The focus on finance this newsletter allows has led to the growth of my wealth. But it hasn’t given me more time. My priorities are shifting in anticipation of growth in several areas of my life.

And in order for new things to have the space to grow, sometimes old things need to be let go.

As I’m writing this post, I’m reminded of an 18-month period of my life where I would attend the practices of a professional pianist once a week. Meeting in the most serendipitous way possible, I had initially been invited to attend practices after meeting the pianist at the chiropractor’s office.

My relationship with the pianist continues to this day, but after starting my job at Rocket Mortgage two-and-a-half years ago, attending weekly piano practices no longer worked with my schedule.

Even if that meant I would no longer hear, what he claimed is, the proper interpretation of Dubussy’s “Clair De Lune” at the end of Thursday night practices.

So to put a nice bow on the 29-post arc of this newsletter, I would like to share the biggest financial lessons I learned along the way.

1. I need to have a clear picture of my finances. How much money I have. How much money I make per month. How much money I anticipate needing to spend in a month. How are my investments doing. If I don’t keep track of my finances, I’ll never be able to grow them.

2. I need to have a vision for my money. A budget was essential for me being able to do this. The budget not only provided guardrails to make sure I didn’t spend more money than I made, but also guided my giving, investing, and saving. I save in a specific way because I’m intentionally planning for home ownership.

3. I need to ignore the daily news and make investments that I’m comfortable with because I believe it will grow over years. Then once I find an investment I believe in, I need to continue investing through the ups and downs of the market (with some limits). I’m fully on the dollar cost-averaging train. Economists haven’t been able to agree upon when the next recession will come for the last 10 months. I can’t stop investing while I wait for everyone to sort it out.

4. I need my money to work for me. I work hard to earn my money, and as I’ve learned more about finances writing this newsletter, I’ve learned that my money can work for me. No longer will I accept savings account interest rates of 0.03 percent, when I can earn 4.21 percent at another bank, or earn 5.5 percent by buying one month treasury bonds.

5. I can’t save my way to prosperity. I’m very good at saving, and as I’ve been reading up on finance to write this newsletter, I’ve become a more educated investor and more savvy manager of my personal finances. But in addition to giving me a better understanding of how to make money, it’s also driven me to take my 9-to-5 career more seriously and look for ways to earn money outside my career.

6. Hope is essential. There is a depressing sub-genre of creators on social media, who are obsessed with talking about the terrible financial condition that many Millennials and Gen Z find themselves in. And the statistics are very bad. And the cost of housing is on average nearly four times higher than it was for my parents generation. But wallowing about it doesn’t help me. I’ve measurably increased my wealth over these past 10 months because I decided to educate myself and be proactive. There are still plenty of opportunities out there. And compound interest is still compounding.

I’m going to miss writing this newsletter.

As a former journalist, learning about new things and then getting to write about the things I just learned about is one of my passions.

This post isn’t goodbye forever — I may post on this newsletter again if I have some time and learn something new that I deem worth sharing — but it is goodbye for now.

Think Casey Neistat at the end of his daily vlog.

In this newsletter, Evan Invests, I explore the world of investing from the perspective of the everyday investor by making small investments every month. Follow along with me as I look to grow my wealth through wise money management and making investments in cryptocurrency, index funds, stocks and more.

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Let’s take a quick look at how my portfolio has been performing in the past week.

YTD Invested (Total): $2,685.77

YTD Returns (Total): $5,501.79

YTD Portfolio Growth: 13.0 percent

→ YTD S&P 500 Growth: 9.6 percent

→ YTD BTC Growth: 61.8 percent

My Portfolio Holdings as of 5/19/23

• Apple stock

• HF Sinclair stock

• Rocket Companies stock

• Steelcase stock

• Verizon stock

• Bitcoin

• Fidelity 500 Index Fund

• Invesco International Small-Mid Company Fund Class R6

• Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF

• Vanguard International Dividend Appreciation Index Fund Admiral Shares

• Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares

• SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 Growth EFT

• iShares S&P SmallCap 600 ETF

• Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets Fund

• Invesco S&P 500 Momentum ETF

• Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF

• Invesco S&P 500 Quality ETF

• iShares Core S&P 500 ETF

• Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF

Until next time, friends.

If you enjoyed this post, hit the like button and leave a comment. Thank you!

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📨 Connect with me on Twitter @EvanInvests

📨 Connect with me on Instagram @Evan.Invests

🚀 My favorite financial tweet from the past week.

💰 I help people finance homes for a living. If you’re looking to buy or refinance, use my link to get a sweet mortgage discount from Rocket Mortgage.

📈 Inspired to begin investing yourself? Use my link to open an account on Robinhood, and we’ll both get between $5 and $200 toward a stock.

And I’ve been beating the S&P 500’s rate of growth.

It’s exciting stuff, really. I’m currently beating the S&P 500 average by more than 3 percent. I’m not at Warren Buffet’s level, who regularly earns yearly portfolio growth of 20 percent, but I’m beating average market returns after less than a year of being an active investor.

I’m satisfied with my efforts and I believe the measure of success I’ve had offers a good building-block for my investing journey moving forward.

With that said, here are two things I’ve noticed that have potential to pull my portfolio growth back to the market average, and one thing that will boost my returns, over the rest of 2023.

1. I realized I’m actually employing two investing strategies at once. Efficient market investing and value investing.

More than 95 percent of my portfolio is tied-up in mutual funds that are pegged to the performance of different segments of the market. And more than 35 percent of my portfolio is directly tied to the overall performance of the S&P 500.

Over a long period of time, this is a good thing. The S&P 500 has produced average returns of 10 percent over the past 100 years. I would be happy with 10 percent returns.

Beating the market average isn’t my main goal. My main goal is to grow my wealth for the future. But it is a goal.

When I look at my investments, the three main investments that have outperformed the S&P 500 average are my Bitcoin (61.6 percent), my Apple stock (38.0 percent) and my Rocket Companies stock (14.5 percent). These investments comprise less than 4 percent of my total portfolio.

I hold these investments because I believe in them and believe the price they’re valued at today is less than what they’re worth. That’s value investing, and is a strategy I could employ to continue outperforming the S&P 500 market average.

It’s also riskier, so being a newer investor, I’m unlikely to invest more than a small portion of my investment budget into these types of investments.

2. Since most of my portfolio is composed of index funds that I buy and hold onto, I’m not going to change my investment strategy if one of my index funds under-performs for a few months.

As I stated in the previous section, about 95 percent of my portfolio is invested in mutual funds. A little bit over half of that investment is in funds comprised of U.S.-based stocks and the other portion of that investment is in funds comprised of non-U.S.-based stocks.

U.S. stock averages have historically outperformed international stock averages over the past 10 years, but in our interconnected world, the U.S. and international markets deeply impact one-another.

So if my Invesco International Small-Mid Company Fund performs poorly for a couple of months, it may bring my portfolio growth down toward the S&P 500 average.

Again, because beating the market average isn’t my main goal, I will hold onto the fund because I know it will earn me healthy returns in the long run.

3. As a result of many of my investments earning dividends, I am well positioned to continue outperforming the S&P 500 average most years.

As I’ve stated in several of my previous posts, one of the core strategies in my investing is buying and holding investments that earn dividends (payments to stock-holders that companies make out of profits).

Capturing the dividends that my investments earn, and reinvesting them, allows me to increase the value of my portfolio without spending over money. And over years, this strategy has a compounding effect.

The four mutual funds I own — along with four out of the five individual stocks in which I’ve invested — earn dividends, which over time when reinvested produces average returns of 15 percent.

In the short-term, my dreams of raking in the dough from dividend stocks doesn’t appear to be producing results. Yet.

My VYM ETF is earning a return of -3.3 percent. And the dividend stocks I bought last month are earning a return of -13.8 percent. Ooof.

In the long run though, I’m confident that targeting investments that pay a high dividend yield will pay off.

And lest I forget, I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day yesterday. Don’t forget to give your wife, mother or grandmother a big hug.

In this newsletter, Evan Invests, I explore the world of investing from the perspective of the everyday investor by making small investments every month. Follow along with me as I look to grow my wealth through wise money management and making investments in cryptocurrency, index funds, stocks and more.

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Let’s take a quick look at how my portfolio has been performing in the past week.

YTD Invested (Total): $2,450.39

YTD Returns (Total): $4,833.91

YTD Portfolio Growth: 11.0 percent

→ YTD S&P 500 Growth: 7.8 percent

→ YTD BTC Growth: 61.6 percent

My Portfolio Holdings as of 5/12/23

• Apple stock

• HF Sinclair stock

• Rocket Companies stock

• Steelcase stock

• Verizon stock

• Bitcoin

• Fidelity 500 Index Fund

• Invesco International Small-Mid Company Fund Class R6

• Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF

• Vanguard International Dividend Appreciation Index Fund Admiral Shares

• Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares

• SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 Growth EFT

• iShares S&P SmallCap 600 ETF

• Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets Fund

• Invesco S&P 500 Momentum ETF

• Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF

• Invesco S&P 500 Quality ETF

• iShares Core S&P 500 ETF

• Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF

I’ll report back next week.

If you enjoyed this post, hit the like button and leave a comment. Thank you!

Share

📨 Connect with me on Twitter @EvanInvests

📨 Connect with me on Instagram @Evan.Invests

🚀 My favorite financial tweet from the past week.

💰 I help people finance homes for a living. If you’re looking to buy or refinance, use my link to get a sweet mortgage discount from Rocket Mortgage.

📈 Inspired to begin investing yourself? Use my link to open an account on Robinhood, and we’ll both get between $5 and $200 toward a stock.

SpongeBob was one of my favorites.

The cartoon is aimed at kids, but it subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) makes a lot points aimed at adults. One of the threads of commentary the show makes is on the plight of employees.

If you live under a rock — like SpongeBob’s friend Patrick Star — then you should know that SpongeBob is a fry cook at the Krusty Krab, a fast food restaurant run by the greedy Mr. Krabs.

Mr. Krabs is the personification of capitalist greed. He is shrewd, and all he cares about is money. He serves as a perfect foil to SpongeBob’s character who is foolish, but good-hearted and not motivated by money.

The irony is that while Mr. Krabs is a caricature of a business-owner, businesses exist to make money.

Even in an era of for-more-than-profit companies, organizations still need to have healthy revenues (hopefully leading to profits) in order to fund any charitable goals.

Warren Buffet, one of the most successful investors of the last 50 years looks at his investing in this way.

He wants to know if the company he is investing in is a quality company, and one of the primary ways he measures that is how likely he believes that company is to increase its revenues (and typically profits) over the next decade.

So after investing in three new stocks in the past month, I want to take a page from Warren Buffet’s playbook and take a quick look at how the companies in my portfolio make money, and how much of it they make.

A couple notes. First, I choose stocks in April with the strategy of gaining value through growing dividend payments. Second, all of the information I’m going to go through is historical, and so it doesn’t necessarily guarantee an increase in revenues in the future.

Apple

🍎 Industry: Technology
🍎 Sources of revenue: iPhone, Mac, iPad, Wearables, Home and Accessories, Services
🍎 Revenue 2018 - 2022: $265.5 billion, $260.1 b, $274.5 b, $365.8 b, $394.3 b
🍎 Profit 2018 - 2022: $101.8 billion, $98.4 b, $105.0 b, $152.8 b, $170.8 b
🍎 Future sources of revenue: Augmented reality glasses is rumored to be coming this year, opening up a new platform for the company.

HF Sinclair

🦕 Industry: Crude oil products
🦕 Sources of revenue: Oil refineries, Gasoline and diesel, lubricants, and other oil-derived products
🦕 Revenue 2018 - 2022: $17.7 billion, $17.5 b, $11.2 b, $18.4 b, $38.2 b
🦕 Profit 2018 - 2022: $3.8 billion, $3.6 b, $2.0 b, $2.8 b, $7.5 b
🦕 Future sources of revenue: The company is investing in renewable diesel which is made with recycled animal fats and other plant materials.

Rocket Companies

🚀 Industry: Financial services
🚀 Sources of revenue: Mortgages, Automobile loans, Personal loans, Solar loans
🚀 Revenue 2018 - 2022: $4.2 billion, $5.1 b, $15.7 b, $12.9 b, $5.8 b
🚀 Profit 2020 - 2022: $198 million, $308 m, $46 m
🚀 Future sources of revenue: The loan products offered change depending on market conditions (largely mortgage interest rates).

Steelcase

🪑 Industry: Furniture manufacturing and design
🪑 Sources of revenue: Furniture for classrooms, hospitals, and offices
🪑 Revenue 2018 - 2022: $3.3 billion, $3.7 b, $2.9 b, $2.7 b, $3.2 b
🪑 Profit 2018 - 2022: $79 million, $124 m, $200 m, $26 m, $4 m
🪑 Future sources of revenue: The company is seeking to create office furniture that accommodates the new hybrid work model that many companies are embracing where employees spend work days at home and in the office.

Verizon

📶 Industry: Telecommunications
📶 Sources of revenue: Cellular telephone and internet services, fiber optic home internet services
📶 Revenue 2018 - 2022: $130.9 billion, $131.9 b, $128.3 b, $133.6 b, $136.8 b
📶 Profit: 2018 - 2022: $75.4 billion, $77.1 b, $77.1 b, $77.3 b, $77.7 b
📶 Future sources of revenue: Mobile computing services that are integrated with its network to offer high speed response times for various cloud-computing based needs.

So after looking at the companies I’ve invested in from a revenue perspective, I’m very curious to see how (my employer) Rocket and Steelcase fare in 2023. Financial services and furniture manufacturing and design are both good industries that offer concrete services that are always needed, at least to some degree.

We’ll see where this goes.

In this newsletter, Evan Invests, I explore the world of investing from the perspective of the everyday investor by making small investments every month. Follow along with me as I look to grow my wealth through wise money management and making investments in cryptocurrency, index funds, stocks and more.

Subscribe now

Let’s take a quick look at how my portfolio has been performing in the past week.

YTD Invested (Total): $2,096.09

YTD Portfolio Growth: 11.6 percent

→ YTD S&P 500 Growth: 9.0 percent

→ YTD BTC Growth: 77.6 percent

My Portfolio Holdings as of 4/28/23

• Apple stock

• HF Sinclair stock

• Rocket Companies stock

• Steelcase stock

• Verizon stock

• Bitcoin

• Fidelity 500 Index Fund

• Invesco International Small-Mid Company Fund Class R6

• Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF

• Vanguard International Dividend Appreciation Index Fund Admiral Shares

• Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares

• SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 Growth EFT

• iShares S&P SmallCap 600 ETF

• Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets Fund

• Invesco S&P 500 Momentum ETF

• Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF

• Invesco S&P 500 Quality ETF

• iShares Core S&P 500 ETF

• Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF

I’ll report back next week.

If you enjoyed this post, hit the like button and leave a comment. Thank you!

Share

📨 Connect with me on Twitter @EvanInvests

🚀 My favorite financial tweet from the past week.

💰 I help people finance homes for a living. If you’re looking to buy or refinance, use my link to get a sweet mortgage discount from Rocket Mortgage.

📈 Inspired to begin investing yourself? Use my link to open an account on Robinhood, and we’ll both get between $5 and $200 toward a stock.

The Grand Rapid, Michigan-based company made $2.8 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2022. That’s a lot of office chairs and school desks.

Although, officially, it only noted a profit of $4 million. Ooof.

But the companies revenues and the fact that it hails from Michigan aren’t what attracted me to the stock. In reality, I was initially interested in purchasing Walgreens stock, which has been consistently paying out dividends for more than 25 years.

Walgreens offers a 5.4 percent dividend yield, and its dividend payouts are well covered by earnings. And I was about to buy it, before I stumbled upon Steelcase, which offers a 5.9 percent yield that is also well covered earnings. And Steelcase has a cheaper stock, so I can by more of it.

Here’s what I found out about Steelcase/SCS using the dividend stock evaluating framework from The Single Best Investment by Lowell Miller.

High Quality. Steelcase has the money to cover both its short term and its long term debts. Both the the company’s revenue and its profits are expected to grow. And, according to the stock analysis website I’m using, simplywall.st, its stock is undervalued.

High Current Dividend Yield. The company has a dividend yield of 5.9 percent. The industry average for March 2023 is 1.7 percent. And the company has a high dividend payout ratio of 163 percent. That’s Fantastic!

High Growth Dividend. The analysts at simplywall.st believe that the dividends for Steelcases stock will continue to grow as its revenues and profits grow over the next few years.

All of this gets me excited and ready to begin investing in Steelcase.

So what’s next?

Honestly, after spending time researching and investing in stocks that earn dividends, I would love to watch the theory of efficient markets in my portfolio. I want to see how the three dividend stocks I’ve invested in this past month, perform head-to-head with my Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF.

Stay tuned in future posts for more on that.

In this newsletter, Evan Invests, I explore the world of investing from the perspective of the everyday investor by making small investments every month. Follow along with me as I look to grow my wealth through wise money management and making investments in cryptocurrency, index funds, stocks and more.

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Let’s take a quick look at how my portfolio has been performing in the past week.

YTD invested (total): $2,076.09

YTD Growth: 10.9 percent

My Portfolio Holdings as of 4/21/23

• Apple stock

• HF Sinclair stock

• Rocket Companies stock

• Verizon stock

• Bitcoin

• Fidelity 500 Index Fund

• Invesco International Small-Mid Company Fund Class R6

• Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF

• Vanguard International Dividend Appreciation Index Fund Admiral Shares

• Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares

• SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 Growth EFT

• iShares S&P SmallCap 600 ETF

• Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets Fund

• Invesco S&P 500 Momentum ETF

• Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF

• Invesco S&P 500 Quality ETF

• iShares Core S&P 500 ETF

• Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF

I’ll report back next week.

If you enjoyed this post, hit the like button and leave a comment. Thank you!

📨 Connect with me on Twitter @EvanInvests

🚀 My favorite financial tweet from the past week.

💰 I help people finance homes for a living. If you’re looking to buy or refinance, use my link to get a sweet mortgage discount from Rocket Mortgage.

📈 Inspired to begin investing yourself? Use my link to open an account on Robinhood, and we’ll both get between $5 and $200 toward a stock.

I can still hear the ad campaign in my head. “Can you hear me now,” the Verizon spokesman said over and over. I thought kids with phones on Verizon were pretty cool.

But I’ve never switched to Verizon as an adult. I still use T-Mobile to this day. I’m happy with T-Mobile’s 5G coverage and I have a really great deal on my monthly bill.

Still, as I look to invest in dividend stocks, Verizon’s 6.7 percent dividend yield is bringing back old feelings from high school and causing me to feel like a fan again.

Here’s what I found out about Verizon/VZ using the dividend stock evaluating framework from The Single Best Investment by Lowell Miller.

High Quality. While Verizon doesn’t currently have the assets to cover all of its debt, but it’s doing a good job of paying its debt down. The company’s revenue is largely steady, though its profits in 2021 were below its profits in 2022. And the company’s stock price is considered to be trading below its potential value.

High Current Dividend Yield. The company has a dividend yield of 6.7 percent. The industry average for March 2023 is 1.7 percent. And the company has a high dividend payout ratio of 51%. That’s incredible!

High Growth Dividend. Unfortunately, the stock analysis website I’m using, simplywall.st, doesn’t expect Verizon’s Dividend to grow much in the next few years.

Still, Verizon has paid dividends consistently for more than 20 years. I don’t know how much more the telecommunications companies like Verizon will grow, but I certainly don’t think they’re going to go anywhere anytime soon.

I’m confident picking Verizon as my second dividend stock investment.

In this newsletter, Evan Invests, I explore the world of investing from the perspective of the everyday investor by making small investments every month. Follow along with me as I look to grow my wealth through wise money management and making investments in cryptocurrency, index funds, stocks and more.

Subscribe now

Let’s take a quick look at how my portfolio has been performing in the past week.

YTD invested (total): $1,955.87

YTD Growth: 9.9%

My Portfolio Holdings as of 4/14/23

• Apple stock

• HF Sinclair stock

• Rocket Companies stock

• Bitcoin

• Fidelity 500 Index Fund

• Invesco International Small-Mid Company Fund Class R6

• Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF

• Vanguard International Dividend Appreciation Index Fund Admiral Shares

• Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares

• SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 Growth EFT

• iShares S&P SmallCap 600 ETF

• Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets Fund

• Invesco S&P 500 Momentum ETF

• Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF

• Invesco S&P 500 Quality ETF

• iShares Core S&P 500 ETF

• Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF

I’ll report back next week.

If you enjoyed this post, hit the like button and leave a comment. Thank you!

📨 Connect with me on Twitter @EvanInvests

🚀 My favorite financial tweet from the past week.

💰 I help people finance homes for a living. If you’re looking to buy or refinance, use my link to get a sweet mortgage discount from Rocket Mortgage.

📈 Inspired to begin investing yourself? Use my link to open an account on Robinhood, and we’ll both get between $5 and $200 toward a stock.

When people think of Detroit, Michigan, where I’m from, they think about automotive companies. Chrysler. Ford. GM. We put the world on wheels.

And right now the automative industry is putting a lot of its focus on building the battery-powered, electric vehicle portion of its businesses, while scaling back the gasoline-powered vehicle portion of its businesses.

Fair enough. But the world still runs on combustable fuels like oil and gas, and will continue to do so for a long time.

I initially looked at buying stock in ExxonMobil, which is known for being a reliable stock for dividend growth. In fact, some investors call it a “Dividend Aristocrat” due to its consistency in increasing dividend payments over the last 25 years.

But after reading this article in yahoo! finance, I was intrigued by Dallas, Texas-based energy company HF Sinclair. And after learning that its earnings grew by more than 400 percent over the past year and its stock price is considered to be undervalued, I had to take a further look.

Here’s what I found out about HF Sinclair/DINO using the dividend stock evaluating framework from The Single Best Investment by Lowell Miller.

High Quality. The company has enough assets to coverage its debts. And it has enough assets to cover its dividend payments. A downside to this stock is that its revenue and earnings are expected to go down over the next few years.

High Current Dividend Yield. The company has a dividend yield of 3.9 percent. The industry average for March 2023 is 1.7 percent. And, it paid out 8 percent of its profits in dividends last year.

High Growth Dividend Yield. Despite analysts predicting that profits will decrease in the next few years, analysts are predicting that the dividend yield will increase. This is exciting news, and something I’m looking for when it comes to picking a stock.

I’m convinced. I’ve set-up a recurring investment of DINO on my Robinhood app.

I’m excited to see how this plays out.

In this newsletter, Evan Invests, I explore the world of investing from the perspective of the everyday investor by making small investments every month. Follow along with me as I look to grow my wealth through wise money management and making investments in cryptocurrency, index funds, stocks and more.

Subscribe now

Let’s take a quick look at how my portfolio has been performing in the past week.

YTD invested (total): $1,920.87

YTD Growth: 8%

My Portfolio Holdings as of 4/7/23

• Apple stock

• Rocket Companies stock

• Bitcoin

• Fidelity 500 Index Fund

• Invesco International Small-Mid Company Fund Class R6

• Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF

• Vanguard International Dividend Appreciation Index Fund Admiral Shares

• Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares

I’ll report back next week.

If you enjoyed this post, hit the like button and leave a comment. Thank you!

📨 Connect with me on Twitter @EvanInvests

🚀 My favorite financial tweet from the past week.

💰 I help people finance homes for a living. If you’re looking to buy or refinance, use my link to get a sweet mortgage discount from Rocket Mortgage.

📈 Inspired to begin investing yourself? Use my link to open an account on Robinhood, and we’ll both get between $5 and $200 toward a stock.

After a couple months of simply optimizing my personal finances and spending time pondering whether Bitcoin is going to increase in price to more than $30,000, I’ve decided to follow the advice of the investing book I’m reading.

Using the framework of The Single Best Investment by Lowell Miller, I’m going to look at investing in three more stocks that pay dividends by the end of April.

And following the advice the the book, I’m going to look at potential stocks through the following lens: Is the stock high quality; does the stock have a high current dividend; and does the stock have a high growth dividend.

High Quality. Does the company have low debt, strong cash flow and creditworthiness? Are the company’s executives generally considered to be excellent and trustworthy? Is the company likely to continue growing?

High Current Dividend Yield. Does the company consistently offer a dividend that is 150 percent to 200 percent the market average for dividends?

High Growth of Dividend Yield. Has the company consistently increased the dividends paid out by its stock in the past?

I’m excited to share with everyone the stocks I’m looking at, and ultimately, the stocks in which I choose to invest. I’m excited to see where this goes.

In this newsletter, Evan Invests, I explore the world of investing from the perspective of the everyday investor by making small investments every month. Follow along with me as I look to grow my wealth through wise money management and making investments in cryptocurrency, index funds, stocks and more.

Subscribe now

Let’s take a quick look at how my portfolio has been performing in the past week.

My Portfolio Holdings as of 3/31/23

• Apple stock

• Rocket Companies stock

• Bitcoin

• Fidelity 500 Index Fund

• Invesco International Small-Mid Company Fund Class R6

• Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF

• Vanguard International Dividend Appreciation Index Fund Admiral Shares

• Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares

I’ll report back next week.

If you enjoyed this post, hit the like button and leave a comment. Thank you!

📨 Connect with me on Twitter @EvanInvests

🚀 My favorite financial tweet from the past week.

💰 I help people finance homes for a living. If you’re looking to buy or refinance, use my link to get a sweet mortgage discount from Rocket Mortgage.

📈 Inspired to begin investing yourself? Use my link to open an account on Robinhood, and we’ll both get between $5 and $200 toward a stock.

Several large banks were closed by governments last week, or in the case of Credit Suisse pushed toward being acquired. At the same time the price of Bitcoin dramatically increased, rising by more than 20 percent.

While I don’t understand the structure of the global banking system well enough to understand if more dominos are going to fall, I do know that investor sentiment seems to show a lack of trust in the traditional banking system.

In many ways, this is Bitcoin’s moment to shine. As centralized banking is rattled, decentralized money, like Bitcoin, can seem more attractive. And when an asset like Bitcoin becomes more attractive, its price increases from $21,500 to $28,000 in a week.

Bitcoin is riding a wave, and I’m getting excited thinking about jumping in to take advantage of the gains to make a quick buck. But then I remember I’m investing for the long term, and not for the short term.

I may still increase my investments into Bitcoin, but that perspective grounds me.

In this newsletter, Evan Invests, I explore the world of investing from the perspective of the everyday investor by making small investments every month. Follow along with me as I look to grow my wealth through wise money management and making investments in cryptocurrency, index funds, stocks and more.

Subscribe now

Let’s take a quick look at how my portfolio has been performing in the past week.

My Portfolio Holdings as of 3/10/23

• Apple stock

• Rocket Companies stock

• Bitcoin

• Fidelity 500 Index Fund

• Invesco International Small-Mid Company Fund Class R6

• Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF

• Vanguard International Dividend Appreciation Index Fund Admiral Shares

• Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares

The value of my Bitcoin in dollars increased by more than 25 percent last week. And the price of my other assets barely moved.

Not a whole lot is happening with my stocks and stock-based index funds.

I’m not complaining about this lack of movement in the price of my assets, but I do want to get smarter about how I track my assets and research potentially buying into new ones.

And to do that, I downloaded a trading terminal program, which is what professional asset managers use to manage their portfolios. You can download the program I use for free.

Now I can not only track the movement of the price of an asset over time, but I can track how much the price of an asset went up or down during the day, as well as how much a particular asset was traded on any particular day (called the trading volume).

What I just described is called “technical analysis.” Click this link to watch a short video explaining what it might look like.

I’ll report back next week.

If you enjoyed this post, hit the like button and leave a comment. Thank you!

📨 Connect with me on Twitter @EvanInvests

🚀 My favorite financial tweet from the past week.

💰 I help people finance homes for a living. If you’re looking to buy or refinance, use my link to get a sweet mortgage discount from Rocket Mortgage.

📈 Inspired to begin investing yourself? Use my link to open an account on Robinhood, and we’ll both get between $5 and $200 toward a stock.

Thinking back, I was aware of one thing. A couple of my childhood friends moved away from my neighborhood.

It wasn’t until years later that my dad told me that nearly half of the homes in the neighborhood of the inner-ring Detroit suburb we live in were vacant at one point during that period.

The 2008 financial crisis was a gut-punch to investors. And from 2008 to 2012, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (the government entity that insures your deposits in the bank) closed 465 failed banks.

Coming back to the present day, some financial analysts are concerned after three banks failed in the past week. And it seems like the writing is on the wall for an economic downturn.

Thankfully, in his latest Substack post, , talks about why he believes the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (the most prominent of the failed banks) won’t lead to my bank and your bank failing.

Still, I believe that these shocks to the financial system provide an opportunity to reflect on the fundamentals of my investing. Even as I believe that a financial downturn of some sort is coming down the pike, I plan to continue investing, and potentially increase the amount I’m investing.

Long term investing isn’t day trading. I’m partnering with companies, and with certain financial assets, because I believe that they will continue to grow in the long term.

Great companies weathered the financial storms of 2008, and they will weather whatever challenges are brewing for the rest of 2023.

As I continue to explore the strategy of buying stocks that pay dividends to shareholders, here are a few take-aways I had from reading The Single Best Investment by Lowell Miller this past week.

1. Any investment must account for human emotion, error, and the tendency to follow groups.

2. In order to achieve longterm growth, I need to become comfortable with some level of risk and volatility in my investing.

3. Short term returns aren’t the end goal. Time and patience are two of my best friends.

4. My portfolio should be comprised of stocks I’m comfortable holding through downturns.

5. Reinvesting my dividends can super-charge the compounding effect of my investing over time.

In this newsletter, Evan Invests, I explore the world of investing from the perspective of the everyday investor by making small investments every month. Follow along with me as I look to grow my wealth through wise money management and making investments in cryptocurrency, index funds, stocks and more.

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Let’s take a quick look at how my portfolio has been performing in the past week.

My Portfolio Holdings as of 3/10/23

• Apple stock

• Rocket Companies stock

• Bitcoin

• Fidelity 500 Index Fund

• Invesco International Small-Mid Company Fund Class R6

• Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF

• Vanguard International Dividend Appreciation Index Fund Admiral Shares

• Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares

Interestingly enough, with everything I just covered about three banks failing last week, and the thick cloud of recession seeming to hang over the economy, my investments seem to be holding steady.

My portfolio lost value last week, but so far this year, I haven’t experienced losses multiple weeks in a row.

As I prepare myself for the possibility of weeks of sustained portfolio losses this year, I’d do well to remember what I wrote above: In order to achieve longterm growth, I need to become comfortable with some level of risk and volatility in my investing.

I’ll report back next week.

If you enjoyed this post, hit the like button and leave a comment. Thank you!

📨 Connect with me on Twitter @EvanInvests

🚀 My favorite financial tweet from the past week.

💰 I help people finance homes for a living. If you’re looking to buy or refinance, use my link to get a sweet mortgage discount from Rocket Mortgage.

📈 Inspired to begin investing yourself? Use my link to open an account on Robinhood, and we’ll both get between $5 and $200 toward a stock.

I did this because I believed that the value of stocks are something that grow over time, so my wealth will grow over time as my investments grow.

This is, in fact, true. Over time as my stocks go up in value, my wealth will increase.

But before reading The Single Best Investment by Lowell Miller, I didn’t consider the role that inflation plays in how my wealth grows over time.

Right now in the United States we’re coming off some of the highest inflation that the country has faced in 40 years. In January, the inflation rate was estimated to be at 6.4 percent.

But even when inflation isn’t in the headlines, it’s still slowly eating away at the value of the dollar. From the end of World War II to the early 2000s, inflation went up on average 4.10 percent per year.

What that means in simple terms is this: When I’m thinking about growing my wealth through investing, I’m not just trying to grow my wealth above the original amount I invested (the principle). I’m actually looking to grow my wealth above the rate of inflation.

That’s why I’m so interested in the rate of return of my various investments. It’s about wealth preservation and wealth creation.

In this newsletter, Evan Invests, I explore the world of investing from the perspective of the everyday investor by making small investments every month. Follow along with me as I look to grow my wealth through wise money management and making investments in cryptocurrency, index funds, stocks and more.

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Let’s take a quick look at how my portfolio has been performing in the past week.

My Portfolio Holdings as of 3/3/23

• Apple stock

• Rocket Companies stock

• Bitcoin

• Fidelity 500 Index Fund

• Invesco International Small-Mid Company Fund Class R6

• Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF

• Vanguard International Dividend Appreciation Index Fund Admiral Shares

• Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares

The assets in my portfolio were stagnant again last week, with my Bitcoin loosing a small amount of its value and my stock-based assets all slightly gaining value in price.

To be completely honest, watching my investment portfolio over the past couple of moneys has been a bit boring and deflating as it seems that the market isn’t moving decisively in one direction or another.

But this is exactly why I practice dollar cost average investing. To take the emotion out of my investing and make sure I’m continuing to buy, knowing that over time, the stock market always goes up.

I’ll report back next week.

If you enjoyed this post, hit the like button and leave a comment. Thank you!

📨 Connect with me on Twitter @EvanInvests

🚀 My favorite financial tweet from the past week.

💰 I help people finance homes for a living. If you’re looking to buy or refinance, use my link to get a sweet mortgage discount from Rocket Mortgage.

📈 Inspired to begin investing yourself? Use my link to open an account on Robinhood, and we’ll both get between $5 and $200 toward a stock.

I’m not against side hustles or multiple streams of income. I have an LLC so I can receive income from odd-jobs, or from occasional clients I have for photography or writing.

And I know people who are successful making income from their passions in life in addition to their more traditional careers. Some of those side hustles are very lucrative.

But I’ve come to the conviction that in my stage of life it’s more important for me to have balance than it is for me to spend all of my extra time working to earn more money.

And actually, as someone in his late-20s, focusing on growing in my 9-to-5 career is one of the best ways I can increase my income.

Patrick Bet-David is one of my favorite financial commentators. And I think Patrick sums up this idea well when he talks about how he focused on one stream of income from his business instead of trying to make money from multiple streams of income.

I want to do what Patrick did. I’m not a business owner like Patrick, but I see the value in growing my main stream of income from my career in this stage of life, so I can have greater resources later in life to potentially try other things.

Cost controls are important. So is beginning to invest early to reap the benefits of compound interest.

Still, it doesn’t take very sophisticated math skills to see how investing more money because I have more money to invest will lead to better returns than situations where I invested less. Even if the investments I made with the lower initial investment amount performed twice as well.

I guess it’s time for me to focus on growing as a professional, so that as my professional career grows, other areas of my life can grow along side it.

In this newsletter, Evan Invests, I explore the world of investing from the perspective of the everyday investor by making small investments every month. Follow along with me as I look to grow my wealth through wise money management and making investments in cryptocurrency, index funds, stocks and more.

Subscribe now

Let’s take a quick look at how my portfolio has been performing in the past week.

My Portfolio Holdings as of 2/24/23

• Apple stock

• Rocket Companies stock

• Bitcoin

• Fidelity 500 Index Fund

• Invesco International Small-Mid Company Fund Class R6

• Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF

• Vanguard International Dividend Appreciation Index Fund Admiral Shares

• Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares

The markets had a tough week last week, and so did my portfolio. Every single one of my assets lost value in terms of its price. Thankfully, I’m in this for the long game, and I’m not worried about making money week to week.

This week’s post was simple, so I don’t have much more to say. But before I go, I want to thank you for continuing to read this newsletter week after week.

There are so many things to which you could be giving your attention. There is more financial newsletters out there than you could ever read.

Thanks again for giving me five minutes out of your Monday.

I’ll report back next week.

If you enjoyed this post, hit the like button and leave a comment. Thank you!

📨 Connect with me on Twitter @EvanInvests

🚀 My favorite financial tweet from the past week.

💰 I help people finance homes for a living. If you’re looking to buy or refinance, use my link to get a sweet mortgage discount from Rocket Mortgage.

📈 Inspired to begin investing yourself? Use my link to open an account on Robinhood, and we’ll both get between $5 and $200 toward a stock.

Unlike the previous couple years where I paid a couple hundred dollars to have HR&R block prepare my taxes, I instead decided to pay TurboTax a couple hundred dollars to have the privilege of filing my taxes from the comfort of my own home.

I’m sure there is a cheaper way to do my taxes without making a major mistakes that will result in me running afoul of the IRS. But that’s for another post.

I input my tax information into TurboTax as quickly as I could because, as I stated previously, I hate doing my taxes. And because I was moving so quickly, I almost skipped over the section where I was prompted to enter the contributions I made to my Health Savings Account last year.

I’m glad I didn’t skip the section in my hurry. Filling out my HSA contributions saved me several hundred dollars in federal taxes.

In 2021 when I switched my employer-backed healthcare plan from a preferred provider organization plan, PPO for short, to a high-deductible health insurance plan, or a HDHP, I wasn’t thinking about saving money on my taxes.

😵‍💫 | Wondering what I mean when I say PPO or HDHP? I found this article helpful.

I primarily made the switch for two reasons: I wanted to save money by lowering the healthcare contributions taken out of my check and I liked the flexibility of having the control of my high-deductible health insurance plan’s Health Savings Account.

I knew that an HSA would give me more flexibility in how I spent money on healthcare. I wasn’t aware of the tax and investment benefits my HSA was providing.

In this newsletter, Evan Invests, I explore the world of investing from the perspective of the everyday investor by making small investments every month. Follow along with me as I look to grow my wealth through wise money management and making investments in cryptocurrency, index funds, stocks and more.

Subscribe now

But before continuing to sing the praises of the HSA, let’s take a quick look at how my portfolio has been performing in the past week.

My Portfolio Holdings as of 2/17/23

• Apple stock

• Rocket Companies stock

• Bitcoin

• Fidelity 500 Index Fund

• Invesco International Small-Mid Company Fund Class R6

• Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF

• Vanguard International Dividend Appreciation Index Fund Admiral Shares

• Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares

Frankly, I didn’t take the time to read up on how the overall markets have been doing (and honestly, how investors have been feeling) in the past week. But I can tell you that none of my investments moved very much in price.

Well, with exception of my Bitcoin. But when has Bitcoin not moved wildly up and down in price? Not since I bought into it five months ago.

Back to HSAs.

Here a few of the tax and investing benefits of owning an HSA that I didn’t know about before I began this investing journey and took a closer look at my finances. Hat Tip to Investopedia.

• Employer and individual contributions by payroll deduction to an HSA are excluded from the employee’s taxable income.

• Distributions from an HSA are tax free, provided that the funds are used for qualified medical expenses as outlined by the IRS.

• You can also use the money in your HSA to invest in stocks and other securities, potentially allowing for higher returns over time.

If you remember anything from this post, remember this. Health Savings Accounts are great if you qualify for one. And if you do have one, don’t forget to declare your contributions to it when you file your taxes.

I’ll report back next week.

If you enjoyed this post, hit the like button and leave a comment. Thank you!

📨 Connect with me on Twitter @EvanInvests

🚀 My favorite financial tweet from the past week.

💰 I help people finance homes for a living. If you’re looking to buy or refinance, use my link to get a sweet mortgage discount from Rocket Mortgage.

📈 Inspired to begin investing yourself? Use my link to open an account on Robinhood, and we’ll both get between $5 and $200 toward a stock.

I’ve done that and it’s been quite a ride.

From the beginning of this journey, my goal has always been to invest in order to build wealth for the long term. But achieving short term wins has been nice too.

The price of my investments (not included employer-backed mutual funds) went up by 9.5 percent over the past six months. The S&P 500 lost nearly 4.5 percent over the same period. Boom!

My Vanguard High Dividend Yield EFT went up more than 5.5 percent in price.
My Bitcoin went up 11.5 percent in price.
My Apple stock went up nearly 18 percent in price.
My Rocket Companies stock was the only loser, going down about 4 percent in price.

Now, if I liquidated all of my assets today, I would only make about $63. And that’s before short term capital gains taxes and penalties for withdrawing funds from a Roth IRA without a qualifying event.

But I still consider this a win for this reason: I achieved a high rate of return. As I begin investing, the important thing isn’t the U.S. dollar price of the assets in the portfolio at first, it’s the rate of return allowing me to build my portfolio at a faster rate, so I can reap the benefits of compound interest.

And my investments faced major head winds as both the U.S. stock market and Bitcoin have gone down in price over the past six months.

In 2022, the S&P 500 (which is an index of the top 500 publicly traded companies in the U.S.) went down nearly 20 percent in price. And while the S&P has gained back nearly 9.5 percent in so far this year, it has been a challenging time to invest in the stock market.

Moreover, the price of Bitcoin has also gone down over the past six months, losing more than 10 percent of its value in U.S. dollars.

I feel pretty good six months into this — hopefully the next six months don’t wipe my smile away.

In this newsletter, Evan Invests, I explore the world of investing from the perspective of the everyday investor by making small investments every month. Follow along with me as I look to grow my wealth through wise money management and making investments in cryptocurrency, index funds, stocks and more.

Subscribe now

But before continuing to analyze my first six months of investing, let’s take a quick look at how my portfolio has been performing in the past week.

My Portfolio Holdings as of 2/10/23

• Apple stock

• Rocket Companies stock

• Bitcoin

• Fidelity 500 Index Fund

• Invesco International Small-Mid Company Fund Class R6

• Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF

• Vanguard International Dividend Appreciation Index Fund Admiral Shares

• Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth Index Fund Admiral Shares

My portfolio lost value last week as the stock market continues to deal with uncertainty.

But as I look back over the past week, and continue to ponder my last six months of investing, I’m thankful for the lessons I’ve learned by dollar cost average investing.

Whether my portfolio loses value in a week, or gains 9.5 percent over six months, I continue investing because I know that over time stock-based investments (and I think in the future Bitcoin) always grow.

Even as I celebrate my wins from the past six months of investment, I don’t want to get ahead of myself, or lose focus on my ultimate goal, which is to build long term wealth.

And honestly, it’s too soon to know if my investment strategies will really turn out as I planned.

Dividend investing is a long term strategy.
Bitcoin is still a relatively new asset.
Apple continues to prove itself as a market leader in consumer electronics and its stock seems to continue to grow.
And while I’m biased because I work there, I have confidence that my Rocket Companies stock will grow as well as the housing market begins to pick back up.

Reflecting back on the past six months, even with the relatively small amount I’ve invested, I would say that the biggest thing I’m learned is that its important to pick a strategy and then stick with it even while it appears like the price of the investment isn’t going in the right direction.

I’ll report back next week.

If you enjoyed this post, hit the like button and leave a comment. Thank you!

📨 Connect with me on Twitter @EvanInvests

🚀 My favorite financial tweet from the past week.

💰 I help people finance homes for a living. If you’re looking to buy or refinance, use my link to get a sweet mortgage discount from Rocket Mortgage.

📈 Inspired to begin investing yourself? Use my link to open an account on Robinhood, and we’ll both get between $5 and $200 toward a stock.