Weekly Roundup - June 21, 2015

First off, Happy Father's Day to all of the fathers out there.  For myself, and I'm sure for the majority of you, we are pursuing financial independence not because we hate working.  Rather it's because we hate the things we miss out on because of work which in many cases is family.  Whether it's having to work late to meet a deadline or travel out of town for work, whenever you are forced to keep a job to maintain your lifestyle that comes with a sacrifice.  However, if you combine consistent saving and investing and give it enough time compound interest can do amazing things and allow you the freedom to enjoy more time with family.

This is my first father's day and coincidentally enough it's also Luke's 7 month birthday.  I can't say things have gone exactly as I expected but there's very few things that do.  It's still hard to believe that Luke is 7 months old today but it also seems like an eternity since he was born.  He had another very up and down week but he's currently back on a more stable trend which we hope will continue.


I didn't make any purchases for my portfolio this week which is actually a bit disappointing.  I have a few companies in mind that I'd like to add to but by the time I had some capital transferred around and in my brokerage accounts the stock markets rebounded back some.  I expect to make a purchase or two this week if there's a slight pull back in the share price of the companies, but Mr. Market will be the deciding factor in that.

In case you missed them, here's the posts from this past week.

• Dividend Update - May 2015
• Semi Recent Buy

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!

Live more than one lifetime by Dividend Mantra

The Kraft Heinz merger has been the focus of my attention by Joshua Kennon

Planning ahead for my kids' education by Financially Integrated

The most important metric for dividend investing by Dividend Growth Investor

Respect your money by Tawcan

Thor Industries: In it for the long haul by Retire Before Dad

Sector overview: Utilities by Roadmap2Retire

Recent buys by Dividend Hustler

Being frugal can be counterproductive by Income Surfer

Why ExxonMobil may be the best dividend investment today on Sure Dividend

Arbitrage: Brown Forman A shares and Brown Forman B shares by The Conservative Income Investor

When ordinary beats extraordinary by A Wealth of Common Sense


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.

Sometimes when I get some free time I like to check out TED talks because there's a wealth of knowledge and always very interesting topics.  Here's an interesting speech about the "Price of Happiness" and how some of the highest priced items in their categories aren't worth anywhere near the price that's charged of them.



I hope you all have a great rest of the weekend and Happy Father's Day!

Image courtesy of nongpimmy on FreeDigitalPhotos.net.