Weekly Roundup - December 5, 2015


This past week was pretty boring and quiet.  Work was smooth on our end but unfortunately it was quite slow during what should be one of the faster sections of the well.  I can't stand when things are slow out here because every hour making no progress out here means that's another hour I'm not at home with my wife.  But at least it pays the same whether I'm actually working or just watching tv as long as I'm out here.

There's not a whole lot to report this week because frankly very little happened.  That's good and bad though.  I'm getting frustrated with how many different expenses keep creeping up on me though.  It seems like every month there's another $1-2k expense that I had forgotten about after being out of the loop for much of this year.  I know I've said this before but I think we might finally be caught up on things.  There's still some significant savings we need to come up with regarding our property taxes but if there's no other emergency expenses that need to be covered then we should be able to hit that pretty easily.  I'm excited to finally start getting back to investing because while I love writing about it and analyzing companies I love practicing what I preach even more.

Blogging/Writing

Back to work means back to more regular writing.  It's a pain to be at work so I figure I might as well make the best of it and find ways to hustle, write, inspire, be inspired, motivate through my writing.  I have lots of ideas floating around as well as companies I want to look into further.  Specifically Kinder Morgan because the decline has been crazy to watch.  I hope to look into this one this coming week but given the complexity of the situation it might be a while.

Also November marked the 4th blogiversary for Passive Income Pursuit which is truly amazing to me.  When I started this journey I didn't really expect it to grow into much of anything but I've learned so much and being able to interact with all of you on a daily basis keeps me going.

Self-Improvement

I had very little motivation to do much of anything this week.  It's funny how I'll gladly force myself to go to the gym if there's one nearby but making myself do bodyweight workouts when I literally just have to walk a few feet from where I'm at is near impossible.  I just find myself so much more motivated to lift weights than do bodyweight exercises.  I did get 2 quick workouts in this week though.  One was doing a pyramid rep scheme where started at 10 reps, then 9 reps, then 8 reps...1 rep and did that for squats and pushups.  That day I completed 55 squats and 55 pushups.  The other workout I went back to the every minute on the minute (EMOM) rep scheme and performed 10 reps of the exercise and then rested the rest of the minute.  I did 7 rounds of that for both squats and pushups completing a 70 reps of each within 14 minutes.  Nothing spectacular but it's better than doing nothing.

Portfolio

On Thursday I took a closer look at Union Pacific to determine whether it made sense to do some selling for tax loss harvest reasons.  I wasn't completely sold on doing it mainly because we're only talking about $70 or so in tax savings but I ended up going forward with it on Friday.  If my own free cash flow was much better right now I would have just purchase more shares and averaged down my cost basis but I'm anticipating things being tight until January or February so it's all about portfolio optimization right now and I honestly don't see any catalysts to boost the share price back up to anywhere near my cost basis so I should still get a chance to lower my cost basis once the timeline for the wash sale rule passes.  So be on the lookout for a post detailing the transaction and my thought process behind it all sometime this coming week.

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!

What should I do about Kinder Morgan? by Dividend Growth Investor

Outlook for December 2015 by Roadmap2Retire

What rock climbing has taught me about financial independence by Tawcan

Investment Income Update - November 2015 by Retire Before Dad

Why it's important to keep your eyes on the prize by Financially Integrated

December 2015 Stock Considerations by DivHut

Why we're not going to complain about work anymore by Our Next Life

Dividend Aristocrats Part 30: Abbot Laboratories by Sure Dividend

House Hacking: The Absolute Key to Early FI by FI Fighter

How we reached financial independence in our 30's by Root of Good

General Mills (GIS): A High Quality Dividend Stock Changing with the Times by Simply Safe Dividends

Rupture by The Dividend Guy

Four lessons from Buffett's and Munger's Biographies by Dividends in Hand

Monthly Review: November 2015 by DivGro

Colgate-Palmolive Stock: Buy Territory for Long Term Accounts 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 the mention, JC. Hope you are having a good weekend

    R2R

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  2. Congrats again on your 4th bloggers art! I'm with you on the continued expenses including property taxes. I'd much rather be buying than just reading or writing about it. :)

    Thanks for the continued mentions JC. Until the next post, best wishes my friend. AFFJ

    ReplyDelete
  3. I truly appreciate being included in your weekly round-up JC. Thank you.

    Enjoyed reading about your lack of motivation to conduct workouts at home. I share your pain...

    ReplyDelete

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