Time to settle down with a nice well-brewed drink (tea, coffee, beer...whatever your fancy) and maybe a biscuit, cake or two and catch up with what has been published during the week related to financial independence, early retirement, frugality and personal finance more generally (with a little of other bits and pieces thrown in).
As usual, last week's post pulled in a mighty amount of interest from you all. Hopefully there is plenty in here to catch your interest again.
As always, this is going to include your favourite articles "On Here" (that is on The Dividend Drive) and my favourite articles "Over There" (that is, on other personal finance sites I read).
And "Over To You"? Well that is an invite for you to highlight any articles you came across that you found interesting and not included in the list below.
Anyway, here goes my list for 13 June. Enjoy!
PS: If you want to look at the archive of previous weekly round-up articles then head over to my Every(ish) Posts page. Here you will find all the articles (except portfolio purchase-related ones) published on the Dividend Drive as well as every weekly round-up to date. Take a look.
"On Here"
NOTE: The "On Here" list is purely quantitative. It is the posts with the most unique reads that week (not including other weekly round-up lists). Here's a little legend for you to explain the symbols: ★ = newly published; ▲ = moved-up list since last week; ▼ = moved down list since last week; ▬ = same place as last week. Respective positions do not include the newly published articles.Again this week has seen the newly published articles--as usual--take the top spots. This time it includes my recent proposed scheme for linking charitable giving with my investing here at the Dividend Drive. I'd love to know your thoughts on this.
Also, my recent top-up purchase of the world's largest advertising giant, WPP.
Outside of this we have some familiar articles from last week. My write-ups for my purchases of Stock Spirits and Legal & General remain popular. Similarly, my monthly update keeps pulling in the readers.
Anyway, without any further ado, here is my breakdown for the week beginning 6 June 2015:
- ★ BUY: WPP--Doubling Up on a Global Media Giant
- ★ Big Change from Small Change? Marrying My Charitable and Investment Goals Through Microfinance
- ▲ BUY: Stock Spirits Group--Spirited Growth in Central and Eastern Europe?
- ▼ May 2015: Dividend Income, Trading Activity and Portfolio Snapshot
- ▲ BUY: Legal & General--Growth and Income Going for a Song?
- ▼ A Minor Miner Addition: South32 Joins My Portfolio After BHP Billiton Demerger
- ▼ BUY: National Grid--Electrifying income with an (ultra) Defensive Utility
- ▲ BUY: AstraZeneca--Healthy Future in Healthcare?
"Over There"
NOTE: The "Over There" is nothing like the "On Here" list. It is qualitative through and through and is simply chosen by me from what I read (and mostly commented on) during the week. It is not really a ranking but a motley bag of (excellent) items.So what about articles published elsewhere? Here is a little list of what caught my eye.
This again is a wonderful mix of fascinating articles. There are still a large number of May round-up articles to catch your fancy. However, the planning and strategy and broader investing sections are filled with great pieces. Form questions about rebalancing portfolios through to choosing investments by dice rolls (of sorts).
Anyway, hopefully you enjoy reading these as much as I did.
FIRE (Financial Independence/Retiring Early) Planning and Strategy
- Retirement Investments you may not have thought of (Early Retirement Guy)--Interesting guest post on less familiar retirement friendly investment. Well worth a read.
- Should Dividend Investors Re-Balance Portfolios? (Dividend Growth Investor)--Do you (and should you) rebalance your dividend portfolio? Read why DGI decides not to.
- Does Rebalancing Boost Returns? (Forbes: William Baldwin)--Linked to from the above article. But well worth a read (and a separate entry)!
FIRE (Financial Independence/Retiring Early) Progress
- My Investment Portfolio Warts and All (Retirement Investing Today)--A wonderfully frank (and thorough) breakdown of RITs investment portfolio. Fascinating.
- Monthly Summary – May 2015 (Dividend Life)--Another solid month of dividend income and wet worth progress.
- Portfolio Update: May 2015 (My Dividend Growth)--Progress all along here.
- dos vacays in may – income/expenses, net worth and savings rate report (The FireStarter)--Two holidays, a wedding and many other expensive activities in May. Still some excellent numbers!
- Dividend Income - May 2015 (Dividend Legion)--May 2014 saw no income whatsoever. May 2015 is certainly a great improvement.
- Income/Expenses For May 2015 (Dividend Mantra)--Jason had a very strong month especially with regards online income!
- Net Worth & Freedom Fund: May 2015 (Financially Free by Forty)--Excellent progress again by Huw. A little behind on some goals, but plenty of time (and will) to sort that out!
Investing
- Is South32 Ltd going north? (Pollie's Dividend)--Anyone heard/read interesting material about newly demerged South32? Pollie is on the hunt for reading material.
- 20 Quotes from Investing Greats to Make You a Better Dividend Investor (Sure Dividends)--Some excellent quotes in there with a nice set of summative thoughts by SD.
- Dicing with Investments (Quietly Saving)--What to do when your investment short list offers no winning investment proposition? Throw of a dice or not?
- How to value dividend stocks (Dividend Growth Investor)--How does DGI value dividend companies? Here is a thorough rundown for you.
- Debt ratios and pension ratios: Connecting the dots between them (UK Value Investor)--John tries to bring together debt ratios with pension obligations in reviewing companies.
- Some lessons from my investment in Serco (UK Value Investor)--Another great post by John. Here he offers a post-mortem of an unsuccessful investment to see what lessons can be learned.
Budgeting and Frugality
- The Escape Artist Recommends... (The Escape Artist)--Practical life-hacking tips for a variety of everyday essentials. Well worth a read.
- Frugal vs. Cheap: Make It Count (Frugal Cottage)--What is the difference between frugality and cheapness? FC takes a look.
- Saving Money with a Staycation (Early Retirement Guy)--Why having a holiday in your own country is better (and cheaper) than abroad.
"Over to You"
Anyway, that is it for this week. And here, as promised an age ago (or rather a few lines above), the "Over to You" bit.What did you read this week that you found really interesting related to investing, personal finance or financial independence?
Make a comment below and include a link. Then we can all take a look!
Why not also follow me on Twitter and like me on Facebook?
Creative Commons image reproduced from Flickr user Ruz
Hi DD, thanks for the mentions. Nice work with the icon styling in that list!
ReplyDeleteAlso, I've only just noticed your social sharing buttons (tweet/facebook etc). I don't want to be rude but they're a bit tiny... Note sure if the Blogger platform lets you enlarge them or make them more obvious for codgers like me?
My pleasure, John. Your two articles on the list were very interesting indeed. I look forward to rereading the Serco one to extract a few more nuggets from it.
DeleteI know. I quite like the icons. I came across them when I started "ranking" my portfolio by size each month (started in last month's update. It works well!
Not rude at all! I have not investigated making the sharing buttons larger. However, I will do. Hopefully there is some way of making them at least look more to scale to the rest of it!
Cheers for this DD. Lots of good reads here.
ReplyDeleteGot a bit of South32 myself and I'm hanging on for the long term.
My pleasure. Glad you found it of interest, Simon. There are certainly a lot of good reads. There are so many more I have missed, of course. Never enough time to bump into and read them all!
DeleteYes, at present I am planning to exactly the same with South32. Over the long term they look pretty good I think. Will be interesting to see their first financial report (and possible dividend). It is not clear whether this will be along the same time schedule as BHP's. Seems likely though.
We will see!
Thanks again for the link again DD.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately my blog is down right now so no one will be able to read it! My host reckons I have some compromised files and scratching my head on how to delete them and then get it back up without losing the whole of the bloomin backlog. Eep!
Cheers
Disaster! That sounds massively complicated to me. Compromised files? Best of luck digging them out!
DeleteHopefully you can get it up and running soon then people can start reading it again!
Good luck! Hope it is not as challenging as it sounds!
Hi DD
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link and another great list of reads.Love the icons!
My pleasure, weenie! Glad you have found them of interest. As I say, sure I have missed many other high-quality posts out there!
DeleteHi, DD. I really like the format for this post, good work. It's full of great links I look forward to checking out and thank you for including mine. Take care!
ReplyDeleteGlad you like it, Ryan. Slowly but surely refining the format. It is a great way of keeping on top of the stuff being published all over the place. The fact that so many people seem to enjoy reading it is an added bonus!
DeleteMy pleasure on including yours. You are making excellent progress which is great to see!
Keep up the good work.
Thank you for including my post DD! I second MDG, in that I like the format/layout. Plus, you have a lot of good articles to spend my Sunday afternoon on.
ReplyDeleteHave a fruitful week!
DGI
My pleasure, DGI. Glad to see that so many of you are liking the changes I have made. Always making little improvements (compound growth of a different sort!).
DeleteIt is quite a challenge to keep on top of all the stuff published in a week. Fun to try though!
Will do, same to you!
Thanks for the links for more interest read Dividend Drive. I am new to your blog. looks pretty good. I will put in some time to read you other blogs. Cheers
ReplyDeleteSorry, missed this post at first! My pleasure. Glad you found them of interest!
DeleteThanks, I hope you enjoy having a look around the site a bit more. Do drop a comment anywhere that catches your interest!
I just stumbled over your investment in AstraZeneca. As I am currently holding GSK in my account i am wondering if that company would be a good addition, too. I am still confident holding GSK since its latest drop but I could not decide yet if I will average down on the stock. The dividend looks great though... And thanks for the links :-)
ReplyDeleteYes, I bought AstraZeneca a month ago. It is a great company for the long-term. I think, as I said in my post-purchase write-up, that AstraZeneca is a nice companion to GSK. My reasoning being--at the time--that:
Delete"AstraZeneca is a slightly different beast to GSK. As noted above, GSK has a large consumer healthcare division (about 20% of revenue). In contrast, Astra is a much purer play on the pharma sector."
I know the feeling about GSK. I am sorely tempted to average down on it. However, I had just got GSK down to a fairer weight in my portfolio (about 10%...it had been nearly a third!). So I am loathed to make myself too GSK heavy. However, it is very tantalising at current prices.
It is interesting that--as I noted in a post earlier this week--Neil Woodford built his GSK holding up more than his AstraZeneca one last month.
I am glad I am not the only one agonising over their GSK holding and whether to top up or not!
Thanks for the details. You made some good points! I think I will keep GSK on hold for now. They promise to keep 80 pence dividend for the next years at least. But that does not give lots of upside here. So that makes me feel that my money works better somewhere else first!
DeleteLong term I think they are still a good bet and they remain on my watch list.
DeleteYes, they have said they plan to keep the dividend at 80p for the next three years. There is the special 20p dividend at Q4 this year as well. Maybe not a lot of growth for the next year or two, but it is a high starting yield and--I think--over a longer period they look good for growth.
But as you say, in the meantime there may be better places to push your cash! I still have not fully made my mind up yet!