General

Just A Small Update

Posted by FI Monkey

Just wanted to let you people know I’m not dead; I’m just taking a hiatus.

Because I can only dedicate energy to so many things at once, I don’t think it’s fair to expect myself to keep up to date on this blog on a weekly basis.

I’ll be back, but while I’m taking a break from dumping money into my investment accounts and focusing more on the business side of things, I’d rather not bombard people with updates on things unrelated to finance and financial independence.

Until, at least, I’m back into that mode. When that happens, expect some comments and another barrage of posts.

For the time being, I’m also giving myself an out on the blog-related goals. On the other hand, I’m still focused on increasing savings, however slowly.

Thanks for stopping by and hope to catch up with you soon. For now, I’ll be focusing on the business, my family and reading a ton.

P.S. In case anyone is curious, I’ll be keeping my Net Worth (on the right sidebar) up to date. That is all.

Whoa! Is it August Already?

Posted by FI Monkey

This won’t be a long post but I just realized we’re about one third through the month and I haven’t posted once!

Perhaps part of the reason for that is that nothing has really happened financially, so I haven’t had anything interesting to say since my last post. I’ve had an oddly packed schedule and have sort of been watching all my portfolios do terribly. Before diving into investing in general, I figured I might be nervous wreck seeing my portfolio take $100+ dives each day, but I think I’ve read enough sort of assuage my fears. Now I view these downtimes as opportunities. Whether or not I can take advantage of the opportunities is another matter.

Hmm, wow. That reminds me. I haven’t done a net worth update this month! Nor have I done an update on my goal progress. Based on my average posts per day this month, I’m guessing I will be falling short of glory. But that’s okay. I’ll post something along those lines soon.

This just shows how easy it is to fall out of the swing of things if you aren’t involved on a daily basis. Admittedly, I’ve been spending more time on the side business than watching my stocks. On that front, I’ve finally chosen a name, so hooray for decisiveness!

Another thing I’ve been doing is allowing myself to get lost in fiction. It happens a few times a year, but getting absorbed in stories, particularly horror stories is something I love. Plus, I’ve been on quite the bender lately with horror movies on Netflix. I think I’ve all but used up their queue. Right now, I’m half way through The Exorcist. I hadn’t seen it in a few years, so I felt like now is a good time.

All that is just to say — I’m still here, just temporarily sidetracked. As soon as I make some additional purchases, stock or otherwise, I’ll be sure to let you know.

And, as I mentioned, stay tuned for my net worth update!

Thanks,

FI Monkey

What I’ve Been Up To

Posted by FI Monkey

Hello, hello!

I’m not dead, but I did have some catching up to do with work and such before I could give you guys a decent update here.

First things first, let’s talk about stocks and portfolios. I haven’t made any additional purchases since my last post which was … 9 days ago. Holy wow. Sorry about that huge break in posts. That also reminds me that I didn’t update my portfolio page to reflect my updated portfolio values after my last buys. I’ll do that after this post.

For now, I just want to say — what’s up with the stock market lately? All my stuff is either down or stale. Get it together, stock market. COME ON.

The only thing that has been doing reasonably well is Realty Income Corp (O), but I guess that’s why we diversify, right? Can’t blame the market if I only have seven stocks. Instead of building upward (buying more stocks for my existing portfolio), I think I will build horizontally a bit (buy other companies) for my next set of purchases.

Moving on to business endeavors, I have actually made some progress there! Having narrowed down the product selection to five last week, I ended up making some more business purchases to assist me in my quest and have narrowed the list down to three products. This part of the process has been difficult to say the least. Luckily, I have a buddy I’m partnered with to keep me motivated and keep the wheel rolling forward, however slowly.

That being said, I still have to narrow the list down to that one product to start with and then make a big purchase. Of course, this might seem unrelated to this blog at first glance until you consider the business itself an investment and part of my overall strategy to make up the difference that my new situation has led me into.

While I’m not being frivolous with my spending, I’m certainly trying to be less timid in pushing forward with my FBA business and buying the right tools (after much personal vetting) to get my to my destination. I’m already about $1,000 in and I’m keeping track of every penny.

This is not my first business, but it’s definitely the business I have taken most seriously. There was a time when I started my first business on my own and actually took time off from working in general, but because I didn’t take it seriously enough, I ended up focusing on too many things and the original business idea went cold, then died. Not the end of the world, but it’s good to know myself.

Business-wise, self-management is paramount for success.

Armed with that knowledge, I know it’s best to focus on my main gig while keeping a side focus on my business. On top of that, it’s important to have a partner with similar goals who will keep me focused.

Interestingly, that brief period of joblessness I mentioned reveals something about one way I might retire if I didn’t keep working. For a while, I just played games instead of doing any actual work. That’s not how I want things to go, so a big part of self-management means keeping myself busy with meaningful work. I do want some time to just mess around because I believe that’s just good for the soul, but not like it was.

I’ll keep you posted on the progress on my FBA Business, of course. Meanwhile, I’m looking at my next portfolio purchases. If I can’t find something suitable, I’ll just move more money into my SEP IRA while I can.

As always, let me know if you have any suggestions in that department.

Thanks!

Picking Products, Watching Stocks and Generally Hoping for the Best

Posted by FI Monkey

I’m taking a break from cleaning my house to post an update on my recent activities, partially as a reward but also to help me get some of my thoughts down.

How do I ... business?

How business makes me feel.

This past week, I’ve been trying to choose a product to start my side business with. As I mentioned recently in my post on making money on the side, I am in the process of getting things rolling with Amazon FBA and, subsequently, an e-commerce business. Featured prominently in that post was Kermit as I was trying to make it clear that I am very green to the process from the business side, although I have spent years working with various e-commerce shops from the engineering side.

So the first step in any commerce-based business, as far as I can tell from what I’ve been studying, is to choose a product. Well, for some that may be easy, but for me picking products has been nearly impossible. There are so many things to choose from and I definitely don’t want to recreate the wheel here. I have a list of products I plan to start with and later I will narrow that down by setting up a score for each — essentially going with the product that I think will sell best while maintaining a decent profit margin, all while being something that I can pivot off of for similar products.

All the things on my list are of high quality, which is extremely important to me. As I mentioned previously, I wouldn’t want to sell anything to other people that I wouldn’t sell (okay, give) to my mother. That qualifier has sort of narrowed my list of possibilities way down, which is nice, but there are still hundreds to choose from. It could take forever.

This is exactly why I’ve given myself a deadline. I have to have chosen five products by this Monday. And that’s after choosing many and narrowing down the list based on a series of factors both of my own and sort of plucked from various posts and videos I’ve been watching. I don’t want to take forever on this. The next goal is to find a supplier for said products, foreign or domestic. Either way, it has to be done and soon!

Another interesting thing has been watching my individual stocks and comparing them to my index funds. Obviously there hasn’t been enough time to compare them in a meaningful way, but still — the index fund has been killing the individual stock selection. Luckily, I’m a buy and hold kind of fellow and won’t be selling my stocks any time soon.

Despite the downward trend my stock selections have already entered, I have transferred another $1,000 to Scottrade for some buys on Monday. That money is to take advantage of my free trades which, inconveniently, have an expiration date. For me, I see that as free money.

At this point, I don’t think I will invest more into the companies I already have. Once I have a decent selection, perhaps 10 or 15, I think I will do that but while I have 5, my plan is to diversify my selection a bit more. I don’t have a hard and fast rule here, it just feels like what I should do. Maybe some of you fine people can weigh in on this with your valued opinions.

For now, I should get back to work. This place needs to be clean before I go (I hate returning to a dirty house). For this next week, I will be out of town on a much-needed vacation so I’m not sure how often I’ll be posting, but rest assured I will be back to keep you posted on where I take my portfolio and my side business.

Learning the Ropes – Starting up my Brokerage Account

Posted by FI Monkey

Hey guys. So I’m still focusing on building my side business this week, but I also don’t want to let my primary goals go either.

Today, I’ve been getting things set up for taxable investing. Last week, I set up a brokerage account with Vanguard for this very purpose and went through the trouble of transferring some money over only to learn that, for an account the size of mine, they only allow $7 trades for the first 25; after that, they become $20 each. So I decided to use Scottrade in the mean time while my Vanguard + Brokerage add up to more than $50,000. After that point, the trades become $7 each with no limit.

Once that happens, my plan is to consolidate everything over to Vanguard so that both my taxable and non-taxable accounts are there. Whether that will actually happen is up to future me and how much it will cost me. Ideally, it would be nothing since I’d want to hold on to the same stocks and such. Worst case, I can keep trading with Scottrade.

On the other hand, the reason I’d like to keep things with Vanguard is that once you have $500,000 with them, all trades become $2! I’m sure there’s something even more amazing out there, but for someone who’s as green as I am to stock trading, that seems like a pretty great deal.

And as some of you are probably paying close attention, you’ll note that I already have a brokerage account through Chase, but my plan is to also consolidate that. I hate having so many accounts all over the place. I’d rather have everything set up simply so there’s less for my simple mind to worry about.

All that being said, my account with Scottrade should be ready for funding this week and I should be ready to get things started with some dividend growth stocks. From what I’ve read recently, Coca Cola isn’t a bad one to start with, so I’ll probably go with that and a few other familiars just to get things rolling. I’m only starting with $2500, so I’ll probably invest in a handful of stocks in addition to KO (most likely borrowed from the amazing Dividend Growth blogs I follow). I’m still trying to come up with my own vetting process which, admittedly, is also largely borrowed from the blogs I read.

For those of you who I’ll be stealing from, please accept it as flattery more than outright theft! I just want to be more like you fine people.

I’ll probably update once things are actually set up and I’m ready to start buying, but while we’re on the subject…

Any recommendations for my first five or so stocks?

Any links to a checklist I should go over to vet each one before buying?

Any general advice?