Weekly Roundup - November 28, 2015


This past week was rough for my wife and I.  Last Saturday was our son's 1st birthday and then Monday we had a meeting with the doctors to discuss the autopsy report and Luke's case.  Strangely enough it wasn't weird to be back at the hospital and was honestly kind of comforting for my wife and I because we both feel that many of the staff are now family members so it was great to see some of them while we were there.

My wife and I happen to be a bit different from most of the families with children in the NICU.  It was always so sad to see how many babies that were there that rarely or never had their parents with them.  My wife and I always planned to be there every step of the way for Luke and many of the nurses and doctors noticed.  I also have to say that we paid very close attention to rounds and got a crash course in medicine in the 8.5 months we were at the hospital.  Sadly we both know way too much about CDH, nursing, diagnosing...

Since we left the hospital in August there's been changes, primarily because of us and how difficult Luke's case was.  They've since started daily multi-disciplinary rounds to discuss all of the CDH cases.  We've also been asked to be a part of a group with doctors, nurses, management staff, and another family to help brainstorm ideas for ways to improve the care for some of the sickest babies in the NICU which should hopefully start up soon, my guess would be the first of the year.  We've also both been asked to possibly do something with family advocacy and the Chief of Neonatology told us we're definitely a resource they're going to use.  It doesn't take the pain away from losing Luke but knowing that there's changes because of him helps to ease the pain slightly.  We've had countless doctors and nurses that have told us how much the three of us have taught them and how much they learned from us.

Other than that it was steady as she goes and time to head back to work.  I was originally scheduled to go to work near College Station, about 1.5 hours from our house, but an emergency job came up and I drew the short straw and had to head to West Texas on Tuesday.  Needless to say I wasn't very happy about that.  Much further from the house and leaving a day earlier was not fun.

Blogging/Writing

This week saw much less writing get accomplished.  Although that typically happens when I'm home because I always try and soak up as much time with my wife before heading back to work.  Of course Thanksgiving was this past week which screwed things up as well.  Have no fear regular writing is back in the works now that I'm back at work.  Even though I didn't get much writing done that doesn't mean the ideas have stopped flowing.  There's so many ideas in my head for posts and way too many drafts in my queue.  I could seriously use an extra set of hands to help knock out some posts.

Self-Improvement

Well this week was horrible for workouts and I only got one bodyweight workout in.  There was just too much driving to be done that it made for essentially no workouts this week.  Although I did complete a very simple bodyweight workout and for the time being that's my plan going forward because there's no equipment/gym nearby.  My workout consisted of doing a countdown exercise (10 reps, 9 reps...1 rep) of bodyweight squats and pushups.  Between each set I rested for 10 seconds and then got back at it.  My plan as long as I'm in West Texas is to bump up the bodyweight workouts and try and complete at least something daily to get in a bit of activity and hopefully limit the damage of less exercise.

Portfolio

I also did a little bit of portfolio cleaning up and freeing up some cash by selling some shares of my employer that I receive through the employee stock purchase plan (ESPP).  It wasn't a booming return since the price of oil has been dropping but a solid return that will help build up some cash reserves.


A 10% price return that equates to a 27.5% internal rate of return sounds good to me.  The total return would actually be a bit higher since I received some dividends as well but I frankly don't want to separate them out.  Note I didn't actually purchase 0.7826 shares in April that's what was left over from when I previously sold shares from that lot.  Also these returns are after commission but before taxes.  The taxation on ESPP sales is much more confusing than for regular sales as some of the gains are counted as income and some are capital gains and the ratio changes depending on how long you held the shares.  Check out this post for more information on ESPP taxation.

On to the Roundup

In case you missed them, here's the posts from this past week.
Also, be sure to sign up to receive posts via email and to follow me on Twitter@JC_PIP so you don't miss anything.  I also started a Facebook page to give people another option for keeping up to date on posts and happenings with the blog.

Once again I'd like to say thanks to each and every one of you that read, commented, and shared posts from here this past week.  I think this dividend growth investing and financial independence community is amazing and the openness from everyone is awesome.  Thanks again!

Now on to the links!

Sector Challenges - Railroads by Roadmap2Retire

Are you patient enough to become a successful dividend investor? by Dividend Growth Investor

The other way to harvest tax losses by DivGro

Ask the Readers: Who/What do you work for? by Income Surfer

Dividend Aristocrats Part 29: Emerson Electric by Sure Dividend

Win each day by Eat the Financial Elephant

Will there ever be another Charlie Munger? by 25iq

Corporate Taxes by Roadmap2Retire

A common intermediate investor mistake by The Conservative Income Investor

Also, if you're looking for investment ideas, A Frugal Family's Journey keeps a list of stock analyses and recent buys from fellow bloggers.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Image courtesy of Gubgib on FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing my post JC. I'm glad to hear that the hospital staff are still nice to you guys, and met with you. That may help provide some closure, but I'm sure it also brought back a flood of memories/emotions. I hope next week is a great one!
    -Bryan

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bryan,

      Surprisingly it wasn't that bad to go back to the hospital and see all these people that helped care for our son. Actually we plan to meet up with some of the nurses that we got really close to and hopefully can continue to stay in touch. After being in the hospital for a few months my wife and I both started to consider them family that happened to be nurses. The only weird part about it was knowing why we were going up to the hospital and that Luke is in fact not here anymore. That's been the hardest part about all of it.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  2. Thanks for the dual mention, JC. Appreciate the support. Hope you are having a good weekend

    R2R

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. R2R,

      Not the best weekend I've ever had since I'm 1) at work & 2) the weather sucks, but I'm getting paid and get to write so it can't be that bad.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  3. Thanks for linking to my article on Emerson Electric! Have a great weekend.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ben,

      Thanks for running through all of the Dividend Aristocrats!

      Delete
  4. Thanks for sharing the round up and of course the mention of our Collection of Stock Analyses and Recent Buys.

    Enjoy the rest of your weekend my friend! AFFJ

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AFFJ,

      Always a pleasure. Hope to get some more stock analyses written so they can get added on to the list. I've had one waiting for SA to approve since Friday afternoon which has been annoying.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete

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