March 2017 Update

Here is my March 2017 Update. For the month of March, I purchased one share of Realty Income (O) and one share of Coca Cola. Before the end of the month, I will likely purchase one share of Apple. Since October of last year, I have only been contributing $90 a month to my portfolio. Talk about slow growth. I purchase $90 worth of shares in Exxon Mobile (XOM) through their drip program. Their transfer agent is Computershare. I chose XOM because it’s a safe company and there are no fees to use their drip program.

There’s another reason why I chose to drip through Computershare. Computershare is a partner with TurboTax. I can easily upload the information to TurboTax at tax time. Interestingly, I previously had a portfolio with Computershare, but liquidated all my assets. I did so because, back then, I had to manually enter the data into TurboTax. Call me lazy. I wasn’t able to automatically upload the information to the tax software. When choosing either a broker or transfer agent, or even an investment strategy, it’s important to consider taxes. Not just the amount of taxes, but the process of filing your taxes. Thankfully, firms are now required to track your cost basis. So, theoretically, filing taxes should be easier.  I’ll find out come April when I do my taxes for this year.

I’m going to make a post about finding the perfect broker. I like Computershare because I get the benefit of fractional shares and automatic investing for free. By automatic investing, I mean money goes from my Checking to my Investing account automatically. Then, the money in my investment account is used to purchase stocks automatically. Again, call me lazy. But, I like the idea of setting up the process once, and forgetting about it.

So, I do XOM through Computershare. I invest in Realty Income, Coca Cola and Apple through Robin Hood.  I’ll do another post on brokers separately. But, unfortunately, I don’t drip Realty Income because their transfer agent is Wells Fargo Shareowner services. At the time of this writing, Wells Fargo Shareowner Services is not a TurboTax partner.  I am going to carefully consider whether I want to drip O or simply keep buying the stock using a broker. Although Robinhood is free, there are certain disadvantages to using Robinhood. which I will explain in a separate post.

For reasons that will be explained later, I will soon have the opportunity to supercharge my dividend portfolio. Choosing the right broker is going to be key. I will definitely keep Realty Income, Coca Cola and Exxon Mobile. I may also be adding to my portfolio. But for now, March is the beginning of a rejuvenated dividend portfolio. As of the date of this writing, my annual dividend income is $86.56, which comes out to about $7.2 per month. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Now, obviously, I’m not going to retire off of that amount, but that’s not the point. The point is to build shares so that when I do retire, I will either supplement my income or rely on dividend investing. I’m under no illusions. I realize it’s going to take a large number of shares before I can live off of the dividends. But, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. In my case, a single share.  I will keep building my portfolio one share at a time.  I will let time sort out of the rest.