Book Winner, Server Change and Weekend Reading
Million Dollar Journey was chosen as one of the “Best of Blogs” in a Globe and Mail article earlier this week. We are currently in the top 10 but with your help, we can boost that to the top 5! If you haven’t voted for your favorite blogs yet, we would greatly appreciate your vote. Polls are open until May 12, 2008.
Book Giveaway Winner
Lets kick off the weekend with the winner of the book giveaway. This time around, we offered a free copy of the book “The House Flipping Answer Book“. Out of the 60 + entries, Dave P was selected as the winner! Congrats Dave P and I hope that you enjoy the book.
Server Change
Million Dollar Journey has outgrown it’s shared hosting platform and is now moving onto it’s own virtual private server. What does this mean to the readers? Nothing really, the domain name, look and feel will remain the same. Hopefully though, the new server will result in a faster and more reliable blog.
As a result of the move, there may be some down time between now and Monday. Hopefully, everything will be back to normal by Monday morning (fingers crossed).
Weekend Reading
- Consumerism Commentary asks “Would You Tell Your Boyfriend You’re Rich?” A very interesting article about a woman who is wealthy but is afraid to tell her boyfriend that she has money. This could be an interesting discussion, maybe I’ll write about this later.
- Chris Perunna, a seriously talented stock trader, writes about the coming big decline in the U.S markets.
- Canadian Capitalist has a summary of articles written about the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting.
- The Digerati Life explains how to retire on time with these 10 tips.
- Lazy Man and Money gets creative and puts his own spin on the whole snow flaking concept. What’s his idea? Snowforting: Snowflaking an Emergency Fund.
- Quest for Four Pillars does an analysis of Vanguard REIT VNQ.
- The Sun’s Financial Diary gives us an update on Chinese ADRs.
- Brip Blap, like Lazy Man, comes up with his version of snow flaking called WealthStreaming.
- USNews hosted the Carnival of Personal Finance this past week. We submitted the article about financial infidelity being a major cause of divorce.
- Money Smart Life gives us investing advice for new college graduates.
- Generation X Finance writes about a few job hunting tips.
- My Dollar Plan tells us to plan ahead: 6 steps to secure your financial future.
6 Comments, Comment or Ping
1. Nate
FT, what do you think of Chris Perunna’s warning? Given that you have your HELOC invested, how’s your risk tolerance?
May 9th, 2008 @ 11:49 am
2. FrugalTrader
Hi Nate, Perunna’s warning is with the Nasdaq which is a technology index mostly. The TSX has different fundamentals, although, looking at the XIU chart, we could be due for a pullback soon also.
With regards to worrying, I don’t fret much about my dividend investments as lower prices means it’s time to buy more.
May 9th, 2008 @ 11:59 am
3. JR
FT:
I thank that Nates question is a good general question, and that your response was not one that I would have you handling my HELOC for investing, even on the TSX.
There is absolutely no difference investing in securities that pay dividends, either on the TSX, NASDAQ, DOW or the S&P
Sure in Canada there is the dividend tax credits, but no where have I seen a guarantee that dividends will always be paid, or that they will always be the same amount.
By purchasing more stock as a protection on the downside, is not a sure, safe or secure way for dividend paying stocks, unless of course your response was specifically talking about Trust-units as opposed to divenends.
Those dividends from stocks and the dispursements from trust units can change at any time, even disappear.Just becareful
Buying more for cost averaging is one thing, but saying that the TSX is different than the NASDAQ is incorrect
May 10th, 2008 @ 8:24 am
4. FrugalTrader
JR, that’s why I don’t handle anyone elses portfolio. Remember that this blog is my opinion and not something that anyone else should really follow without their own due diligence.
In defence of dividends though, I only buy those that have a strong history of payout. RY and some the other big banks have been paying their dividend for over a century, what makes you think that they will stop now?
May 10th, 2008 @ 11:09 am
5. JR
FT:
I know that its only a blog (your blog) absolutely, and that no comments on here should be considered as real advice … only individual posters opinions lol
Have you never seen, heard or read of any stocks that stop paying dividends, even lowering dividends, even to the point of stocks that fall off the edge of the table… even the so called strong ones in the past 10-years
I was trying to lead you into discussing the what-if , even if you were to cost average.
Take RY, RBC or BNS for example over a 5-year period and assuming that you purchased 10 shares every month for the past 60-months.
Do you know what the capital value of your holding would be today, what the +/- and what the gross dividend paying % of total investment versus current holdings?
Would appreciate if you could you do a chart for us on that and post it on this thread
Thanks
May 10th, 2008 @ 12:40 pm
6. DAvid
JR,
I’ll bite!
Starting 5 years ago, buying 10 shares of RY.TO on the first of each month and DRIPing, here’s the line-up as of May 1:
1274 shares with a value of about $61,700
These cost $49,625 to purchase, and now pay about $2550 in annual dividends.
This equates to about a 5% dividend, and about 4.5% annual capital growth. Not exciting, but steady, and seems to be comparable to some other regular dividend payers. If you were to hold these, your return should increase as the value of the stocks and the dividend grows relative to your acquisition costs.
This indicates the truism of looking for growth stocks when a long time horizon is available and converting to income stocks when a steady income need be drawn.
DAvid
May 11th, 2008 @ 7:59 pm
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