 Minimalism and The Importance of Learning to say “NO”
One of the great things about minimalism is that it allows us to eliminate things that are time wasters and put our focus on the important things in life. To do this, we must learn to determine what is important and be able to say NO to those things which are not. Most of us live in a world where our daily lives have become too busy. To be pleasing at work to our employer or more importantly pleasing to the Lord, we have to learn to do those things most important and not do those that are of little importance. Jesus desires us to be people who are about God’s work. Luk 9:23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. Luk 9:24 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. If you were with us Sunday night when Jordan Lindsey preached out of the book of Haggai, he taught how God was very displeased with the children of Israel for not doing the work of God first. The people found time to do their own thing and build their houses, but put off the rebuilding of the temple. (Hag 1:1) In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month, came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet unto Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, saying, (Hag 1:2) Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the LORD'S house should be built. (Hag 1:3) Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying, (Hag 1:4) Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? (Hag 1:5) Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. (Hag 1:6) Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. (Hag 1:7) Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. (Hag 1:8) Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the LORD. Like God told his people in verses 5 and 7 to consider their ways, we need to consider our ways also. Each of us has only 24 hours in a day. We must learn to prioritize our lives to be pleasing to God. When something comes up and you are asked to do something, it is crucial to realize that the little two-letter word NO may be way better than YES. When you say YES, you are saying that the thing you are about to do is the most important thing there is and in fact, saying NO to all other things you might be doing. Now if it is God’s will for your life, you best say YES. But my point is we can be so good-natured that we tie up all our lives with things that are not all that important and waste our time away. Psa 90:12 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. I read a book recently by James Clear who is a motivational speaker and a very great teacher on how to use your time precisely. I want to read a couple of portions of his book on learning to say NO. The Ultimate Productivity Hack is Saying NO by James Clear How often do people ask you to do something and you just reply, “Sure thing.” Three days later, you're overwhelmed by how much is on your to-do list. We become frustrated by our obligations even though we were the ones who said yes to them in the first place. It's worth asking if things are necessary. Many of them are not, and a simple “no” will be more productive than whatever work the most efficient person can muster. But if the benefits of saying no are so obvious, then why do we say yes so often? We agree to many requests not because we want to do them, but because we don't want to be seen as rude, arrogant, or unhelpful. Often, you have to consider saying no to someone you will interact with again in the future—your co-worker, your spouse, your family, and friends. Saying no to these people can be particularly difficult because we like them and want to support them. We find ourselves over-committed to things that don't meaningfully improve or support those around us, and certainly don't improve our own lives. Perhaps one issue is how we think about the meaning of yes and no. The Difference Between Yes and No The words “yes” and “no” get used in comparison to each other so often that it feels like they carry equal weight in conversation. In reality, they are not just opposite in meaning, but of entirely different magnitudes in commitment. When you say no, you are only saying no to one option. No to just that one thing. When you say yes, you are saying no to every other option. “Every time we say yes to a request, we are also saying no to anything else we might accomplish with the time.” Once you have committed to something, you have already decided how that future block of time will be spent. In other words, saying no saves you time in the future. Saying yes costs you time in the future. No is a form of time credit. You retain the ability to spend your future time however you want. Yes is a form of time debt. You have to pay back your commitment at some point. And I think we know from my last devotional that debt is not good. No is a decision. Yes is a responsibility. The Role of No Saying no is an important skill to develop at any stage of your career because it retains the most important asset in life: your time. “If you don’t guard your time, people will steal it from you.” “Saying no is so powerful because it preserves the opportunity to say yes.” Saying no can be difficult, but it is often easier than the alternative. “It’s easier to avoid commitments than get out of commitments. Saying no keeps you toward the easier end of this spectrum.” In a spiritual connotation, I think you can see how crucial it is to say NO to a lot of things. No - to wasted time on social media. No - to much wasted time on videos or TV. No - to things tying up all our free time. If we are not giving our all to the Lord like He wants, we need to learn the simple word: NO. It all ties back to what God wants for our lives. Let’s read that verse from Luke again. Luk 9:23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. Luk 9:24 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. We need to make full use of NO and YES as needed and mean it. (Jas 5:12) But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation. So be sure when you say YES, it is a commitment that you follow through on and you will do what you promise. But realize that NO is acceptable and may be the right answer to free up time to do the work of the Lord and at the same time, simplify your life. It is up to each of us to manage our lives and time. Don’t be over-committed and miss out on the important things in life. Check out great article on Minimalism by Heather Aardema on How to Let Go to Live Light from No Side Bar website. List of All Investment Articles List of All Minimalism Articles Facebook Internet Direct Store Internet Direct Laptops
0 Comments
 DISCLAIMER - I am not a Financial Advisor and do not work for any Brokerage Firm. The opinions given are my own and are not to be used as professional advice. These are my findings and can hopefully help you make informed decisions on investing. Consult a Broker or Lawyer before making any investment.
What I Love About Passive Income – Part 3 What is greater than Passive Income? I started asking that over a month ago in our first article on Passive Income. I think that every investor needs to make it a goal to build a large stream of Passive income. What Is Passive Income? In our first installment of What I Love about Passive Income, we discussed the vast number of methods for creating Passive Income. One of my favorite methods of passive income is to buy an asset. That could be a rental property, but my choice is to buy stocks and ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) that make me money via dividends. Investing with ETFs Read The Whole Part One Article on What I Love About Passive Income There are so many good dividend-paying stocks. I like to use my Schwab IRA to buy ‘stock slices’ in companies I feel are good dividend payers and also are potential growth companies. This is called DGI / Dividend Growth Investing. These are companies that will make you steady dividend income, but due to growth may also gain in value as their stock prices go up. What is Dividend Growth Investing This week US News Investing wrote an article In October 2023 on 7 of the highest-paying dividend stocks available. I have some of these in my Schwab Portfolio. Article on Seven High-Paying Dividend Stocks In the past year, I have come upon another class of investments that are making me money which are called Preferred Stocks. Briefly, the advantage of Preferred Stocks over normal stock is they sell at a fixed par value which is normally either $25 a share or $10 a share. And because the stock market is liquid, these vary in price a lot. Article on Understanding Preferred Stocks So, buying a company’s preferred stock that is out of market favor will sell at a discount to par. I try to buy all of mine on those with 14 to 70% discount to par. The dividends are still paid on the par value. And if purchased at a discount, normally these move back closer to par value over time. Complete article on Part 2 of What I Love About Passive Income on Preferred Stocks. In the second part of What I Love about Passive Income, we covered real estate. It is truly one of the best passive income sources. If you don’t have the volume of dollars to invest in additional houses or apartments, a good way to invest in real estate is by buying ETFs on REITS. (Real Estate Investment Trusts.) Article on Investing in REITS In that article, we discussed a super simple method to get into real estate with minimal investments. Some ETF names are given to help you get started. This week we will wrap up our articles on What I Love about Passive Income by covering the last 2 of my four favorite methods. These last 2 are a huge reason this year's income is way up over 2022. My two highest-paying Passive Income investment providers are CEFs (Closed End Funds) and BDCs (Business Development companies.) What are Closed End Funds? Read the full article above for all the details, but in summary, Closed-End Funds are like mutual funds in regards to how you are diversified over a large number of stocks based on the contents of the CEF. Closed End Funds are much different than mutual funds in that they have a set amount of shares. This is set at the time of IPO (Initial Public Offering) when introduced. The number of shares does not change without a management decision. Normal mutual funds constantly buy and sell more shares, but not CEFs. This gives them less volatility, and they have a NAV (net asset value) which gives you an idea of what the fund is worth. But the CEF rarely trades at the NAV value. Many can be purchased at a large discount to their NAV. If you can buy a CEF at a large discount to NAV value, not only will you receive dividends, but most likely the stock price will rise coming back closer to the Net Asset Value. One of my favorite CEFs is the Pimco company. I probably own more of their holdings than any other. I love the fact that they don’t just pay a quarterly dividend, but they pay MONTHLY. Steady consistent income stream many times above 10%. Check out the PIMCO CEFs of PDO, PTY, and PDI. NLY is another good non-Pimco CEF. Just because a fund is a CEF does not make it a good investment. You must study any kind of investment to be sure it is a quality product. Here are two websites to help you find good CEFs. I use both of these for research on Closed-End Funds. CefConnect.com CEFA.com – Closed End Fund Association. The last passive income category we will discuss in this series is BDCs. (Business Development Companies.) What are Business Development Companies? Business Development Companies are a lot like a bank. They provide financing to small to medium-sized companies who may have trouble obtaining financing. Many relate these to REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts), but they are not specific to the Real Estate business. They can provide financing to any kind of business. So if you are looking for those who loan just to Real Estate investments, you must research and see who they provide financing. In many cases, I have found those tied to real estate to be safer than some others. However, each company must be researched in all aspects of their business, as no specific type of loan is a sure bet. It truly depends on the success of the borrowing company and its management. Perhaps one of the reasons these tend to pay excellent dividends is due to their design. These were specifically organized by the government to allow special tax preferential status. They can distribute up to 90% of their profits to their investors. No other type of company has this unique taxing advantage to my knowledge. Read that article on Making Money on Business Development Companies. In that article, I list a large number of BDCs that have worked for me. And it goes into greater detail about BDCs. Some of them include MAIN, ARCC, ORCC, TPVG, and HTGC. I believe we all need to consider Preferred Stocks and BDCs in our investment portfolios. These two have been solid income producers for me. I want to close with a recommendation to read this week’s article on No Side Bar about viewing life properly. None of us are perfect, and we need to embrace life and accept our limitations but REALLY LIVE. I love the whole article. Rachel Oberholtzer gives reflections on What Would Sunshine Do? Another great article on the same website explains about the 15 types of Minimalists. I found it quite interesting and found I fit into multiple categories. List of All Investment Articles List of All Minimalism Articles Facebook Internet Direct Store Internet Direct Laptops  DISCLAIMER - I am not a Financial Advisor and do not work for any Brokerage Firm. The opinions given are my own and are not to be used as professional advice. These are my findings and can hopefully help you to make informed decisions on investing. Consult a Broker or Lawyer before making any investment.
Dividend ETFs using Covered Call Options One of the easiest ways to make money in Dividend Investing is to buy ETFs that specialize in Dividend Growth stocks. DGI (Dividend Growth Investing) is a very efficient and consistent method to grow your portfolio. What is DGI Investing? I have many ETFs that invest in Dividend Stocks and found out this week why a number of them are making a lot more money than the others. Those making the most are using Covered Calls options on the dividend stocks. Options are not anything new, but I have not written about them as most of the time, they seem limited to speculative investors (loosely called investors) and very wealthy investors like Warren Buffet. Anyone can write an option, but only those holding shares in the stocks should do this. Many day traders sell naked options without holding the stock and sometimes make a lot of money. But most of the time, people who deal only in options go broke very quickly. I will try to briefly explain how options work. Let us say you have 100 shares of stock XYZ. (A fictional stock symbol.) The stock price is $25 a share and pays a 10% dividend. So in a year, your $2500 investment would yield you $250 if the stock price stayed the same every quarter. If you placed a covered call option to sell your stock in 6 months for $28, the option would vary in price as the maturity of the option closed. Let us say hypothetically that you could sell the $28 a-share option for $3 a share. Anytime in the time of the option until maturity, the option owner could call the stock and pay you $28 per share for it. You would get to keep the $300 payment for the option. So not only did you make $3 a share, you received quarterly dividends while you owned it for 10% of the current stock price, plus the $2800 the option caller paid for the stock. Let us say it was worth $26 at the end of the quarter and if we still owned it, we would have received $65 in dividends ($2600 * .10 = 260 then divided by 4 for quarterly value.) So you made $65 in dividends, $300 on selling the option, and gained another $300 over the purchase price of thestock(Capital gain). So you made $665 on a $2500 investment in less than 6 months. That $665 makes you over 25% net profit on an investment that was held for less than 1 year. Now all these assumptions are based on this being done in a non-taxable investment account like an IRA or a 401K so you have no taxable capital gains. See the difference in your net dividend or gain? 10% is a good return, but 25% is way better. Now suppose that the stock never went to $28 a share. What happens then? The option buyer has two options. One is to take the loss and pay you the $28 a share and exercise his option, or just let the option expire. Either way, you win. You keep the $300 on option purchase and still get $28 a share when stock is of less value. Think about how great that is. You got $300 of free money by writing the option. The numbers I am using are made up, and you may receive more than $3 a share or less based on the market sentiment for your stock. The longer the maturity window on the option, the higher the amount the option buyer pays as it gives them a long window of opportunity to exercise their option. Why would anyone pay you $3 a share for an option? Their $300 investment is controlling the full value of the 100 shares. So speculators like to take a chance and make money on what could happen. If the shock was to shoot up to $33 a share, they come out good. Most options buyers that I have met are either very intelligent with a good plan or they are mainly gamblers hoping for a free quick payout. Most of these last only a few months until they lose all their investment money. Dave Ramsey said on his show today that 78% of day traders go broke in the first 6 months. No way to invest if you want to retire with a large sum. Remember that this is a super simple explanation. Study out options in detail before selling (or buying) covered call options. An investment professional or broker can give you details and explain all the risks. They are not totally risk free, but most of the time a conservative play to bump up your income. So why talk about this opportunity? Two reasons. One is when you get to owning 100’s of shares of stocks, this is easily one of the most secure methods to bump your income up with minimal risk. And secondly, you don’t have to own hundreds of shares to do it right now. There are several ETFs designed for this exact purpose. I own a bunch of them and just found out why these pay out over 12% most of the time. Here is an article published in October 2023 from Morningstar explaining some of the ETFs. Why Investors are Pouring Billions into Covered Call ETFs. They list a lot of ETFs in the article. Some that I own that have done very well for me are QYLD, JEPI, JEPQ, PFFA, and SDIV. (I am not 100% sure SDIV uses covered call options, but they pay consistently high dividends.) I have owned all of these for quite some time, and all have been very constant in paying excellent dividends quarter after quarter. These are examples of some that have worked for me, but never buy any investment without talking it over with a broker or investment professional. So keep this strategy in mind. If you are a big investor with thousands of shares of stocks, this is a way for you to supplement your income with very minor risk. If you are a new or small investor, get started by using some of the ETFs I have listed or those mentioned in the Morning Star article. List of All Investment Articles List of All Minimalism Articles Facebook Internet Direct Store  Originally published 6/2/2022 on LifeCanBeSimple.net
Published on LifeCanBeSimple.blog on 10/10/2023 DISCLAIMER - I am not a Financial Advisor and do not work for any Brokerage Firm. The opinions given are of my own and are not to be used as professional advice. These are my findings and can hopefully help you to make informed decisions on investing. Consult a Broker or Lawyer before making any investment. DGI investing – Dividend Growth Investing Probably the most underused method to acquire great gains in your investment portfolio is DGI Investing. Ever heard of it? It has been around for years, but few people have adopted it. It is Dividend Growth Investing. We have discussed dividend stocks in two previous articles. Dividend Aristocrats Dividend Kings The Dividend Aristocrats and Dividend Kings are lists of stocks that may or may not be ideal DGI investing instruments. A Dividend growth stock will not only provide you dividends, but the company will continue to grow and the stock will appreciate. So if a stock pays a 6% dividend and in a year grows 8%, you received a 14% growth in that one year. (Added value of your investment plus the dividend paid.) I code all my Stock Schwab Slices where I purchase most of my DGI stocks to automatically reinvest the dividends by purchasing more stock of the company. Is it possible a company could return in one year more than 14%? Does it sound too phenomenal to be true? It happens all the time. But as I warned you in the earlier articles, don’t chase high dividend percentages only as the company may be paying out more than 50% of earnings to pay that high dividend. A company without sufficient money to reinvest will not continue to grow. So pay attention to the percentage of profits used to pay out the dividends. Some REIT (Real estate) stocks by law return the profits to the investors, so there are a few exceptions to this rule. So you are looking for high-quality companies with the ability to continue to grow. With this and the compounding of interest and growth price (appreciation), this can turn into a fine return. In 2022, I have been putting over ½ of my investment money set aside for ETFs and Stocks into DGI investments. Review those two lists on Dividend Aristocrats and Dividend Kings. They are different lists, and if a company is on both lists, it should be carefully considered as a potential DGI investment. If you continue to buy stocks all through the year with consistent investments, you will gain the average cost on the price throughout the year. That way if you invest $50 each month into say McDonald's stock when it is lower priced you will purchase more shares, and as it gets higher, fewer shares. For example only, if the stock was $10 a share, you would get 5 shares for $50. If it moved up to $20 a share, then you would only get 2.5 shares for the same $50 investment. But your per-share cost would be 100 / 7.5 =$13.33 s time goes on, and the stock goes up and down as the market fluctuates, your average cost will vary. This is what Dollar Cost Averaging is all about. Income investing is much like DGI investing. In both cases, you receive dividends from the company. The big difference is in DGI investing, you have a much greater chance of stock appreciation in value. Finding companies that have good dividend returns and excellent growth potential are sometimes difficult. Many websites offer not only last year's growth rate, but the EPS percentages for next year and sometimes for the next 5 years. EPS stands for earnings per share. If a company has a projected EPS of 3% or more, that is probably a worthy candidate. Also, remember to look at the P/E ratio (Price to earnings ratio.) As I have mentioned in earlier articles, an ideal P/E is 8 or less. Many today are well over 20, so don’t let this deter you if other reasons are compelling to include the company. Some of the best options for DGI investing include REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) and Preferred Stocks (possibly via ETFs) and also CEFs. (Closed-End Funds). These are unique mutual funds that can not sell more shares but are fixed at the IPO shares sold. You buy these looking at the Dividend Return and the discount to NAV. (Net asset value) A few of my DGI favorite investments are O - Realty Income (Reit), CVX – Chevron, WMT – Walmart, ABBV – ABBVIE(an Abbott labs spin-off), PEP – Pepsi, and KO – Coca Cola. These all appear to have good growth potential and are paying dividends of 3% or more. List of All Investment Articles List of All Minimalism Articles Internet Direct Laptops  DISCLAIMER - I am not a Financial Advisor and do not work for any Brokerage Firm. The opinions given are of my own and are not to be used as professional advice. These are my findings and can hopefully help you to make informed decisions on investing. Consult a Broker or Lawyer before making any investment.
What are Dividend Aristocrats? This is VERY IMPORTANT. Perhaps besides Growth Dividend Stocks, there is no better method to consistently reap rewards on your investments than to invest in Dividend Aristocrats or Dividend Kings. In our next article, we will cover the 2023 Dividend Kings. Today we concentrate on the first: DIVIDEND ARISTOCRATS in 2023 In simple terminology, Dividend Aristocrats are the large United States publicly traded companies that are very successful and highly liquid. When a company pays you a dividend, that is money that you make like a bank paying you interest. If a stock sells for $100 and has a 5% dividend, it will pay out $5.00 in dividends either quarterly, semi-yearly or once per year. If the company pays quarterly, you would receive $1.20 per quarter if the stock was at a level of $100 all year. The reality is stocks do not stay at any set value, so the Earning Per Share can vary causing the dividend percentage to increase or decrease. While this sounds bad, if we are in an upmarket, then the $100 stock at the end of the year may be worth $105 so with that value and the dividend, you really would net out a 10% gain. When I was younger, I wish I had known about Dividend Aristocrats. Ever since I started purchasing these over the past 10 years, my returns have been much better on my overall portfolio. If a person concentrates a large percentage of their money on the total stock market indexes by using ETFs such as ITOT, VTI, or SCHB, and then put an equal amount into these types of dividend stocks, it will work well for you in the long haul. Does buying Dividend Stocks guarantee you will make money? Absolutely not. You have to evaluate each company on its strengths and weaknesses, paying close attention to its P/E. P/E is a price-to-earnings ratio. Years ago, a company with good cash flow with a P/E ratio of 8% was considered a good investment. Nowadays, prices have driven up the P/E ratio, and many are above 20%. That does not mean they will not perform well, but it is a note of caution. Benjamin Graham, the author of The Intelligent Investor, makes a huge push for buying only high-quality stocks that have the right Cash Flow and Income Statements. Why anyone would want to buy a stock without it paying a dividend makes very little sense. To make money in the stock market, you must have a plan and stick to that plan over the long term. Steady consistent investments win the race. Richard Kiyosaki in his book, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” stresses the importance of having a written plan. He reiterated that in the second book “Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing”. Those two books are in my top 5 books on investments that I have read. We will be doing some book reviews in the upcoming weeks so that you may decide which books might be of interest to you. Study the markets every day. Only by continuing to learn will a person grow proficient in any endeavor. (Work, Family, Investing, etc.) Just to make this list weeds out many unprofitable and speculative stocks. Traits of a Dividend Aristocrat 1. At least 25 years of consecutive dividend payments with a higher dividend per share each year. 2.The company maintains a minimum market capitalization of 3 Billion dollars. 3.The stock averages at least 5 million dollars in daily trading. 4.The stock is part of the S&P 500 stock market index and is publicly traded. Not many companies can pull off this hat trick of meeting all 4 criteria for 25 Years. For a complete list of all 68 companies in 2023 Dividend Aristocrats, see the following link. MarketBeat List of 2023 Dividend Aristocrats. When you get to it click on the dividend yield column and you can sort it into order showing the highest payers on the top if you click it twice. The top two should be LEG and VFC. Another article showing the number of years they have paid consecutive dividends is USA TODAY. I noticed that the dividend yield in the two articles does not match. I suppose it is due to the date of each article. Before investing be sure to look at the yield showing that day at your brokerage site like Fidelity.com or Schwab.com. Review the lists to find the number of years they have been on the list, and what their dividend percentage is currently. If you decide to buy some of these, study each one carefully. Be sure they have a good rating and are expected to continue to grow. If the stock market price per share never goes up, a large percentage of your profits go away. I shoot for 7 to 8% of both dividends and a possible price increase over the upcoming year. You can purchase the majority of these on Schwab.com using their Stock Market Slices program. You select which companies you want, then designate the amount of money you want to invest. If you selected 10 stocks and invested $100, then each one would receive approximately $10. You can invest as little as $5. I have used their program to buy 12 of what I consider the best dividend-paying stocks. A few are not on the Dividend Aristocrats report, but the majority of them are. You can purchase any of these on Fidelity.com and buy by the dollar rather than the number of shares. Both Fidelity and Schwab help investors get started on their path to financial freedom with ease of use and good research. Look forward to the next article on the 2023 Dividend Kings. They are different than Aristocrats and maybe even better. A few overlap both lists which makes those certainly worthy of researching. Always remember that historical returns may or may not help to make good decisions today. So many factors come into play that you must not just read a list and start buying. Study them out and make a logical assessment of each company. What these lists do is give you some EXCELLENT prospects to analyze. Life Can be Simple Internet Direct Laptops |
David ParhamChristian Minimalist and Investor. God guides and helps me everyday. Archives
December 2023
Categories |
RSS Feed
