2019 Year-End Summary
2019 was another great year for investments and life in general. It was the first full calendar year of marriage, the first full year of being a partner at my work, and the year my wife and I bought land and a house.
The bull market continued through the end of 2019, finalizing the decade of 2010 as one of the best performing bull markets of all time. Fortunately, I am very invested in stocks so percentage-wise my portfolio did great.
While I would actually love to see a temporary downturn in order to buy more stocks at a discount, I’ll take what I can get. The bull market has been great in that I was able to diversify from stocks and use some of that money to fund private investments and to pay down the mortgage on the house/land.
Dividend income for 2019: $11,833.66 (up from $10,408.28 in 2018)
Option income for 2019: $0.00 (the year was so busy that I did not have time to manage any option strategies)
As you can see, the annual dividend growth has slowed. More than anything, this has been due to the fact that I have now roughly $386,000 in non-dividend paying assets, which doesn’t even include the downpayment on the house. Just investing that amount alone in dividend paying stocks averaging 3% would add over $11,500 a year in dividends, bringing me up over $20,000/year. Why wouldn’t I do this? I believe the potential for these private investments should in the long run easily outperform the relatively small gains from investing solely in dividend paying stocks.
I’ll be writing up a post soon on the outlook for 2020. We have been saving up a bunch for the mortgage as well as private investments, but will soon again begin allocating each month to stock investments. Some will be dividend-focused, while others will not.
2020 will hopefully be another year full of other fun “firsts.”
What are the private investments ????
Hi AG,
I’ve invested in farm land, security tokens, an organic alcohol business, private placements, and some IPOs. More details are here: https://www.twoinvesting.com/2019/12/alternative-investments-diversification-part-3/
Nicely Done!
Thanks, John!
Hi 2I, indeed 2019 has been a good year for growth stocks. 2020 will be a slowdown due to the corona virus escaped a laboratory.
How do you choose and select those private investments and where do you find them? Is it just all dividend stocks which are not paying dividends?
Hi Financial Independence,
You could not have been more right about 2020 being a slowdown!! Wow, have things changed in the last couple weeks.
As far as private investments, I get some ideas from my business partners. Other ideas come from newsletters…I subscribe to Frank Curzio’s and Marin Katusa’s newsletters. They occasionally provide either private placement or IPO ideas. I do also invest in non-dividend paying stocks, but I do not consider those “private investments.” They are more along the lines of growth investments.
I am quite glad that I did diversify since had I been all in on equities, my portfolio would have been down a lot. While it is still down from a month ago, the private investments have buffered a lot of what could have happened.
Scott