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Posts

The Ultimate SEO Strategy for 2017

March 20, 2017/10 Comments/in Business, SEO /by Adam

It is time to formalize Wallet Squirrel’s SEO Strategy for 2017. This strategy will help get the website to rank higher within Google and Bing. Over the next 12 months we will give you updates on how the process is going, where we rank, and where we still need improvement.

Andrew has done a nice job over the last couple of years by laying down a solid foundation for Wallet Squirrel and its SEO strategy. The most important thing he did is he built the website using a highly responsive Enfold WordPress theme. Google gives Wallet Squirrel a score of 99 out of 100 in their Website Mobility Testing Application. This is great news because if he did not do this, we would be redesigning the website to meet this criteria.

 

Google's Mobile Friendly Tester

Google’s Mobile Friendly Tester helps our SEO Strategy for 2017 by ensuring our site is mobile friendly

Another nice thing Andrew has done is create some great backlinks. About 70 percent of the links he has created are dofollow links as well. This seems like a healthy balance between the two.  A lot of the research I have found shows that you want a balance between Do Follow and nofollow links. In case you do not know what those two types of links are, I will explain.

  • Dofollow links allow juice to travel from their site to your site giving Wallet Squirrel more power/authority. Nofollow links do not allow that juice to flow from site to site. Simply put, dofollow links allow humans and the search engine to travel to Wallet Squirrel through the link but nofollow links only allow humans to do so.
  • Nofollow links do not allow that juice to flow from site to site. Simply put, dofollow links allow humans and the search engine to travel to Wallet Squirrel through the link but nofollow links only allow humans to do so.

SEO Strategy Starting Point

Before we begin to dig into what our new SEO strategy for 2017 is I must disclose some information. Since neither Andrew nor I are SEO experts we have done a lot of research to come up with a plan. We chose the tips on this page because they were consistently talked about throughout our research. Also, Google and most other major search engines have never formally disclosed what makes a website rank higher. They have hinted at things but they like to keep this information a secrete just like the Coronal’s Famous Crispy Chicken Recipe. So everything below are educated guesses as to what makes for a great SEO Strategy.

Focus on topics for Wallet Squirrel’s audience

We need to find what our audience is really looking for. The main question we need to ask ourselves is, “What do you, the audience, want to read?” If we take Wallet Squirrel down a path of topics that people do not care about then we will not receive any interest. This simple question seems like common sense but it can be an easily overlooked part of SEO.

The process is fairly easy with a little bit of practice and increase of knowledge as to where to search. During this phase of our SEO Strategy we will look for five to seven broad topics to look at. These topics will not be our keywords, those come in the next step. They will be for defining the broad ideas we write about.

Defining  Topics

To be able to define these topics we need to do a lot of research as to what current trends are. Our main goal during this research period is to find the readers pain points. What do they need to know about? For example, credit cards. Now a days pretty much everybody has one. These little pieces of plastic control the lives of many people. Within this topic there are dozens of articles that could be written about. Some include how to choose a credit card, how to properly manage payments, how to payoff that debt, tricks to earn more awards, and so on.

Flipboard Application used in our SEO Strategy for 2017

Flipboard Application helps us with our SEO Strategy for 2017 by finding trending topics

As I mentioned before, finding these pain points can be tricky. We will need to search around the web for trending topics as to what is being talked about. This can be on the news, demographic profiling tools, social media, or any other creative place you can find. I personally like searching through social media with hashtags because it is the most current. Another source I have been using is the application Flipboard. This news application allows you to customize content based on topics. It then pulls in trending articles. Looking through those articles I was able to find some patterns to help identify some broad topics.

Find Keywords Within those Topics

Now that we have found the topics that the audience is looking to read about, it is time to find keywords to create content around. This is where Google’s Keyword Planner comes into play. Here is how I gathered keywords for each topic.

To-Do:

  1. Firstly, I opened up a new blank Excel document and named it “Topic Keywords”.
  2. I created new tabs for each topic and named them accordingly.
  3. Next I went over to Google’s Keyword Planner and signed in.
  4. I opened the “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website, or category” section and typed in one of the topics to search for such as “Credit Card”.
  5. After hitting search, Keyword Planner takes you to the next page to show you all of the keywords that would fit under that “Credit Card” topic.
  6. Next, I selected the “Download” button and selected “Excel CSV” for my export.
  7. In the new Excel CSV that I downloaded, I select everything in “Keyword” and “Avg. Monthly Searches” columns.
  8. I copied and pasted those columns into my “Topic Keyword” Excel file under the “Credit Card” tab.
  9. Now that I have retrieved all of the “Credit Card” topic’s keywords, it is time to grab to the rest of the keywords for the remaining keywords. To do this, I repeated steps four through eight.
  10. After all of the topic tabs are filled out, the real fun can happen (sarcasm). It is time to clean up our new keywords list. This is done by deleting out irrelevant or poor keyword choices. Also, we will lay out a priority list by marking higher priority keywords with a certain color and lower ones with another color.
Credit Card Keyword Planner used in our SEO Strategy for 2017

Credit Card Keyword Planner used in our SEO Strategy for 2017

Loose Guidelines

Phew, now we are done with finding keywords! We do not have to follow these keyword lists to the dot. There will be other topics that we will want to be write about. This list is a nice guidance to keep us focused on those broad topics but it is there to help with content ideas. It is time to move on to the next step in our SEO Strategy for 2017, creating lots and lots of content.

Create Lots of Excellent Content

Google’s Algorithms are said to rank good solid content higher than poor content. What does this mean? You should create content that is written to the highest standards. It should be highly readable and informative for the reader. The content should also have a lot of substance. The days of writing short 300 word articles are over. Any article should be 1,000 words or greater. So grab a cup of coffee, find a comfy seat, and start writing!

Our articles should be based on a keyword that is searched for monthly. It does not need to be a ground breaking keyword with 100,000 searches per month. Anything with 100 searches a month is a great place to start.

We also need to make sure to do internal linking. Creating deep links from the home page and throughout the website allows for the Google Bots to crawl throughout the website easier. This helps provide more page authority and domain authority to more fresh content.

Build strong Headlines and Titles

During my research I found that building strong headlines and titles for each article does help it rank better. For last week’s post, Way #73 – How to Earn More Money in 2017 – The Achievement App, I used an application I found off of Money Lab. The Headliner Analyzer Tool by CoSchedule analyzes the phrasing and word structure of the soon to be headline or title.  It gives it a simple score between 1 and 100. The higher the score the better.

When reading, it sounds like a score around 75 is pretty darn awesome so I shoot to get something around there. I consider something below 60 as pretty low but what do I know. The application also gives you a breakdown of word types used within the headline. I try to get a healthy balance between all four of those types. This tool will be used when we go through to update older yet high performing posts (see last step below).

Define Our Competitors

Many of you reading this post are friends to Wallet Squirrel so do not be hurt by this headline. Defining our competitors is not us putting every financial blog in our cross hairs rather it is about something else.

When we write a brand new blog post, we choose a keyword for that post. For example, this keyword could be puppies. Who doesn’t love puppies, right? After publishing this new article about puppies over on the blogroll we will go see who the article’s competitors are. Within Google’s search bar, or any other search engine preferred, I type in the articles keyword, puppies. Every website that pulls here are our competitors for the blog post on puppies. Next, we will look into how we can copy the backlinks they are getting as well.

Puppies search in Google to find competition.

Puppies search in Google to find competition.

Spying on Our Competitors

After defining the competitors, we need to spy on our competitors to see what they are doing. Chances are they have a lot of referring links coming in from people who wrote about their article. Here might be an opportunity to see if those people will want to link to our article as well, especially if it has better content. Here is what we need to do.

  1. After defining our competitors we need to go to Backlink Watch and enter in the exact URL of your competitors page. This is the exact URL that competes with your keyword.
  2. Backlink Watch will bring up a list of referring sites pointing to the competitors page.
  3. Click on each link and contact the site owner/author about the new blog post we just posted that focuses around the keyword.
Backlink Watch used in our SEO Strategy for 2017

Backlink Watch helps us find who is linking to our competition.

Backlinks

During my research I keep reading that backlinks are not as important as they use to be for ranking. I personally do not think you should take backlinks lightly for several reasons. Firstly, as we compete against several other blogs out there, these backlinks might just be enough to take Wallet Squirrel above and beyond. Secondly, Wallet Squirrel has been around for a couple of years now so it is not exactly young in the internet world. It is very immature with its reach though. These backlinks can help with exposure to the site as we try to broaden our reach around the internet.

We will make sure to post to credible websites that provide backlinks to each new article. These can vary from other blogs, social platforms such as StumbleUpon, social media, and others. There will not be a set list of sites to post on for each post. This is because each article will be about something different and the previous backlink sites might not fit properly.

In the past, on a previous website, we have paid for backlinks. My research has consistently told me that this might be a waste of money now. We will try not do this and see where it takes us in 2017. What do you think of purchasing backlinks?

SEO Strategy Extra Points!

After completing all of the above steps we still need to use the little remaining time we have on these remaining SEO Strategies for 2017. These are more advanced SEO Strategies that will take a lot more time (not sure where that is going to come from). It will be interesting to see how we can fit these techniques within the overall strategy.

Infographics

Infographics are becoming more and more popular. Luckily we have an immensely talented guy on our team to make gorgeous infographics, Andrew. If you have not seen his What Happens To Debt When You Die – Infographic, you need to head over there next. Plus, the other dude on the team, Adam, wrote his Master’s thesis on Data Visualization. So we should have no excuse to make amazing infographics for Wallet Squirrel’s audience. They have a great potential to bring in a lot of traffic to Wallet Squirrel.

We want to make sure our infographics can be found. Submitting to infographic directories will help gain more exposure for each one. Though this will be time consuming, it should be worth it in the long run. The article by Modern Marketing Partners provides twenty sites that we can submit too.

On top of this we want to make it easier to share the infographics from Wallet Squirrel. Making information easy to share for our readers will increase the likelihood of it being spread across to broader audiences. We have not figured out this method yet but once we do, I am sure we will keep you posted. Ideas?

Guest Posting

We will continue to jump on any guest post opportunity that comes our way. Some people are nervous about doing guest posts because you are creating other content for your “Competition”. Then your “competition” gets all of the viewership and affiliate links. I will be challenging us, Team Squirrel, to not think this way. Other financial blogs are not our “competition” but rather friends and colleagues who are also reaching for financial freedom.

I personally think guest posts can work be very effective! They help spread our voice across the internet to other audiences. Essentially, I see it as putting in a little work for some easy advertisement to the blog. We will want to be somewhat picky as to who we guest post for. It will be important to make sure that the other blogging website has a similar vision and morals. It would not be good to guest post for a website that could bring negative feedback to ours.

Story Time

Trey Ratcliff, who is the photographer that inspired me to get into photography. About five to seven years ago he was doing something most other photographers were not doing on the internet. He was uploading high resolution photographs without a watermark to a downloadable site, SmugMug. He would put his content under the Creative Commons Non-Commercial license. Everyone was saying he was crazy to do this. People kept saying “bad” people could take his work and use it illegally. He thought so what, at least my photography is getting out there and viewed. Trey is now one of the world’s most popular photographers. He even has work in the Smithsonian! I believe he made it to where he is today because he let the leash loose on his photographs allowing his viewership to expand even more rapidly.

SSL Certification

Google helps promote websites with the newish SSL certificate. I have read in several locations, including Moz, that this certificate is really important now. You can tell if a website has the SSL certificate when its URL starts with https://. Wallet Squirrel does not have this certificate…yet. Adding the SSL certificate should be a fairly easy item to check off our SEO strategy for 2017 list.

The SSL Certificate is highly ranked by Google and should be apart of anyone's SEO Strategy.

The SSL Certificate should be apart of anyone’s SEO Strategy.

Slow Website Speeds

Research tells us that Google will ding websites with slow loading speeds. When running tests on the Wallet Squirrel, the site fails miserably. I will work on trying to figure out what is causing this slow down. Firstly, I will check with our web hosting provider Bluehost about what might be going on. They have amazing customer service so I am sure we can get to the bottom of the issue.

There are several other ideas that could be slowing the site down. The first item I will explorer is checking to see if the images are too large. Secondly there is a possibility that there is too much JavaScript and CSS code. This code could be imbedded into the WordPress theme that we use. I really hope Bluehost is able to help us because I do not want to go digging through code.

Let me know in the comment section if you have any other ideas?

Index the pages

We need to make sure that our pages are being indexed on Google and Bing. This can be done on Google Webmaster Tools as well as Bing’s Webmaster.  This is a very easy process of making sure Google or Bing Fetches the website or blog post.

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Another tool recommended by Neil Patel Is the Ping-o-Matic. The application will allow us to ping high authority search SEO service directories. According to Neil, this allows Google’s bots to crawl the website a lot quicker and easier.

Use Authoritative Social Platforms

There are several social platforms include websites such as Slideshare, Blogger, Quora.

Our goal will be to create a document on each site that can push more visitors to Wallet Squirrel. This is obviously easier said than done but is not out of the question. First we will want to pick one of the social platforms to create a new document such as Slideshare. We will want to pick a trending topics that relate to Wallet Squirrel. We can use GrowHackers.com or Google Trends to help us search for those trending topics.

After finding an awesome topic to create a slideshow about it will be best to do research on how to make it spectacular. Luckily, we can look at the what other slide shows are doing themselves. Looking at what those authors did we can figure out what works and what does not work to create something jaw dropping. Creating well written content within the slide share will help engage the reader but more importantly we will want to add images. Adding a visual dynamic will create a more well-rounded presentation to keep our audience roped in.

Return to Old Blog Posts

We do not want older but popular articles to go stale. Google does not like stale content and will lower its ranking within search results. So every three to six months we need to examine older articles to refresh them a bit. First it is best to find what the best performing articles from that time frame are. One example for Wallet Squirrel would be Andrew’s Review of the Robinhood App.

  1. First we went to Google Analytics
  2. Under the Behaviors Tab I found what the top posts were three to six months ago.
  3. After finding the top three or so posts are we can go ahead and update them.
Updating old but high performing posts every three to six months is an extra point item to our SEO Strategy for 2017

Updating old but high performing posts every three to six months is an extra point item to our SEO Strategy for 2017

There are several ideas as to what to update. One thought is to update the headline or title of the article. This would be another great opportunity for us to use the Headline Analyzer talked about earlier. Also, as time progresses we usually learn more about that particular subject. We can update the article to include this new information.

Measuring Progress

So I have decided on a few metrics that we will use to measure the progress of our new SEO Strategy for 2017. All numbers are current as of March 16, 2017. We will update them as the year progresses.

  • Alexa Ranking – 3,609,825
  • Sites Linking Into Wallet Squirrel (by Alexa) – 30
  • Moz Domain Authority – 18
  • Avg. Weekly Views – 329
The goal to our SEO Strategy for 2017 is to climb the ranks with Alexa

The goal to our SEO Strategy for 2017 is to climb the ranks with Alexa

SEO Strategy Resources

To put this SEO Strategy together, I looked all around the internet for consistent recommendations from credible sources. I must give credit to the sites that gave me each idea first. I wish I could name all of the sites that confirmed these ideas but that would be too long of a list!

  • Moz Post One
  • Moz Post Two
  • Neil Patel
  • Money Lab

Cheers!
-Adam

How to Earn More Money – Donating Plasma

March 6, 2017/0 Comments/in Earn Extra Money /by Adam

Introduction

Hello Everyone! Before I get to today’s main way to earn more money, donating plasma, I wanted to introduce myself. As a lot of you already know from Andrew’s introduction of me from his post last week, I am Adam. If you didn’t see his introduction, go check it out now. It is a really good read! Don’t worry, I won’t go anywhere, I’ll still be here when you get back.

You back? Great! I hope you enjoyed that article as much as I did.

Anyways, back to what is important, me! As I’ve already mentioned, I am Adam, the newest and greatest (shhh don’t tell Andrew) contributor to Wallet Squirrel. I am very excited to work alongside my best buddy Andrew making great content for you while learning in the process.

My goals here are to learn more about becoming financially free and to become that. My wife and I have a lot of debt (car, student loans, and house) that we want to break free from. I want to include you in on this journey to paying off our debt!

A little about me. I am married and we have a four month old. We also have two dogs, a lab-retriever and a husky. Living in Denver, Colorado allows our little family to do what we love the most, spend time in the mountains. We love to hike, climb 14ers (Mountains above 14,000 feet in elevation), and to camp. One of my favorite hobbies is photography so you will be seeing several posts from me about it and how you can make money with your camera. Be excited!

Earn More Money With Photography

A little self promotion of one of my photographs

 

I guess I’ll stop rambling and get to what you are really here for. Way #72 to earn more money by donating plasma.

Earn More Money – Donating Plasma

A lot of people cringe at the thought of having a 12 gauge needle moving towards their arm. I don’t blame them, it can be a very nerve racking process. Especially when a trainee would come to stick you but most weeks the experience was great. I am here to walk you through the donation process to help ease those nerves.

Back in college donating plasma was my main income for a few years. Twice a week one of my roommates and I would go to Biolife Plasma in Ames, Iowa to donate plasma. Typically we would earn between $50 to $70 a week for our plasma and time.

So let’s walk through what my typical visit was like. Keep in mind, I have experience with only one facility and your local donation center might vary.

When I initially started I had to take a physical to make sure I was fit enough to donate. This is not a traditional physical that you get at the doctor, so do not worry about that. It takes about an hour to complete between all of the paper work, the million and one questions they ask you, as well as the general physical health checkup they perform. The physical needs to be repeated every year, which was my least favorite part of the experience. Not because it was hard or anything like that, it was just really annoying.

Now that the initial physical is complete and I was approved the rest of the visits were easy. I would walk through the front door and sign in at the front desk. This included answering a bunch of questions on a computer. Some examples are. Have you visited certain countries within a particular time frame? Were you sick recently? Did you donated blood recently? Then I would go sit in the waiting room for a little bit. A nurse would call my name to check my temperature, blood pressure, and verify so other items. If I had too high of temperature or blood pressure I could not donate for the day. If I passed, the nurse would take me back to the donating beds.

Once back there and settled in, a technician would come to stick my arm so the donation process could start. This is the part most people cringe about, don’t worry about it. These technician do go through a thorough training process. Out of the three years I donated, only a few sticks did not go too well.

Earn More Money - Donating Plasma

Technically this photo is of someone donating blood but looks very similar to the plasma donation process.

After getting hooked up I was able to relax during the donation process for the next thirty to forty-five minutes. This is when I would read/study or watch a movie. I really enjoyed this part of the donation process as you were literally forced to relax. When done and unhooked, I went to check out, sign up for my next donation time, and get paid! The whole visit took about an hour and a half.

Payment wise, Ames was a smaller market so we only got $50 to $70 a week for the donations. We were limited to two donations a week each time. They would pay $30 for the first time and $40 for the second visit. Some bigger cities paid a lot better. It was rumored that people in Kansas City were getting $130 a week!

Conclusion

For anyone with a few extra hours in the week and looking for more money I highly recommend checking your local plasma donation center. This is a fairly easy way to gain some extra income. It is mostly a painless process that allows you to get other work done during the process. If I missed anything about the process or you have a story about your own experience, give a comment below.

Now that you know a little more about way #72 to earn more money, donating plasma. Head over to our comprehensive list to check out other ways you could earn more money in 2017! We will continue to try out and review these ways throughout the year for you. If we are missing something on the list and you want to see us review it shoot us an email or tweet (@WalletSquirrel)!

Cheers!
-Adam

Holy Crap! Interest Checking Accounts are a Thing

February 23, 2017/7 Comments/in Earn Extra Money, Review /by Wallet Squirrel

Until two years ago I didn’t know there were such a thing as an Interest Checking Account. I had a standard Wells Fargo checking account for 12 years making me zero money. Literally zip, so imagine my surprise when I discovered there are checking accounts out there that pay you interest like a savings account.

What is an Interest Checking Account?

It’s essentially a regular checking account You can write checks, use debit cards or withdraw from ATMs but while your money is in the account, you’re earning interest like a savings account.

Interest Checking Account

Regular Checking Account vs. Interest Checking Account

How much can you earn in an Interest Checking Account?

It isn’t much, but better than zero. I have an account with Ally Bank and my Interest Checking Account makes 0.10% interest. To give you an idea. I keep around $4,000 in my checking account at all times. $2,000 is

To give you an idea. I keep around $4,000 in my checking account at all times. $2,000 is for my emergency fund and $2,000 for my monthly expenses. So that’s $4,000 sitting in my account making about 0.38 cents per month. See my Income Reports to see how it changes per month.

It’s not much, but over the last year, my Interest Checking Account made $3.66. That’s what I entered on my taxes last week.

My Personal History

Now $3.66 is more than I made on my Wells Fargo Checking Account, EVER! Keep in mind, I don’t mean to hate on Wells Fargo, but they simply never told me an Interest Checking Account was a thing.

They were like the cool kids in every high school (likely named Chazz). You wanted to hang out with them, even though you knew you they were dicks and there were better friends out there.

At Wells Fargo, if my checking account ever made interest, they kept it. Even my Wells Fargo Saving Account at 0.01% was earning less than my current Interest Checking Account. If I kept my $4,000 in Wells Fargo Savings Account for a year, I’d be left with $0.40 at the end of the year. THAT’S THEIR SAVINGS ACCOUNT!

Do a lot of Checking Accounts earn you interest?

Actually, most checking accounts I’ve encountered do not earn you interest. This is why I was so surprised when I discovered there are a few that do.

Many of my friends have a balance similar to mine with $4,000 in their account and some of my friends have up to $60,000 sitting in their checking account because they don’t know what to do with it. If you have that much, you should move it over to a savings account at least and hire a financial manager. I get the fear of the stock market, but there is no reason to keep that much in a checking account, especially not making you interest.

Conclusion

I’ve been wanting to do this post for a while now. It’s cool to share with people, who like me, didn’t know about Interest Checking Accounts. They exist! It’s not a lot of money, but it all adds up!

PS. I’m in no way sponsored by Ally Bank here. This is just my personal experience so far and if they start to F*!k up, you’ll hear about it

I hope I taught at least one person something new!

Wallet Squirrel

Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!

www.walletsquirrel.com/

How I Just Saved Money On A Parking Ticket

August 25, 2016/4 Comments/in Credit Card /by Wallet Squirrel

Last week as I returned to my car, I noticed a small piece of paper sticking out of my car door in a familiar yellow envelope common to Denver’s Parking Division. Not sure why they no longer put them on windshields, but my reaction was the same. F**K. However, I figured out a way to save a little on my ticket!

Background

My day started out so well. I took a little time off work in the morning for a 8:30 am annual dental cleaning. I left the dentist office happy because there was NO CO-PAY. Apparently after talking to a few people, insurances usually cover this, but it was still a good feeling leaving knowing I had nothing to pay. Now I walked back to my car, where I park my car on the road every time I’ve been to this dentist. I’ve parked at this location multiple times before so I was used to nuances of the neighborhood.

However, this particular time as I returned to my car, I found a lovely parking ticket. I discovered that the 2 hour parking sign I always stop at, also noted that the last Wednesday of the month, April through November there was no parking. Just my luck, it was that day. What are the odds? I will note, that this is my 3rd parking ticket ever. So I’m usually pretty good. The cost of this mistake? I had to pay $50.

My Idea

Ok, this isn’t exactly rocket science, but in my rebellious nature I didn’t want to pay $50 for a parking ticket. While I usually can find a special promo code or coupons for most items. I have yet discovered the Denver Parking Division to hold such promotions, so I couldn’t save on their end. I had to save on mine.

I had 3 options. I could pay in person with cash. This would entail going to some sad, and depressing place and deal with someone who hates their job (yes, I base my Parking Division assumptions on movies). I could pay online with PayPal, which would be convenient or I could pay online with a credit card. HA! I used my 2% cash back credit card.

I paid $50, but got $1 (2% cash back) back. So in the end, I paid $49. Yes, it’s a small victory but it’s mine. The little guy can chalk this one up to a win!

How-to-save-money-on-a-parking-ticket

 

Have you figured out any additional ways to save money on parking tickets?

Wallet Squirrel

Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!

www.walletsquirrel.com/

What are Dividends and Dividend Investing?

May 30, 2016/8 Comments/in Dividend Investing /by Wallet Squirrel

On Friday, I sat at lunch with some friends talking about life, weekend plans, and personal finance. I’m a dork I know, but I found myself explaining what are dividends and dividend investing. So let me take a shot at this since I talk about them ALL the time.

What are Dividends?

Let’s start with what are dividends. Dividends are a portion of a company’s profits that are paid regularly to the company’s shareholders. The amount of profits shared among shareholders is a percentage of the stock price called “yield”. This is shared sometimes annually, quarterly or monthly to the shareholders depending on the company.

Dividends are popular because not only do shareholders of a company’s stock see the price move. They receive dividends just for owning the stock. It’s like a small bonus.

For example: Apple (AAPL) stock price is currently $100. Apple has an annual dividend yield of 2.27%. Shareholders will receive $2.27 throughout the year just for holding onto the stock. The neat part is shareholders will receive income from their investment without selling.

What Are Dividends Infographic

Why do stocks produce dividends?

First, not all stocks produce dividends. Stocks like Google and Amazon don’t produce dividends. Every company decides for themselves whether they want to or not.

Stocks like Google and Amazon don’t wish to produce dividends because they want to focus all extra capital for research and development. Typically younger companies like this don’t pay dividends. However if you look at Coca-Cola, while they do innovate, their extra cash is distributed as dividends because they found it’s better put towards dividends to attract more investors. Dividends are very attractive to investors because of compounding.

Let’s Talk Compounding!

The idea is that dividends will compound increasing your investment. Let’s say you invest in 50 shares of stock ABC at $100 a share with a 3% dividend yield, you’ll annually earn $150 per year in dividends. However if the stock increases its dividend 5% (not stock price value, but dividend yield), your $5,000 investment in 20 years will be worth $13,143. That’s a 162.85% gain! Here’s a great dividend reinvestment calculator.

That’s if the stock stayed the same price at $100, but typically the market increases annually at 7%. So both the stock price and dividend will increase. Cool right?

What is Dividend Investing?

Dividend Investing is the idea of investing in only stocks that produce dividends. The purpose being of living off the dividends produced by the stocks you own opposed to selling your stocks for money. It essentially creates passive income.

Let’s say you plan to live roughly till your 92, and you want to have $60,000 per year for retirement. If you retire at 65 you would need to have $1,620,000 (before taxes) saved up to spend $60k every year. Yet, by 92 you will have run out of money, totally broke, dirt poor.

However dividend investors use dividend yield to create passive income for retirement. In the same situation, a dividend investor would save a larger amount upfront, $2,000,000 in a portfolio of dividend stocks at a 3% dividend yield. That 3% yield will create $60,000 (before taxes) per year. If you never touch your principal (that $2,000,000) you’ll be able to keep receiving dividends every year, forever. So even if you live to 126 (oldest person in the world), you can rely on that $60,000 every year since people seem to keep living longer and longer. I personally plan to live to 182.

Dividend Investing is relying on a reoccurring stream of income that never runs out opposed to a stash of cash that will eventually run out. If you haven’t figured it out, I’m a dividend investor.

Fun Fact: All five of Warrant Buffett (one of the greatest investors of all time) largest stock holdings pay dividends. These are Wells Fargo, Coca-Cola, American Express, IBM and Wal-Mart. He lives on the buy and hold strategy. He invests in good companies that pay dividends and sits back and receives a paycheck. Sounds like a dividend investor to me.

I’m constantly wordsmithing on how to explain what are dividends and dividend investing to people. How’d I do? Any tips on explaining it better?

Wallet Squirrel

Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!

www.walletsquirrel.com/

My Emergency Fund, Why I Keep $2,000 For Emergencies

May 16, 2016/15 Comments/in Business, Dividend Investing /by Wallet Squirrel

Early last year, following the January 17th post season game of Broncos vs Steelers, I recall reading Dave Ramsey’s “Total Money Makeover”. Yes, I was desperate.

In one of the first chapters, he goes on and on (he literally can not shut up about it) about having an Emergency Fund. Yes, others have mentioned it, but for me, Dave Ramsey was the first to tell me I need to get on this. He was my first.

Here’s the thing with Emergency Funds. Everyone seems to have a different way they set these up. Davvy-Poo Ramsey talks about putting money in an envelope under your bed for safe keeping to pull out in dire emergencies. His believes that if people have an emergency fund easily accessible, they will spend it. Apparently he believes his audience has no self-control, maybe they don’t, but I went a different direction. I will always love Davvy-Poo for starting on my Emergency Fund journey, but here’s where I deviate.

My Emergency Fund

I have everything electronic. I keep $2,000 in my checking account as my “Emergency Fund” where it’s readily available. I don’t have cash hidden under my bed like National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers (how the mighty National Geographic has fallen).

My active checking account fluctuates between $2,000 and $4,000 each month to cover my monthly expenses. At the end of the month, anything over $4,000 goes toward my savings account and that into my dividend portfolio. Here’s what I mean (infographic below):

Emergency Fund Infographic-01

Why I set up my Emergency Fund like this?

I have a method to my madness. Two reasons why I set up my Emergency Fund like this:

  1. My checking account is immediately accessible for debit withdraw if needed. PLUS my checking account gains interest (albeit a small amount) my emergency fund is large enough I make about $0.20 each month. I couldn’t do that hiding cash under my bed like a caveman.
  2. The biggest reason is fees. Overdraft fees are ridiculous and I’ve done that a couple times when I kept extra cash in savings. Since my Emergency Fund is the base of my checking account, if I go over my monthly expenses, it just pulls cash from my Emergency Fund which is the foundation for my checking account. No OVERDRAFT FEES EVER.

How much do you need in an Emergency Fund?

This is where a lot of people differ on how much they should have saved in an emergency fund. For me, I try to have $2,000 in my immediate emergency fund. This will cover about 1 month’s expenses for me. My emergency fund essentially gives me enough time to access my stock portfolio if needed.

In case of a legit emergency, here’s what I’d actually do

I’ve never had a legit emergency that’s affected my income (I’m young and invincible), but if I ever did, I have a plan.

  1. I would have immediate access to $2,000 in my checking account
  2. I would have immediate access to my emergency fund of $2,000 also in my checking account
  3. I would have semi-immediate access to my saving account which usually holds $4,000. It’s a semi-secondary emergency fund. This also makes interest =)
  4. That would give me time if needed to sell stocks and access my portfolio currently made up of $7,000.

With my average monthly expense of 2,000. My emergency process would cover me for 7.5 months if I could make no money what so ever. That’s pretty cool! Yes, I have friends and family that would be willing to help, but it’s important to me that I could support myself.

How do you set up your emergency fund?

Wallet Squirrel

Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!

www.walletsquirrel.com/

How to make money buying for other people

March 28, 2016/4 Comments/in Business, Earn Extra Money /by Wallet Squirrel

Here is a quick story of how I made $21.80 by offering to pick up the bill for other people. This might work for you too.

Last Thanksgiving before leaving Denver and heading home to visit my parents in Iowa. My father asked me to pick up a few things that he couldn’t find back in Iowa. With Denver being a major metropolitan area, he figured it would be here, as well as some other errands since I would be out.

Here is where the story gets interesting, at Target while picking up these specialty things. Target had their Black Friday deal of buying $20 worth of merchandise, you get a $5 gift card for your next purchase. I didn’t know about this or think about it till checking out when the cashier handed me four $5 gift cards. Not sure why she didn’t put them all on one card, but that’s beside the point. It was pretty cool. Later I added another $10 at IKEA and spent a total of $90. Keep in mind, the entire time, I used my 2% cash back credit card so my credit card company paid me $1.80 just for using my card.

Now when I got home, I handed my dad the receipts for $90 and he promptly paid $90. So I was returned my original $90 and had an additional $21.80 from Target’s promotion and my cashback card.

My Dilemma:
Give Money Back – Do I give my father back $21.80 since that was earned through his errands?
Keep the Money – I paid $90 for the items he asked for and he paid me $90 back. That should be the end of story, right?

meadow-680607_1280

Photo Credit: Pixabay

What happened – I offered the gift cards to my father since they were received when I was acting on his behalf picking up his errands. He informed me to keep them to help pay for the gas running around town. While the $20 was more than what gas was, he’s just that kind of generous guy. As for the 2% cash back from the credit card. I have no reservations about keeping that. It was my choice to pay with a credit card rather than cash.

Lesson Learned:
After that, I learned the benefits of picking up the check. Now when eating out with friends and the waiter won’t split the check, I now always offer to pick it up and people can pay me via Cash, Pay Pal or Venmo. Usually, it’s easier for the waiter and my friends thank me for taking care of it. I have yet had anyone not pay me back and I love the cash back. A meal with 12 people that cost $250 generates $5 from my 2% cash back credit card. That’s $5 I didn’t have before.

Pretty cool right?

Wallet Squirrel

Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!

www.walletsquirrel.com/

Getting Caught up with Recent Buys

March 17, 2016/6 Comments/in Dividend Investing /by Wallet Squirrel

Not going to lie to you, keeping up with a blog is tough. I’ve been slacking on you WalletSquirrel. WalletSquirrel grew from such a GREAT concept of earning money beyond the day job and I need to play catch up a bit with my most recent stocks before I continue my financial freedom journey.

Recent Buys

I went against my better judgement bought an oil stock. I bought The Chevron Company (CVX) for 4 shares at $90.01 with the intention of hoping on the bounce back of the oil market. I liked it’s $11.33B they had in total cash and they were using this downtown as an opportunity to restructure and run a leaner company. Plus I loved the dividend yield of 4.54%. However once I bought it, it was still fluctuating all over the place and when I asked myself, has the oil industry really bottomed out? And since I know NOTHING about the oil industry, I pulled out of Chevron at $90.94 for a $11.72 profit.

I do this whole, impulse buy and sell right away, A LOT. I need to work on impulse control, but while I keep making money it’ll be hard to stop. Especially with a $0 trade fee each time with Robinhood.

Lemur Pounce

Otherwise I’ve really been averaging down with a lot of stocks. This last month I’ve averaged down with Clorox (CLX), Wells Fargo (WFC), Coca-Cola Corporation (KO) and Verizon (VZ). Now what was the main reason I averaged down? Frankly I had the capital and didn’t have time to do the in depth research. I’m not sure if this was a bad plan, but I knew I liked these companies and while their stocks were down, I pounced. Like a lemur.

Wallet Squirrel

Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!

www.walletsquirrel.com/

SE vs SEP, My First Journey to into Oil & Gas Stocks

February 21, 2016/0 Comments/in Dividend Investing /by Wallet Squirrel

So everyone and their sister is talking about oil prices. Are they bottomed out or what not and to get in now while the prices are low. So how do I get into this action?

While I’m still learning about the oil players, one company has come to my attention thanks to Motley Fool, and that’s Spectra Energy (SE). I know what you’re saying, why are you even listening to the Motley Fool and frankly it’s just because I like the amount of info they give me. So when they bring up Spectra Energy, I find it as a good starting point into oil and gas.

Spectra Energy (SE)
In essence, Spectra Energy is a natural gas company that operates in the transmission, storage, distribution, gathering and processing of natural gas. They were originally apart of Duke Energy but spun off for tax reasons. I think of Spectra Energy as a natural gas company that operates along the east coast providing natural gas from the Gulf of Mexico and Texas all the way up the east coast through New York and Maine.

Now slightly confusing

Spectra Energy Partners (SEP)
Spectra Energy is the natural gas company and they created yet another spin off of their actual pipeline transmission known as Spectra Energy Partners which is a MLP (Master Limited Partnership). They essentially own the pipelines and charge companies to use their pipeline highway, essentially like a toll. Think of Kinder Morgan except without the major losses right now, SEP is fairing slightly better than KMI right now.

spectra-energy-partners-lp_large

SOURCE: SPECTRA ENERGY PARTNERS, LP.

Now I did buy 3 shares of SE at $27.44 because who wouldn’t want to get into the high exciting world of natural gas. The idea is I will build my position in SE while the stock is down and keep building until oil prices bounce back to normal (whatever that is). Plus at a dividend yield of 5.70% I will enjoy my lovely dividend. Life is good.

Wallet Squirrel

Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!

www.walletsquirrel.com/

HCP down 32% two days after buy, WTF

February 15, 2016/11 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Wallet Squirrel

I knew this would happen, but why so soon? Last Monday I finally decided to pull the trigger on HCP, a healthcare REIT that has a diversity of healthcare facilities in its portfolio including senior housing, life science facilities, medical office buildings, hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. Essentially HCP owns the facilities and healthcare organizations pay rent to use these facilities. I love REITs so it seemed like a great investment.

Here’s why I bought 12 shares of HCP at $34.52:

  1. I think healthcare facilities are a solid investment with the amount of growing population we have and soon to be baby boomers.
  2. With the upcoming baby boomers, HCP has a large variety of senior living facilities that will benefit from this population
  3. HCP also has a good diversity of other healthcare facilities including Medical Office Buildings which will benefit from the rise of outpatient services.
  4. HCP has a 31 year consectutive record of raising dividneds, it’s the only REIT in the S&P 500 Dividend Arstocrats Index

In 2 days it declined to $26.13 because:

  1. HCP’s largest tenant HCR ManorCare (23% of portfolio) are under federal investigation over fraud for their Medicare Reimbursements (that’s never good)
  2. HCP with their largest tentant under investigation, their 2016 outlook looks poor.
  3. The post-acute/skilled nursing industry is getting heavily saturated right now with everyone prepping for the baby boomers.

What I am now going to do:

I could sell these shares and use the remaining cash to get a bigger stake into something else, but I don’t know what would spike to make up for the money I lost. I follow Warren Buffet’s ideology when it’s better not to lose any money than gain some. Yet in this case, I lost money. Luckily some of my other positions have been doing well so I’m not in a negative portfolio, yay!

I know better than to make an emotional decision with stocks so I am going to continue to hold onto HCP. I do think that they are making strides to remove themselves from HCR ManorCare by selling non-strategic HCR facilities to reduce their portfolio . I also think with a portfolio of over 1,100 healthcare facilities they have room to come back. I’m currently $99 in the hole with this stock after only owning it for 2 days. Damn. There really is nothing I can do about that timing except do more even more research into each stock I purchase. So for now, I wait.

Wallet Squirrel

Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!

www.walletsquirrel.com/
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