...and now, back to our regularly scheduled program

Hello, I'm back! :)

It feels like I've been consumed by the tour for the past week, so I'm more than ready to return to posting in my own little corner and let the spotlight fade. Taking on a big task is an interesting case study for what happens when scarce resources are reallocated. In this case, my time and attention could only go in so many directions so I had to both find more time and allow certain things to pass by.

Money is the ultimate scarce resource. I suppose that if you are a government you can print it, and if you have a money tree in your backyard you can grow it, but most of us have only a finite amount of it at any given time, and additionally we know that we can only get more of it at a certain fixed or maximum speed.

Okay, not always a fixed speed. For instance I got a bit of a bonus yesterday... I sold my car. This is great because it means that I can cancel the insurance on it and I'm not going to be paying for two cars when I can only drive one. Also, I now have a chunk of money in the bank which will cover some house expenses that I have this month and probably my summer vacation as well.

In other news... The Dividend Project has reached a new stage!

I went out on a limb and bought some BMO today at $68.08. This equates to a 3.99% yield and I figure that's a good place to start. It was a bit scary to hit the buy button, because I haven't done it in so long. But I only bought 100 shares so that if the price drops further I can look at it as a buying opportunity instead of being all upset. This means that I am now entitled to a dividend of $272 per year or $22.67 per month (although it actually is neither of these since it is paid quarterly).

A reality check here-- the cost of the trading commission through a discount brokerage increased my actual share price to $68.34. It would have cost the same to buy 200 shares, so when possible I will have to make larger purchases. Fortunately I am not planning to sell if things go according to plan. :)

With an eye to early retirement, I am going to relate these dividends to real expenses. So first goal is to have enough dividend income to pay my property taxes and this first amount is about 10% of my property taxes. The nice thing about the stocks that we have been looking at is that they historically raise their dividends annually, so I can relate the amounts to current expenses and know that in most cases they should remain inflation-protected.