Weekend Reading – October 1, 2011

October is here, and fall is in the air. Here in southwestern Florida we don’t actually get the brisk fall breezes and change in colors, but we do get beautiful mid-80 degree weather, low humidity and lots of sunshine. I’m very excited and just got back from spending a few hours at the beach today. Woo-hoo!

It’s been a busy week. If you haven’t already read about it, the Dividend Growth Index project has been started by The Dividend Guy Blog and you can read all about it here. It includes a total of seven bloggers, which includes me. I’m extremely proud and excited to be part of this project. It’ll be very interesting to see how this index performs. Stay tuned! I’ll be posting a little more information about my picks this coming Monday.

In investment news, one of my holdings-Harleysville Group (HGIC) has agreed to a buy out offer from Nationwide for $60 per share. This has caused this individual holding of mine to become overweight in my portfolio and I’ll likely be taking the profit on Monday and reinvesting it. I would actually have done this yesterday, but I was too busy at work to get a moment to log in to my brokerage account. I was waiting for the dividend to be paid, which was paid on Friday. This is great news for me, as HGIC was trading for levels significantly below my cost basis. This has actually turned out to be one of my bigger winners ever.

Here are some excellent articles from fellow dividend growth investors, frugalists and personal finance bloggers from the past week.

6 Reasons Why You Should Panic and 1 Reason Why You Should Keep Investing
The Dividend Guy gives you six reasons to panic and only one reason to keep investing. The one reason to keep investing is pretty simple: over time the markets have always recovered and over a long period of time they always go up. Count me in among those that aren’t panicking as I continue to invest monthly as part of my DCA strategy.

6 Premium Dividend Payers On Sale
Dividend Monk highlights six premium dividend stocks currently selling for a discount. The tech stocks have the most compelling numbers from a valuation standpoint, and I also have MDT and DOV on my watch list. The volatile market has a lot of bargains for value investors to pick from. This article highlights a few great choices.

Revisiting why I DRIP
My Own Advisor reviews his reasons on why he participates in Dividend Reinvestment Plans. I’ve made my personal views on this known before, but I can see many benefits and drawbacks to using a DRIP to reinvest dividends.

Magic The Gathering and Lifestyle Design
Jacob wrote a very interesting article that compares a childhood card game to major life lessons. The kinds of lessons to be learned here (live below your means, less stuff = more life) could be extrapolated from a number of different sources, but this article highlights how you can learn these lessons very early in life.

Introducing the Dividend Growth Index
Dividend Ninja explained all the nuances of the new Dividend Growth Index project. Ninja is clearly very excited to be a part of this, as am I. We’ve got Ninja involved, so I think we’re going to be alright!

Who’s Making Your Lunch?
Frugal Dad posted a great article here, and he’s preaching to the choir. If you don’t like your life, it’s up to you to change it. If you get up every morning and hate yourself for going to a job you hate, it’s up to you to change it…because ultimately it’s your choice to do so. I’ve given up my car, moved to a cheaper place and given up a lot of other luxuries in life in order to give myself more freedom and flexibility.

Buying A New Vehicle
The Wealthy Canadian discusses his recent experience about looking into new vehicles. This article caught my attention because I actually work for a Volkswagen dealership, one of the car lines mentioned in the article. Personally, if I was to buy a vehicle I’d buy used and let someone else take the hit on depreciation. I actually really enjoy not owning a vehicle and experiencing all the costs associated with it right now.

How dividend stocks protect investors from inflation
DGI posted a great article on why dividend stocks are such a great hedge against inflation. The companies I invest in produce products that people need, and if inflation strikes the prices of those products will rise with the rest of the economy. This article provides real world examples of this.

7 High-Yield Dividend Achievers With 25 Years of Increases
D4L provides us a list of seven dividend achievers with at least a 5% yield and have increased their dividends for at least 25 years. Great list here, and there may be a few that you haven’t heard of yet.

Thanks for reading.

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4 Comments

  1. Big J,

    I’m going to take the profit from HGIC and combine it with fresh capital this week, as I receive my once-a-month big commission check from my work on Thursday. All said, I should have somewhere around $7k to invest this week.

    I’m looking at adding to, or initiating positions, with T, LMT, VOD, RTN, PM, ABT, PEP, PG, MDT and a couple others. The list will be narrowed down depending on how the market reacts this week and how exactly large my commission check is.

    Thanks for stopping by!

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