As a kid, do you remember that rush of excitement you would get, when you knew you were crossing into another state? You’d see that big billboard sign welcoming you to a supposedly wonderfully great state. Of course, your family was just passing thru and had no intention of checking out any touristy stuff they might happen to have in the their otherwise “Great” state…
Do you remember the feeling about 15 seconds later after you asked how much further before the next new state, and learn that this new state had an even long drive time to get through than the last state?
Well, that’s how if feels for me right now, since I’m now in the asset building phase. And I have to juggle 2 kids and their various activities and needs on top of that. Though I have to admit, I’d rather deal with the upcoming kid issues now than in the past.
But, the feeling I’m having now is wrong (at least if I do it right)!
Over the next 2 months, I’ll have (for me) three decent sized infusions of cash (taxes, saved money from no house payment, and the bonus from work), that I’ll be able to invest in a low risk dividend stock. This will kick off the creation of my life long dream of the start of a Dividend Portfolio to cover my expenses. If you’ve been following my site, for the past 6 months or so, I’ve been doing a lunch experiment where I eat cheap at lunch and save the money to invest in stocks that yield dividends. The idea was to invest enough to have the Lunch dividend fund eventually pay for some or all of my weekly lunches. That would free up that money for other purposes (like investingJ). Through sacrificing (it wasn’t that bad really) by packing lunch (oh, the agony), I would save $40 a month week to invest in stocks. Of course, I didn’t invest it every month week because the transaction fees would have eaten me alive (I waited until I got a big lump sum, then purchased stocks)… I’m up to 1 fully funded lunch a week already!!!
Hopefully, the next time I write about this, I’ll have some snapshots of where I’m going with these funds and some conservative projections!
MR…
I love the idea of creating an account that allows you to eat lunch out on your dividends. Way to be creative with your savings and investing. 🙂 In the same way, you can do this with a car investing account. Save enough each month that will eventually allow you to buy a car every 7 years with your dividend.
@ParisGirl
That’s the plan! Eventually, I want to try and replace all my expenses with Dividend yielding stocks!
Interesting lunch experiment.
I tried scraping off lunch money but find myself spending even more during weekends.
$40/mo in lunch money saving is not bad. One year would save you about $280. Pay that $10 to commission, and invest the $270. At an average dividend of 2% yield a year, you are looking at $54. so that does pay for one month of free lunch.
.-= moneyhoneysf´s last blog ..February 2010 Net Worth Update =-.
Drat, you caught me in a typo, that was suppose to be $40 a week! Good catch! I’ll correct it!
Now I have to wonder if I made the same mistake in my initial post… hmmmm
It’s currently yielding about $100 a quarter, but that could change. I’m invested in a risky REIT, and a oil/gas company.
I can afford to do this for the experiment because it doesn’t cost me anything! I would have paided that money for lunch, so it a twisted way… it’s kind of like free money.
Currently, it yields about
A very innovative way to measure your progress. First lunches, then the electric bill. You rolled that snowball of debt elimination down hill and now you can roll a new snowball up the other side.
Rock on!
.-= LeanLifeCoach´s last blog ..Are You Earning A Living or Living An Earning? =-.
@LeanLifeCoach
Thanks, I like your hill analogy!
Yeah, so far the Lunch experiment has been a success for me, but really it’s a play in high risk dividend stocks.
For my regular expenses, I’m planing on going with safer Aristocrat Dividend plays. the yield won’t be as high, but neither will the risk!
If I do it right, it should be fun and profitable!
I’ll definitely be posting more of my investment decisions in the future!!!