Saturday, September 30, 2017

Passive Income Report: September 2017 (348% YoY Growth!)

It is time again for my Monthly Progress Review, and I'm excited because this is my FOURTH record month in a row...and one where I achieved a 348.6% Year-over-year growth rate from last September 2016. Things are really clicking into place for my portfolio - praise God!

In each progress review I will list a summary of all dividends I received, the rental income I received, and any purchases I made from that particular month.

This monthly report covers September 2017.  
I hope you enjoy these posts and that we can learn how to grow our passive income streams and build real long-term wealth together! 


General Thoughts on This Month: In September 2016 I received $369.  WHAT A BLOWOUT this year's September was, comparatively. This was my 4th record month in row, and it was also the first month where all 4 of my rental properties paid out with no expenses or issues.  Completely, 100%, passive income.  This was also only the second month ever where I have achieved 4 digits of passive income in a month that isn't December (my big paying month, due to mutual funds.)

Read More to see how I earned $1,655.24 this month in passive income,

Saturday, September 16, 2017

Income/Expenses: August 2017

Another month has passed and it is time again for my monthly Income/Expenses report. 

In these reports I highlight what income I made during the month, what sources all of the income came from, and where it all went, on the 'expenses'-side; showing all purchases by category...every dollar! Ideally, when it all is calculated I achieve a high savings rate, and then I post that to my Savings Rate tab for month-by-month tracking of progress.

General thoughts on this month: This was another very good month for us, and I think we are now in a good routine after our move up to NY.  We're making quality spending decisions (for the most part!), trying to maintain a high level of frugality, while still providing for our two kids and our hobbies, etc.  Unfortunately, we're still in debt by over $15,000 thanks to our last real estate purchase, so unfortunately all surplus is not "felt" yet and actually goes towards paying down debt.  Soon though!  Without further adieu, here is what happened this month:

Friday, September 8, 2017

My Year-over-Year (YoY) Growth in 2017

I thought I would do a quick post about my favorite metric (or at least what I consider to be the most important one), and that is Year-Over-Year growth, or oftentimes shortened to YoY.

I believe YoY growth is extremely critical in measuring one's progress and in making real strides towards financial independence for a few reasons. First, it helps you clearly see the direction you are moving, which is always nice and good to know (which may be obvious to us bloggers, but MANY people do not have a clear understanding of which way they are moving). But more importantly: it helps you clearly see the pace at which you are moving! 

Knowing your "pace" is extremely important in your journey toward FI, and oftentimes we overlook measuring our pace for more exciting metrics like "total dividends earned" or "number of companies that payed out" or "total passive income."  But consider the following example: if your YoY growth turns out to be only 3%, then in reality your "growth" is probably nothing more than inflation!  Who cares about the dividends or number of payers or income! In 'real' dollars, your growth is actually probably zero! Or consider a growth of 5% with all equities (or all dividend paying stocks).  Is that good?? Well, I would say no - you're taking on significantly too much risk to only achieve the 5% growth that you did.  You should be getting much more than that!

With all of that said as an introduction, I have been very thankful and excited for the growth that we've achieved this year.  In September, I anticipate we may have YoY growth for the month at approximately ~275% from last year!  We will see, but I'm excited for the final numbers to come in over the next few weeks, as I'm hoping for monstrous growth. If it is close to my estimate, we'll just assume a conservative 225% here, below is what my YoY growth for 2017 would be:   



Overall, I'm very excited to achieve that level of growth.  A little too sporadic for my particular tastes (but real estate will do that sometimes!), and February and May were clearly disappointing - thanks to some larger real estate expenses and a few portfolio moves, but this year I've written a lot about how it would be the second half of the year where things really kicked in to the next gear for my plan. And that is actually what we're seeing in the above chart.  Take a look again: from June onwards my growth has been a monstrous 113% average per month!  

With 9 months of the year completed, seeing a 41.6% per month average growth is great!  We will see how the rest of the year actually turns out - it only takes one tenant to move out to COMPLETELY reverse these numbers :), but I'm hopeful I can finish the year strong with very good numbers.

What do you think? How has your growth been? Do you calculate YoY growth as an important metric of your progress?  What level of growth do you consider acceptable?

Thanks for reading!

Passive Income Dude

Friday, September 1, 2017

Passive Income Report: August 2017 (Record x3!)

It is time again for my Monthly Progress Review, and I'm excited because this is my third record month in a row..thanks mostly to rental properties.

In each progress review I will list a summary of all dividends I received, the rental income I received, and any purchases I made from that particular month.

This monthly report covers August 2017.  
I hope you enjoy these posts and that we can learn how to grow our passive income streams and build real long-term wealth together! 




General Thoughts on This Month: August was another record month for me, and the snowball is finally rolling, albeit still not fast enough yet (unfortunately) to reach my passive income goal for the year (agh!). But hey, that is ok. I had real estate expenses of over $230, but I still was able to increase my YoY growth for this month by 28.2%. That is very encouraging!

Read More to see how I earned $843.45 this month in passive income,