already earned enough.

So many good stocks are trading at their lowest right now.

Since I am trying not to have more than 5% of each stock in my portfolio I have to skip some of good stocks for now because I already have enough of certain stocks or certain industry in my portfolio. 

This is why in "stock pics list" you only see certain stocks, which I don't have in my portfolio or want to increase holdings.

My favorites for next week:

PG, JNJ, DOV, DEO, XOM, GE, RCII, EMR

I am also watching WMT, CAT and BUD.

What's on your watch list for upcoming week?

Thanks for reading and please share your thoughts.

How I get rid of back pain naturally

I was struggling with back pain for years.
Every time I would do gardening or running or too many activities my back would hurt a lot. Even on most regular days I would wake up in pain. I thought my mattress was bad or I slept in the wrong position.

When the pain got worst, I would use heat pads or take pain medicine.

I kept going to chiropractor office, especially after my intense gardening sessions. It would help but still I was constantly in some kind of back pain.

I always was leading healthy life style, eating healthy and lots of fruits and vegetables. But about two months ago I decided to stop eating meat, even if I never was a big meat eater and I only ate chicken. Also I stopped drinking milk. I never drank much milk before, mostly just added it to my morning coffee. I made these changes to my diet mostly because I kept reading articles about how animal protein make you age faster. Back in 2014 I posted a video here about a woman who is in her 70s, but still looks like she is in her 40s.


Little did I know that a month later I realized that I am totally free of back pain. Every morning I wake up and move free of pain. Last time when I went to my chiropractor office and shared this news with him, he said I must be inactive. But I did lots of gardening and cleaning and even moved some landscape rocks and I still was fine. I was shocked. On top of this I can run longer and have no aches next day.

I keep reading articles online about animal protein and I guess this was a cause of my pain - Animal protein caused some toxins build up in my muscles and this was the reason of my pain.

And about milk drinking... Since I stopped buying milk for my household I had to convince my daughter that it's not good for her too. So I found a short video, which did the trick for her.

I posted this video here.

Why I stopped drinking MILK...

I used this short video to convince my daughter why she should not drink milk anymore.

Project: Dividends Stocks for Teenager Part 2

I wrote here about my Dividends Stocks project for my teenager daughter. 

Our update

We discussed list of stocks I picked for her. I promised that if by the time she will need this money for college her portfolio still will be lagging I will give her my money instead. So she feels pretty safe about investing now. 

She got more interested about stock investing after I explained her how her stocks can earn dividends just because she owns them. She likes an idea of getting money without working. Now she is talking how she is going to save more and invest more. 

Here is the list of stocks she picked from my list:

symbol	name	current price	1 year target	dividend yield
SE	Spectra Energy	$29.69	$36.30	5.00%
XOM	Exxon	$77.77	$90.53	3.70%
PG	The Procter & Gamble Company	$75.57	$85.50	3.30%
JNJ	Johnson & Johnson	$98.38	$109.59	3.00%
T	ATT	$34.18	$37.17	5.50%
LHO	LaSalle Hotel properties	$32.06	$39.50	5.30%
EMR	Emerson Electric	$49.58	$59.52	3.70%

We opened a regular brokerage account and today I am going to show her how to buy stocks. 

Thank you for reading, please share your thoughts and I will keep you updated on this project.