Four Things I Learned After Three Months as an Amateur Dividend Investor

This is going to make anyone with even a little bit of education in economics shiver cold shivers. I am but an artsy boy, and a poor artsy boy at that. Never have I felt more unnatural than when I say things like, “I am putting money in the stock market,” or, “My money is making money.” It feels unholy, like I’ve somehow broken a sacred covenant with Dionysus himself to live out the rest of my days in abject bacchanalian poverty. But, alas, here I am, accruing spare wealth when I can manage it by vibes alone. So here’s what I learned.

1. I really, really, really love spreadsheets.

I’m proud of these, honestly. Google Sheets has become one of my affinities since starting this. I can plug in stock price, amount of shares in a company I own, overall gain or loss including or excluding dividend income. I can make it do all that automatically. (What will technology think of next!) I can customize it with goals, I can create my own indicators as to when to buy or sell dividend-yielding stock. Like, look at this funky little chart.

Right there, you’ll find how much I’ve already invested, how much I need to invest in order to make enough money off of monthly dividend income, how much I make per month already, what percentage I am to that goal– It’s a lot of numbers. I love Google Sheets. I am a Google Freak in the Google Sheets, my dudes and dudettes.

2. This shit is really boring to my friends.

My friends are all artists. As I said, we are money-averse people. The moment I talk about the stock market, I can already feel their eyes glaze over. I don’t even know why I’m talking about the stock market. I started buying share-fragments on CashApp for fun last year, and now I’m like, “Huh, this might work.” And now I've recently transitioned to Robin Hood, which is even more complicated and terrifying. The more I apply logic to it, the more I feel my friends slipping away into Proud Grandma Who Doesn’t Know How The Internet Works But Is Proud That You Have 3,000 Followers On The Instagrams. I don’t mind it. My goal in life is to make sure all of my artist-friends have the resources available to continue to create art. If I can accumulate wealth somehow, then maybe they’ll be alright.

3. No Research, Vibes Only.

Okay, so I’m going to tell you a secret. I hate Reddit. Reddit has a Dividend Investing subreddit that I was on for maybe, like, two days, and somehow everything that everyone was doing was wrong. High-yield investors were throwing their money away on risky ventures. Low-yield investors weren’t tapping into their money’s true potential. I posted one question about dividend payment cycles and got absolutely slammed. I think that’s what’s so terrifying about investing in things sometimes. You’re being pulled in a million different directions, and there are too many options, so instead you just do nothing. I’ve done an amount of research that, for me, is decent. I’ve put resources into the stock market that I’m comfortable with losing, and I’m comfortable with the rewards as well.

4. A non-purchase treat.

Whenever I want to treat myself—and I still do—I’ll buy Yu-Gi-Oh cards. There’s something rewarding, in my silly little mammal brain, about cracking open a pack of trading cards, looking up the values, and plugging them into my sheets. I’ve recently started valuing my 20,000-card collection of Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and already it’s worth over $3,000, but that’s taken years to accumulate, and honestly, I don’t think anyone’s willing to buy 80 copies of damn Jerry Beans Man. More of my disposable income, then, is going to my investments, and honestly, it’s kind of been therapeutic. I enjoy watching the values creep up. I enjoy seeing myself inch closer and closer to my goals. Right now, I’m expecting an approximate 16% annual dividend, and that’s neat. And the thing is, with dividend investing, even if the stock market falls, dividends do not fluctuate with the price of the share. I make eight cents per AGNC share per month, whether that AGNC share is eight dollars or ten dollars. So when AGNC shares rise, I make more in market gains; if AGNC shares fall, I make more per share in dividends and can buy more dividends at a discounted rate to make sure my dividend rate goes up compared to my principal investment. Dividend-investors have a calmer demeanor than other investors for that reason. Gains are gains, losses are gains, barring any enormous crisis.

So, anyway, those are my takeaways from my months in dividend investing. Feel free to leave a tip if you want to feed my addiction. If you want to hear more about my experiences in dividend investing, leave a comment. If I’m a dumbass, leave a comment. If you’ve been secretly in love with me for years, and are just now getting the courage to confess, leave a comment. If you’re the sleeper agent who’s come to me in my dreams every night for the past twenty-three years, and are waiting for the code phrase, spank me, captain, I'm a lasagna man.