February 2015 Financial Reports

February was a good month in several respects. First, and foremost, I accepted a new job back in Virginia. This is going to have some awesome impacts that won’t yet be seen below (I’ll start later this month), but over the next few months our household expenses are going to fall dramatically.

My forward passive income and side hustle income covered 7.8% ($670 of $8,586) of our expenses this month. Pretty terrible, I know. However, I STILL firmly believe that this “coverage ratio” will be over 30% by year end (something like ~$1,400 on $4,500 in expenses).

Passive Income

Dividends

See Investment Portfolio for Full List of Holdings and Details

Paid In February: $267.35

Previous Forward Dividend Income: $204.83
Dividend Increases/Decreases: $8.69
Dividend Buys/Sells: $415.25
New Forward Dividend Income: $628.77

I established my dividend growth portfolio this month. It is made up of 39 positions and it yields $397.58 per month—which equates to a total dividend yield of 4.19%. I’d like to get the number of positions to between 55 and 60, and get the yield down to 4.00-4.10%.

The rest of my dividend income comes from my other accounts. Here’s the breakout.

The 2015 goal still remains to get to forward dividends of $1,000/mo by the end of this year (meaning, in an average month going forward I’ll receive $1,000 in dividends). That is an increase of about 60% from this point. I do have a few cards up my sleeve to get me there. I’ll roll over my current 401(k) to the portfolio (+$35 in monthly dividends), and I’ll also contribute another $16k to the account (+$55). Dividend Increases (+$50), Reinvestment (+$35), and contributions to 401(k) and Taxable Brokerage (+$60) will get me to about $900 total. That’s not $1,000, so I might come up short. However, I’ll try really hard to get there.

Interest

See Investment Portfolio for Full List of Holdings and Details

Paid In February: ~$0

Previous Forward Dividend Income: $40.50
Interest Rate Increases/Decreases: $0.00
Interest Contributions/Withdrawals: $0.25
New Forward Dividend Income: $40.75

The goal this year is to reach $70 in forward monthly interest. I’ll get there.

Rent

I own no rental units and, despite my desire, I have no immediate plans to change that. I’m obviously in no financial position to take this on. I’ll call this a 12-month goal to get a rental unit and bring it under lease (maybe our basement).

Side Hustles

A lot of effort was put into securing this new job, so I did no writing this month on SeekingAlpha. I will turn that around significantly in March, getting me back on track to hopefully accomplish my full-year goal of 12 articles this month (I need to write nine more).

Expenses

We took two trips back to Virginia this month for job hunting and school, so that was $429 that we should not have to deal with after this month. March is going to be improved in housing, as the second half of the month we won’t have any rent to pay. We’ll have to restock the kitchen back home with spices and whatnot, so grocery costs might be high again this month.

February was terrible for expenses; March will be slightly better but still terrible. We will have to travel twice back to Virginia to move household goods. We cancelled our DirecTV, so March will have a huge $240 cable TV cost. We moved phone plans to RingPlus, which meant a handful of one-time fees and closeouts of prior plans. This is all just a cost of unloading many bad decisions. However, I’m very excited to see our reports come summer, when all of these efforts will start to take shape.

Net Worth

Net worth, which is the sum of assets (including long-term property like houses and cars) minus liabilities, just doesn’t matter that much. Passive income is a far greater determinant of one’s ability to be financially independent. However, people like to watch the net worth number, so I’ll provide it.

February was pretty good to us, as our net worth increased 3.6%. This is a bit disappointing considering that the markets were up between 6-7%. However, this is the price you pay for having $8,500 in expenses. Our cash level is getting frighteningly low right now, so we’re leaving New York in just the nick of time.

“Other” assets continue to increase. However, that will drop by the end of this month. We will file our taxes—turning that receivable into cash. We will get our security deposit back, and I’ll receive my final pay from my current job. Debt hardly moved down at all this month, which sucks. That level will stay quite high until I sell our depreciating luxury vehicle fleet.

Thank you for reading!

Eric