Weekly Roundup - May 7, 2016

The last two weeks have been pretty hectic around our household, although it's nothing we can't deal with.  But my wife and I did get to take a trip to Nashville last weekend to visit one of her college friends and as our last real trip before the baby comes in July.

Nashville was awesome and we always have a great time when we go.  Although I have to say this one wasn't quite as much fun only because my wife couldn't run in the Rock 'N Roll Half Marathon there and I had the genius idea that I'd just do it.  Afterall, we'd already paid for it.  Several years back my wife and I had done some half marathons together, but then I got my job in the oil field that required me to be gone and made planning much more difficult so I'd just kind of given it up.

Considering that the only training I had for the run consisted of "well my wife can't do it so I'll do it" I'm pretty happy with the 2 hr 50 min finish time.  It's far from impressive but I do have to say it felt good despite the fact that my body was in no way prepared for it.  And it didn't help that I started developing blisters around mile 3 because it had rained before the start and my shoes/socks got soaked.  But the run was good and Nashville is a pretty city although there's way too many hills for this Texas boy.

With being home as well as being away with travel I didn't get a whole lot of writing done although I'm still trying to figure out a way to be more productive while at home.  I'm thinking that I need to just block off a certain time block each day to write or work on other blogging tasks, but in no way can that time be used for anything else.

There's also some new developments that have changed things pretty dramatically and have altered our plans.  I plan to get a couple posts written about it over the next week and where we go from here.
Now that I'm home again I can get back to sharing some of the definitions from The Devil's Financial Dictionary by Jason Zweig (affiliate link).  For those that don't know the book is a nice little time killer that gives brutally honest and often humorous definitions of finance and investing terminology.

Today's word/definition is:

"Income Statement, n. - The part of a company's financial statements in which it may exaggerate its income and understate its expenses."

This definition is very appropriate for a post I previously wrote and for two more that are in the works and upcoming.  The financial statements are all we have to go off of unless you happen to work in finance/accounting department for a company but it's important to see just how the companies you own are growing.

On to the Roundup

In case you missed them, here's the posts from Passive-Income-Pursuit the last two weeks.

• 5 Ways Companies Can Grow
• Dividend Growth Investing at Work - 3 Pay Raises? Yes Please!
• Dividend Growth Investing at Work - A Double Dose of Increases
• Dividend Growth Investing at Work - 54 and Counting
• Dividend Update - April 2016

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!

13 Dividend Aristocrats For Further Research by Dividend Growth Investor

The Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting by Income Surfer

"Won't You Be Bored?" And Other Questions You Hear On The Road To Early Retirement by Our Next Life

Passive Income Update - April 2016 by Roadmap2Retire

Early Retirement Is Exactly Like Being An Entrepreneur: Awesome! by Financial Samurai

Building Failure Into Your Process by A Wealth of Common Sense

Are There Better Strategies Than Dollar Cost Averaging? on Sure Dividend

Are Future Investment Returns For Millenials In Jeopardy? by Freedom35

Stanley, Black & Decker, Inc. Stock Analysis (SWK) by Dividend Diplomats

Dividend Income Update April 2016 by DivHut

If My 2 1/2 Year Old Daughter Could Buy Stocks by Retire Before Dad

Deferred Dividends For Younger Investors? by Financially Integrated

CBS Stock: The Peak Earnings Trap by The Conservative Income Investor

A Dozen Times Mark Twain and Warren Buffett Said Similar Things by 25iq

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.