Don’t Worry About The Stock Market

The stock market has been turbulent, losing all of the 2018 gains in just a week. Instead of worrying about my stocks dropping, I decided to keep myself busy by continuing to learn all that I can about the business of building a reliable dividend portfolio.

Instead of watching the market drop, my time is best spent becoming a better investor. So, I’ve been reading and watching everything I can on dividend investing, building a diversified watch list that includes both stocks that I want to purchase over the next couple of months and stocks that I want to purchase over the next year. Also, I’m watchful throughout the day for stocks that I currently own or for stocks on my watch list to have a significant drop in price so that I don’t miss a significant buying opportunity.

Because money remains a taboo subject, I don’t have anyone that I can personally sit and discuss how my investing strategy may or may not change with all the volatility in the market. However, I do have a vast community of financial vloggers and bloggers from which I’m constantly learning and drawing motivation.

There couldn’t be a better time to share a couple of my go-to resources with you.

I’ll start with my favorite financial vlogger Ian Lopuch aka (PPCIan). It was a great day when I found Ian on Youtube because like Ian, I’m super dedicated to building a dividend portfolio that will one day be significant enough to pay all my bills. Ian has 20 years of investing experience that he brings to his vlog and he couldn’t be more passionate about the information he brings to his subscribers. He breaks down the stocks that he likes, stocks that he dislikes and even explains his personal portfolio strategy. Ian is also super responsive to critics of his wealth-building strategy, which I absolutely love.

With more than 100 vlogs, there’s not much about building a dividend portfolio that Ian doesn’t cover. Whether you have $1,000 to invest or $50,000 to invest Ian has something valuable to share with you. He gives me so much information to research and think about that I’ve made listening to him during my commute a priority.

Next up is one of my favorite dividend blogs, Dividend Diplomats. This blog is great because it’s written by two friends, Bert and Lanny, who are in a race, not against each other, but against time. They both want to retire as early as possible by replacing their current incomes with the income from their individual dividend portfolios.

These guys bring a long history of dividend income tracking to their blog, which creates a lot of motivation for the reader. Being able to see where Bert and Lanny started and where they are now, is nothing short of amazing. Bert didn’t start his dividend portfolio until 2014 (with Lanny’s encouragement). Lanny has been in the trenches building his dividend portfolio since 2011. This blog is a major adrenaline boost. It makes you want to pour everything you have into building up your dividend portfolio as quickly as possible. Packed with great content and motivating progress reports, this is the perfect blog to binge read while you wait for the market to present you with a  great opportunity.

I’m happy to report my patience and watchfulness paid off. I managed to buy a few shares of Proctor&Gamble (PG), when it dropped to $80.24. I missed it at $79.94, but it still went from $80 to $86.45 in 24 hours and that’s not bad. I only want to add to a couple of my current positions between now and the end of the year.

It looks like Bank of America (BAC) and AT&T (T) are where I’ll get the most bang for my buck. Both stocks are down significantly, trading under $30/share, which is at or below their 52-week lows.

If you don’t get serious about your money, you will never have serious money.~Grant Cardone