001 - How We Got Into Investing And How You Can Avoid Our Mistakes

As an intro we discuss how certain aspects of our lives led to us wanting to live a nomadic life and how we could fund such a dream. 

From Tim's hypothermia scare forcing us to sleep in the trunk of the car, burnout from being overworked, and quitting jobs to strike out on adventures...

We tried flipping real estate, investing in start ups, chasing growth stocks, and starting businesses, but had mishaps with each endeavor.

Eventually, Tim stumbled onto the hidden potential of passive income from dividend stocks in the book Beyond Wealth. 

The second half of the episode gives an overview of the general principles of our income investing strategy that we'll be covering in future episodes.

Detailed Episode Summary 

Companion blog post with a more detailed summary on our website. 

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Ticker metrics change as markets and companies change, so always do your own research. The content in this podcast is based on personal experience and is for educational purposes, not financial advice. See full disclaimer here.

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Chapters

• 0:43 Tim's Background
• 7:48 Falling Into A Creek
• 11:10 Near Freezing In The Smokies
• 13:36 More Travel By Sleeping In The Car
• 15:26 Figuring Out How To Fund Vanlife
• 19:46 Tim Stumbles On Dividend Investing
• 20:52 Investing In A Start Up Company
• 22:22 Flipping Real Estate
• 23:51 Tim's Rental Property
• 26:22 Downsizing & Massive Life Changes
• 26:50 Our Plan - Why Income Investing Was Perfect
• 28:36 Income Investing Is About Income & Shares
• 29:51 Buying Dividend Stocks While Undervalued
• 31:30 Carmela's Background & Wanting To Retire Early
• 34:04 Self Retirement, Social Security & Taxes
• 36:30 Intentional Living
• 37:00 Trends & News For Investment Opportunities
• 41:27 Screening Investments & Risk
• 48:16 Avoid Spammy Fear Based Financial Advice

Transcript

This is the first episode of the roaming returns Podcast with your hosts Tim and Carmela. This episode is more of a background about how we got into this whole thing. And it's a pretty good overview of a lot of the concepts of income investing. 

So tune in, you'll hear some really cool stories. You'll hear some funny stories. You'll learn some things. So without further ado, here we go. 

But yeah, we figure we should probably give you guys a background introduction to us, your lovable leaders.

Oh my god. All right. So we thought our backstory would be pretty pertinent to the whole reason that we got into this income investing situation. So

I shall go first. I was born many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many moons ago. I'll be 47 next week, I was born in Denver, Colorado, but we lived like 60 miles north of Denver, Colorado, in the middle of Podunk. I grew up on a farm a 35 acre farm, dirt poor and by myself pieces parents. Little tiny school I was always smart but didn't like I mean there really only three people total in this in the school. So it didn't matter if I was smart because you couldn't go in couldn't Excel anywhere. So I was stuck.

I used to get beat up and stuff because you were just redneck hick.

Really redneck like I wore Walmart shoes, Walmart pants. You know how brutal children can be like they all have fancy clothes because like there was like two different divisions of houses like either grew up in the farm area where you were dirt poor or they had like nice developments. So there was like no, like no middle class, either upper class or poverty. And the risk is picked on workers and they pick on me the most because they didn't really get a rise out of me I just whatever and then we get in like we get in a fight every now and then what they're asked but

just staying silent, like my dad tries to egg him all the time and he just like sits there and walks away. I think makes things worse but makes

things better. Your dad doesn't like when people walk away. But yeah, I grew up there. That's taken away from my parents when I was 11 out of foster care because I went to school with like, bruises and welds and everything I couldn't stand so they just take me away and put me in foster care, foster care. was an adventure there. I learned to shoplift quite extensively and the foster dad but he like, like molested foster kids. Thankfully not me. I must have been hideous. So but like he didn't molest me most of the other foster kids and I was there for over a year. And then my grandparents that like live with them some of my grandparents right before I'm a teenager and I was really bad teenager like I always thought I knew what was best knew it was right and that but it hasn't been there. Quite religious and I was not drink and smoke and have girlfriends.

I mean, we're business owners all the time. So my

grandpa worked for the state of Colorado for like 30 Some years my grandma had her own business. And she she opened up her own business and it was a family run business. It was a loan document for preparation for like, closing houses, all those documents they bring to sign my grandma printed those out and created the documents.

Did you do any of that stuff?

I did that first summer I was like This is stupid.

So there was no peeking of interest for like anything to do with finances.

No, I never had an interest in finance. And so I got through college college, which is a big party. I went to Penn State Mont Alto, if you're not from Pennsylvania, the Mont Alto would be like it's a branch campus of Penn State. And it's a little tiny campus in southern Pennsylvania that was in the middle of nowhere there was like 500 kids that went there and he just had dorms and all that worry, like all you really had to do was go to class or party that was the only

college is the fact that he'd go out and you buy pizzas and you take them to these like frat parties and he'd sell it per slice. So

we had our own we had our own house. So we have the parties at our house. We go get kegs charge $5 for a cup, literally just give me give us $5 And give them a solo cup. So cups like coin says and then we have pizza and wings and fries and everything that we get from the local place and then when we take it we would divvy that up $5 For a slice because we know when people are drunk they really want to eat so we made pretty good money off that the parties like a part of the party is really lucrative. So like I've always had like an innate ability to make money. I just never really cared. So I was born I grew up with nothing, so I don't need anything. It's

interesting. A lot of people feel the opposite where like they've got a course they want so much money that they're just like clean out their eyes. That's one of the things that I've admired most about you like you're very not materialistic in any way shape or form. I imagine you got a lot of that love for nature from being in Colorado

when I was young. I would just go for walks like I would go for day long hikes with the dogs and we go hiking around so I was always out in nature can be lived like literally when I say in the middle nowhere I mean middle of nowhere, like there was the nearest town was like 15 miles away. My road there was like three houses on my road. It was like a probably a two and a half, three mile long road there was three houses on it. So they didn't know where I'd be able to I could just wander around that was back before like they had like these crazy recapping on people's property stuff. Like I could just wander across people skills. One of my best memories is doing that. Then I would tie the dogs up and I hop on like, if you don't know what they are you don't I'm talking about know what they are. You know what I'm talking about the huge sprinklers of water the grass fields and the crops and everything. I climb up on that and I just get blasted and make you fly like 20 feet to the air and you just hit on the ground, but it was so much fun. Your chest was all welted and so I've always been crazy, but I've always been outside and I don't need a lot to be outside. That's like the perk of being outside is it doesn't require a lot

and when I met him, I was like frickin Guardian worker bee basically for my dad his business and I guess hanging out with him more like I had always kind of wanted to travel but I just never had time to read money. Never put it in. I don't know like always in the background.

I forgot to mention that my grandparents they'd always packed us into a van and we just traveled the country like all the time

so jealous. He's been everywhere except me at this point. Every, every state

every summer we would travel somewhere. And then you guys had an issue because there was three of us three of the three of their grand kids graduated in 1994 from high school, they've charted a bus and we drove from Colorado down to Texas and then from Texas over to Florida. We went to Disney World. It was awful, but it was a fun trip. And I kind of like this is the part like this is me in a nutshell. Like we're on the bus and the family sitting there all having their conversation. And I sat in the front and clocked at the bus driver got to know like what he wanted to do like we're like I want to say passions but like what he did outside of driving the bus and like how he afford that so like I mean I guess the seeds are always there. Like always there's better ways to do things. You don't have to work all the time you can actually have fun. And that's like one of the things I always tell her is everything should be fun. Like I've said that like I always have to have fun.

And I like to have fun but I do have this like crazy serious moment of like mode that I get stuck in and like when I'm around my dad and stuff. It's like he's a workaholic. So like I inadvertently become a workaholic and it's just like time has went by so like when we started hanging out and everything. Then we started actually going on these hiking trips and I think our biggest first one was probably the most epic they ever were Tim like Creek in the middle of winter. It was like single digits out in Ohio. It was like literally 20 feet. hocking Hills

State Park in Ohio. We were hiking around down a trail. I wasn't paying attention she's just like she's like this hopper and things and it doesn't matter and I'm not I literally

had like two tears and because it was icy like a normal person or somebody with half a brain would freaking grab onto something when they bought down to like the next year. I like turn around and all I see is his feet like flew out past my eyes and I was like what just happened? I like turn and he's just like Superman like diving out over the edge and I'm just like, oh, this could go bad. I looked down and I'm like, God that water is not just sit there watch.

It was very cold. I'm not sure if you've been in ice water in a degree temperatures but it's it's wakes you up. Oh my gosh. You want to do the Polar Plunge just so

he pops up and I just start busting out at that point because he wasn't dead. So I was just the guard. I'm not gonna worry, whatever. And then he's like, You shouldn't die out here, you know? And then he's like, how do I get up like, I don't know you got yourself down there figure it out because I was like, I'm not gonna get wet. We were probably like three and a half miles from

the car at that point. We were always removing malware. It was one hour and

it was so cold so I ended up stripping him out of his shoes wearing jeans like this is how I experienced we were using jeans and we'll think like cotton shirt. It was starting to freeze I had to strip them down. I gave him my outer like sweat pant layer and I like jammed them into my little sweatshirt. He was like crammed and he looked like our pain would like water.

Understand that? That's like I'm 510 She's five foot and I probably weighed 245 at that time and she weighed like 130 The discrepancy and like, in her outfit. It had to be hilarious. It was hilarious. Incredible. Hold

on. I was just like, I was like, Alright, I was like, Do you want to call the authorities and he's like, No, and I was like, oh, like a man after my own heart right? Like figure it out yourself. I feel so we wandered back we got to the main road instead of taking the trail hoping like a car would roll by. Fortunately for us like a ranger came to Austin his frickin like frozen out dilapidated Jean like in the back and like we just like sat on his lap to ride back with his brain through Reiner was really really cool. We ended up going back to the lodge and they pulled him a heater out. We were the only people there it was it was a really fun first experience, but I remember he took like two hours once we got to my brother's fiance's parents house took him like two hours sitting in a tub to fall out completely from Grandma's but the best part about the whole thing was after we ate we ended up going back on the hike because we were like we're already here. We might as well just finish

it asked me she's like do you want to keep hiking or do you want to leave I said we'll finish

the high. Thank God I was like this person is just as friggin crazy as I am. So that was I guess the first step where we found love there. There were a lot of patterns where Tim almost died in cold like multiples because that was the clenching point where we kind of realized that the problem we're frequently was the thing because like we had a couple experiences when I actually started taking time off work to go on extended

trip to the smoky Smoky Mountains when we returned because we're sleeping in the

Cavalier but in January, we were gonna leave that camp but that didn't work. We got wet because there was like a wash

out. We went right on the trail like we were following the trail and we sort of went we went right and it was like a freaking

Creek. Even close I think we bought a clothesline and we're

walking up quote unquote trail that's like eight inches of water. So by the time we got back to the actual trail we might my feet were so my legs were so we

got to literally claiming stone, which is the highest point east of the Mississippi and Tim takes his shoes and socks off. We're so cold and it's like sunset at that point. And I didn't realize was happening. I was like oh my god, I was like we really should go back and me doing what I do. Like I don't like of course stuff on people always seem like I do but I was just like, I feel like we should probably go back to the car and again at that point we were already hiked like what was it it was 13 miles for the day and we were seven miles back from the road but even further from a car. I was like Do we just try to figure this out and I like past experience. Like I feel like this is a bad idea to Tim probably like an hour he waited completely until after sunset during

the summer. Like ah, that's a theme I like to suffer.

I like to have gone through inclusions about death apparently. Like absolutely hilarious. What do you like? Yeah, we do believe I'm like, alright, I'll pack everything up. So it's dark at that point. I remember we passed that random guy that was running and six inches of snow. Seven miles from a road. I was like what is happening right now? I felt like that random guy is out and it's like running around the castle.

Jogging was interesting.

Don't worry, I'm not a bear. I'm like, Dude, you're a cop. I was freaking out. Like our screw bears. I don't care about bears. He passed us again on the way down and he's just like, You're crazy, bro. And he's like, I could say the same for you. What do you do like roll pass? That's what like oh my god. Like hitchhike thank God these people like brought up and then we ended up getting a hotel which we weren't going to do because we're trying to like save money but I knew he was going to need time to fall out and having a shower in the warm bed. We did that for two nights. Anyway

that's inside a sidebar. Anytime you get a hotel, make sure they have a continental breakfast and then you get up as soon as they start serving the breakfast. You can fit three breakfasts in and you get your money's worth of food. So that's just a money saving that

happened that we still had I think three nights there and we decided to the camping probably wasn't the best idea and it was where's their snowstorm it was supposed to come in so what we did was we ended up sleeping in the back of this corridor cabling. I think it was like in 2003 I want to say and we just bought it the back seats down put our blow pads on and we ended up sleeping on the truck not and we just parked it like the trailheads and had no issues the rest of the trip. And I remember after that we were both like, I feel like we need to

get to the band part for me, but I figured that we could possibly do that more often. Yeah, it was. Ironically it was pretty comfortable. And it was dirt cheap, like newspaper guys at that point. You have to pay for a hotel room. So

that was why I think it was 2019 We went on like a lot of friggin trips.

Then I started watching them like videos about travel and then I stumbled across a fan Life video and I was like, wait a minute, and then I was like I must have one of those and then that's where the band came from. And that's how that all started. That all started from a hike through a creek up in the middle of the Smokies.

Okay, so how do we fund this? Because that was like once you go on a couple of these trips, it is so hard to come back. I noticed that

throughout my life like every time I went with my grandparents every summer we'd go we'd go somewhere whether it'd be like Utah or California or Pennsylvania or Illinois, wherever wherever we went. The trip back was the worst part like the trip it was exciting like oh, we're going here and super cool. We're gonna see this but like the actual like a week back or the two days driving back it was like it actually is a clinical thing where you get depressed Yeah, this absolute

depression every time we

go back to

real life. That was so hard and it's like when we would go on our trips and we were packing a lot in and we were like maximizing every spare moment of time and we were like cramming stuff into Friday trips or a week long trip and then it's like we were exhausted we got back which I could recoup at my office job on it. Not a huge deal. But just the whole not wanting to go back. It was worse than that feeling on Sunday night like that you have at the end of the week is way worse. And obviously you got a taste of like what life could be. And then at one point, I think we had a discussion where I was like I want this to be a lot more frequently in my life like something needs to change and then that was I think the moment I turned my finances over to him because I was always a saver but I just didn't know what to do with my extra money. We I tried all these like business endeavors and have something else but it was everything. Almost everything I lost interest in because it just didn't feel right. I knew it was gonna be a lot more obligation. I was looking for freedom. I wasn't looking for obligation. That was my biggest problem.

What is board like today? She's like, here's my here's money in the stock market. I was like alright then. So I did I did what everyone else does. I like okay, the stock market so I'd find like the hot stock quote unquote hot stocks are like the growth stocks and I was like okay, we'll do this but like I really really suck at entry prices. So I would get into say we got into like Lululemon at like $80 and immediately shoot down to like 72 I was like, Well, that didn't work out but that's not growth. That's the opposite of growth. So I had to find a different way like after losing so many trades that way I had to find a different way to make money and because at this point I was like I was branching off in my mind into like, money should make money. It shouldn't be I shouldn't have to rely on like the emotions of traders or I shouldn't have to rely on

Well, I think the big key there was when I think you you lost the $20,000 but then you realize that there was something to the whole, like, what are those quarterly reports that come out? earnings report, I was good to go but it pegging what they were going to be but then he got so frustrated because the emotional response of people was like,

I don't know if you've ever actually looked at earnings reports. I mean, generally like simplify it. They'll say here's how much we made this past quarter. And here's how much per share we made this past quarter. And here's like here's our debt and here like so they would go through all these financial all this financial data, it would all be stellar and for whatever reason the stock will go down, like whether it be like supply constraints or whether it

be it's almost like the people that are watching it with just pick up on one negative aspect and like freak out panic get emotional and stupid and then just like dump their stuff which will drive the price down because

theory if you could actually this is one I don't do this, but I've done it previously and you you can make a lot of money off of just earnings report. Literally just do the research of a company they say like a like today for example ABR. It's one of the ones that's in in our portfolio. It reported his earnings and its earnings were a blowout like it's it's it's EPS was like 20% higher than they expected. Its revenue was like 50% higher than expected. And I knew that was going to happen so like four days ago. I sold profits. I didn't sell like one holding completed but I sold profit we were up like 4001 of our holy so I sold $4,000 And I put that $4,000 into ABR going into the mix. I knew their earnings were going to be a blowout, but you literally could make a shit ton of money off of just doing earnings reports but like because they go up anywhere between like five and 15% whenever they have a blow

for whatever reason you stopped doing that, like he made it that 20,000 back or maybe it was 3000 Back then the pattern shifted. And it was like there was no rhyme or reason to it. So it's like the climates of different types of the market really, really dictate. Like when strategies work when they don't work. And I remember him being so frustrated about it and like I'm a very logical person chooses like I that's one of the whole reasons like I just don't get it. For me it just doesn't make any goddamn sense. So I actually fell into what they call this momentum trading where you wait until the earnings report comes out or some news gets dropped and then you see what the phone or people are going to do and then ride the wave and take like a snap like a snippet of it. And you do that over and over and over and let it compound so there's really no guesswork, and it doesn't even matter if you're in penny stocks at that point. It just doesn't matter. You're just riding emotions. That's a whole different strategy in itself. And I did that for a while but it is so freakin time consuming to learn all the stupid indicators and all this other stuff I'm like again I needed freedom. It took me about a month to realize that this is just not my thing. I need something more passive I need to be able to be do what I want to do in a day and not be like chained to the computer. And for me like I just have to have like especially if you want to be traveling and hiking, exploring stuff around book

I forget what it was called.

Oh that went by that guy.

It was Mark Lichtenstein or something like you where he's been anyway, he's, he's an analyst for Oxford. Oxford invest in corporations. He wrote a book about dividends and I wasn't too interested in dividends at the point but I was like interested in his passive income part. I was like, well that makes see that makes sense to me passive income like you because everybody has to work. You're trying to make people work less by what we're doing but everybody has to work and basically take what you earn while you're working and you make it make money for you. And I was like passive income sounds like shit so we'd like you started looking at like,

two because I was like, Oh my God, I've been looking at this wrong starting these businesses and having to put the time in to make the money. I was like, it's the passive piece that I'm looking for building something that creates and continues to generate that passive income. So we both came to the same conclusion from different things and that's where he flopped

over home with the dividends and she went to like real estate and Amazon. No,

that was actually when I started looking into building blogs and websites and all this stuff and I kind of thought on that bandwagon forever but so

like our best our best illustration of what not to do passive income wise was we invested in a toy company called dynasty toys I mean if you want to get a good laugh, research that nonsense, basically the owner like he sent out like ads and like he'd say, well here's how you can make 20% on your money and we're like okay, cool. So we sent we gave him how much we give away initially

only gave him like, I think it was 10,000 and then it went up. Like I think it was a 40% return. And I was like shit. I was like I can actually leverage my retirement, take a loan out on my retirement, you know, a whole bunch more money. What ended up happening was we lost like $60,000

What he did was it was what was it like seeing where he would take the money from the new the new people coming in pay that returns to the old people that already had money in there and then he just like left come down with this you guys and he's like left they had actually arrested him and everything but but this is

what we I don't think we're gonna get a setback on that and yes, we can actually claim that as a loss but I think you can only quit I think our account only claim like $3,000 loss a year so it's gonna be like the next 40 years or whatever for us.

To recap, we failed. We fail at momentum stocks. We failed that earning report stocks we fail that like passive income when we're companies always business startups. Try different, like, probably three or four different businesses. We still have land in our one business like flipping real estate. Flipping real estate, we didn't fail. They failed us. Actually. That's one I think we actually would have done pretty well.

We have all the numbers right? We just couldn't get people to actually say yes to the buyer until it was like

go to like a dilapidated house or property. Like I had like a I didn't have like a checklist per se like, like the most ridiculously I actually had an idea of what was valuing things. So I was like, Well, this is bad. This is bad. This is bad. So we're gonna give you 25,000 And when you're looking for 75,000 And they're like they laugh at me. But then I went back a couple years later just to see like

every single one that we put an offer in on and they sorted out our offer price and they were laughed at

us at our offer price or lower and they laughed at us and we did so like

the one people got mad at us because they wanted us to waive like at the main watermain inspection or something. And I was like I'm not doing that I'm not buying this house and waiting that like that could be broken inside the wall like they ended up blackballing us. So what are the other real estate like people so like they wouldn't even do showings with us anymore because they were mad and then like, they probably pulled the thing out and it was like ridiculous, but we were right in the end. Do another investor for the price we

were asking was 10,000

it was just ridiculous.

A couple things that they wanted us to weigh. But

we also saw in kind of that we didn't do that because in the market change and it was like the whole class would have eaten you alive. Had we done any of that and I didn't have the time and again time was a huge issue for me at that point. So I was working two full time jobs and I had a house at this time. And then Tim's will have situation completely left the bad taste in our mouth ownership prior

to meeting her that I then rented out whenever we started dating. And that situation was a messed up situation like it was a friend that I knew from years before her and her boyfriend. Were looking for a place to rent. I was like that's cool. Go ahead. Here's what I'll make a lease. So I drew a lease up and they got on the site and she moved out like not even within a month. I'm gay. She became a lesbian. She's married now with kids and everything with her like crazy

because it was like she was pins friend she left her boyfriend behind with Tim said she was a lesbian and just like moved out and we were just like, What the

hell just happened? I was like, okay, so I had to talk to the guy he's like yeah, I'll take care of this. I'll do that. I'll do that. So fast forward about 14 months around there. And like I get a call letter from the township and like, there's like vines growing up the side of the house. Like there's weeds that are grown up over the fence and I was like, oh, so I went over there to check it out. And I was like, dude, like you said you were taking care of this and this looks like you haven't been taken care of. So ultimately he found the girl he just moved out. He's like he just gave me like I don't know, like always notices like I'm moving out at the end of

the craziest part of the whole thing was he goes alright, I moved everything out. It's ready for somebody new to move in. We went over there. He was still full of shit like importers, though, like we had to get. It was probably the two dumpsters worth of just crowded run. Everywhere. I

had to rent a truck and trailer for $500 and they just loaded the truck and trailer like to the brim with stuff and there was still stuff to get rid of. That was I was like, Well, I don't want to do this anymore.

But it was crazy. And we actually ended up making this was the craziest story ever. We lucked out super hard. We cleaned everything but a lot of the appliances and stuff during I think it was like a Thanksgiving Black Friday morning or Friday as always, we did a bunch of stuff and then we finally were like yeah we don't feel like doing any more of this work. Let's see what we can get as is. And Tim ended up selling it for 1000 more the markets went crazy and 35 year old furnace which was the funniest part in my opinion

broke some some water pipes were messed up the siding was bad the winner Hey, if

you could make money off it power to him. They

did they sold it for I want to say 175 and they bought it for 89 We got outbreak even to put 30,000 into it and

then at the point where like he's like you know what he's like, I have stuff sitting over here that I didn't even remember that I had he was like screw it. He's like throw it out. I don't give a shit. So he like completely cut loose everything. He's like, I feel so free. He's like, I don't own anything separate a chair, my cat,

my phone TV shares.

So he's over here and he's like, I have no bills. He's like I have no desire to work and I'm like, Dude, seriously, we're trying to like switch our life over it was like You're killing me small. Like he totally senior is like, Oh man, it was ridiculous. And then we had like a three year plan basically for me leaving my job because once he got in, it was working working extremely well. And we went up

almost 30,000 dividends within like two years. But

it wasn't even just that like the fact that we were laying the passive income thing and it wasn't we realized it's not the principle. It's the payout per month. So you're essentially creating a retirement account type setup. Now, before like without having the penalty of having to wait and take your disbursements. I was like oh my god, how did we miss this? This is seriously like the answer to everything. And then I was like, okay, so I don't want to keep working at this job. I was at the government for 11 and a half years and like my soul was literally on the tether up just like imploding completely and I was like, Alright, I was like so if we're, if we can make save $1,500 Like I think we can downsize our life to that point. Because if we got rid of our mortgage, if we got rid of like a lot of expenses and actually had just lived in the van, we could literally live off 1000 bucks a month or less. So there'd be that extra $500 buffer money in case you ever work repairs on a van or like whatever and I was like, oh my god, this is reality and like the next couple years is amazing. And it's been a heck of a ride. So I couldn't get the condom sold before we actually went on our four or five month first van full blown trip, which was the beginning of 2022 because I just had to burn out so freakin bad. It just wasn't happening. But that was the best decision I ever made because now it's like 100% No, that's exactly what we want to do. And then the market crashed. And I was like, Well it's kind of dumb to tap our investments will compounding is gonna give us so many more shares and way more payouts. So we're working for my dad this year tying up all of our skill sets and we are launching beginning of December

what she means by that is like when the market went down and say it dropped by like 30% to 50% So our principal value or principal went from went down 28% Something like that 32% I forget the exact number went down like the lowest point, but at the same time, it was we were getting our dividends every month so like we were buying more shares, shares at like a way reduced price and we're getting a lot more shares when

the prices go down that 30% You're not getting say 10 shares with 1000 bucks, you're getting like 15 to 20 shares that same $1,000 So it's if you're compounding. The cool thing with the dividends and interest in pays per share is

ultimately the market going down is actually a good thing. worker goes back up so when the market goes back up, we're going to have probably 15 to 20% more shares and we would have had the market stay sideways

and then our valuation will be back if not up. So the

dividend actually when they started increasing the dividends, that's nice because you're actually getting more for more as opposed to more for less. So

we decided not to tap that we have an alternate strategy right now and we agree again, not everybody has to do this. But this is something we decided to face our goals and principles

strategy people like they say this was income investing, technically is because everything that I buy into it paid me money, but there's also value investing. There's also a contrarian investing, like we're all finding something that should be saved $15 that sell for eight, so I'm going to get it for $8 Knowing that it's going to go up almost 100%. In the meantime, I'm still collecting dividends. So I'm actually really

valuating fundamental analysis.

So that's what I look for I look for like for example, if you want like right now be a good time if you have a company really like that has bonds to get a bond because they're all like 20% off and bonds are pretty safe as long as you get like quality companies like you can get like for example, I got a GE GM bonds for like $88 instead of 100. So I'm getting a small percent discount, it's going to go up to 12% before maturity, so you're no you're gonna get a price appreciation of 12% but in the meantime, you're collecting 6.5% per year on that

so you actually get to two

so that's, that's what I do with bonds. And the same thing with closing funds. Like that's like I mentioned before, it's like the only thing that actually has, here's how much it should cost. Are you willing to overpay for it pay at a premium or do you want to pay at a discount? There's some of that like, there's some like for example, there's some closing funds that are generally like 20% over and the premium and they're selling for like 2% For years, you know, they're gonna go up hypothetically 18%. Yeah.

And you have to look at the history you have to look at the specific assets. And that's where the future episodes are really going to take deep in. We're going to show you how to go through the whole process of learning everything you need to know and introduce yourself. Well it's not really about me or I guess it is you doing all the dirty work. So my back story doesn't matter as much I probably have most people's like conventional failure parents six have all these expectations for you and like you end up wanting to please them or get involved somewhere way shape or form with being obedient or whatever. But it's like I felt like part of my soul was dying inside like I remember fighting with my dad. I think it was like you're in 10th grade or my senior year like fighting hardcore. I almost dropped out because I like I just school was not I just it didn't resonate with me like and I was getting straight like I was 30 I want to say 31 out of 700 or 651 kids in my class like I was no slouch when it comes to the education aspect. Yeah, I'm good at like taking stuff in and regurgitating but I don't give a shit about most of the stuff we learn about and then I don't know how the how I made it through a friggin bachelor's and then a friggin Master's. And then I was working at the government not even using my degree at all. I mean, if it matters to you, like I have a degree in engineering and then like management classes, but I mean, I've always had a mind for just taking things apart. But I didn't even realize I loved learning until after college when I got a desk job and I needed to do something to like keep me from pulling my hair out in my head and I just started reading and I have consumed so much crazy information. So now I'm just like this weird broad like knowledge cesspool of just all sorts of stuff. So it's like I actually just started putting all the blog posts together for Tim's income investing stuff and it's like I have absorbed so much stuff, even just reading he's been trying to teach instead of strategy forever, but I guess I learned in a different manner.

So I want her to be able to be

of that when we add our three year plan. My cousin like up and kick the bucket at 29 and I was like holy shit, right there is like a prime example of why you need to live now instead of waiting until retirement because you seriously never know when something's gonna happen. And Tim had a similar experience with his one of his favorite

uncle. He was driving from Colorado to Mexico. He wrecked his car

and he passed away. He's only like 5067 I had another girlfriend who had cancer. She went into remission and then it came back and she was only 40 She was your age right 42 at the time. Yes, she was only like 40 to 43 and I was like full of crap and then one of our other friends died at like 40 Something I was like Jesus like again tomorrow was ever promised so I'm sorry but I just cannot wait for retirement to actually live the life that I want.

I was just reading an article about requirement like a lot of like most people are relying on their 401 K and the Social Security to pay like they're gonna get two payments out to actually afford their retirement but Social Security is they get an in depth analytical approach to social security. And right now like there are it's going down by like two to 3% per year because there's so many baby boomers retiring that there's more people actually collecting there are working to pay into it. So the only way they're going to rectify that is to either start paying less in the social security payment pass or raise the tax on the few of us that actually do work. So my mom's

taking on it right now and like payment is not even consistent. A month like it's insane. How much is fluctuating and

Social Security is not something that I would actually rely on rely on, like

extended people rely on Yeah, and that's another thing like our whole message, but this is basically like empowering yourself to take control of your own financial destiny basically, so that you can be financially free our cat is drinking out of my cup of water it

doesn't even fit the cup. Wow.

Oh my god, she's gonna spell this watch. Basically like to empower yourself because like you can create your own retirement plan without having the penalties. And the drawbacks like yes, you have to pay taxes but I was even just looking over that whole thing. I always thought capital gains taxes were so much more than like you're paying normally but if you're not so like capital gains works like you hold the asset for less than a year. You're gonna get the capital gains tax which if you're in the right tax bracket, which most people are going to be in the one where it matches your normal tax bracket. But if you do the holding for like longer than a year, you're actually at a discounted rate. Most you're going to fall in the 15% category for 2023. But still like if you actually make less than the $44,625 a year to be taxed on you actually get to $0 reporting those stocks for over a year. So like there's ways you can work within like the brackets and taxes and we actually I'm not even kidding the tax bracket between the $44,000 a year and then like the 80 or the 125 or whatever it is $1,000 a year. Is 12% to 22%. It's like a 10% jump. I'm sorry, but I would rather be in the poor bracket living a lower or more intentionally simple, simpler lifestyle and just paying less taxes because then you have to work less choosy as we're choosing more intentional or women

or time here is what we're making of it. Like we don't want to you don't want to spend like 30% of your week so that you can pay taxes

or even just pay for stuff you really don't care about, like the big example was with that house. Like 10s Like, I didn't remember I had all this stuff. It's like why do I have it? Why do I care? Why is it Why am I paying to store this? And that's like one of the biggest like metrics is like what is it 90% of people have a storage unit that they're paying for. Yeah, so you even know within that

there's actually a good record of students not to get into what's actually so storage. Yeah,

I mean, you can capitalize it on that perspective, but I'm talking about from, that's one

of the aspects I hope to actually convey later in a couple of other episodes is keep up with the news and current events because you can actually get an idea of which niches to invest in. Like right now, because the baby boomers are all it's going to be like financial retirement services. It's going to be like planning hospice care is going to be like a senior living medical and senior livings and then there's going to be like funeral like there's a couple of funeral stocks out there that pay dividends. So just keep up with the news. That way you can

miss you guys are interested in real estate perspective. If you think about it, like they're gonna have to sell off their homes because the boomers are actually the people who own the most homes in America are gonna have to sell off their homes to be able to pay for those hospice and medical and, and there's other expenses. So I wouldn't be surprised that there's going to be a flood of houses in the market which is going to drive real estate prices down significantly. So if you're looking to buy or invest in real estate, I think waiting probably would be the smarter choice in that area.

Right now,

just theories that everybody has their theories

actually backed up by like there's 100,000 Baby Boomers every month retiring so like that's that's common. It's just a matter of what my

comments or theories because I don't pay attention all that stuff because I'm doing other stuff and usually ridiculously on point. And he's like, I swear to God, he's like a frickin Oracle when it comes to like these pattern recognition because that's like one of his biggest strengths is like pattern recognition. And people

sort of grow stocks,

for growth stocks,

anything that requires a motion basically because I'm very logic driven. And like when I use when I see a pattern, it's logically set a certain way and then like when there's human emotion involved, it's not so people

actually logically like hey, stuff doesn't work. But when it's like logic based and like eventually the trends do correct to like the logical pattern and that's when he's always proven right? It's annoying when it comes to the

one of the things I learned from my years was what Carmela touched on earlier, which was take control of your own retirement your own financial goals. I learned at a young age that no one is going to care about me as much as I care about myself. Yeah.

And if you rely on other people, you kind of create helplessness, powerlessness, and that's where that anxiety comes from. That everybody suffers when it comes to finances.

Animals do but no person is going to care about myself as much as I care about

myself. A huge huge animal lovers here huge like one of the

one of the things that we plan on doing once this actually gets up and it gets popular is actually donate ASPCA is I don't know

we're definitely going to do a lot of conservation stuff and Animal Protection airy stuff so like this is we're gonna have a lot of philanthropic one of

my favorite play like I don't forget the website. I think it's, I want to say for a ride and I'm not sure like it's a van life one, but they have affiliate programs and what they do is that they take I think, I think it's four or 5% it might be 1%. I forget the exact figure but they take that much and they actually donate to plant trees and everything. So it's like a sweet rock on people. Yeah, that's

something we're like. Tim is coaching like you can get on coaching. We're thinking about doing like a $10 a month subscription thing where we're actually going to put his entire portfolio up and do live trading for people who either don't have the time or trust our judgments enough to just literally like follow it. Like I would honestly pay for that because like I'm so interested in like so many things that are in the financial realm. To me kind of feels like an anchor. He likes it or like I guess can justify falling it way more than I can I have like I pursue other things like like I'm really into health and I'm really into like human behavior. So I put a lot more focus into that. And so I would gladly pay somebody $10 a month that I trust to help me manage my portfolio and keep that rolling. So we're thinking about doing that if you guys actually are interested in that, please let us know. But as of right now, it's just like you're getting on a coaching call with him where he'll sit down and he'll ask you questions about like, if you want to be in specific sectors or if you're into like certain types of stocks.

What you're like what your ideal payout ranges as well like that's like I personally don't invest in anything under 10% yield. And like that I know seems ludicrous and crazy. Most people are like oh my gosh, the market only pays like one to 2% but I like if it's yield is a little like lower than 10% I just like that I put it on a wait a waitlist or I put it on a list of to look at later when the prices drop everything. So when it actually meets my 10% yield threshold, then I'll like reconsider it. I know that there's a lot of high yield investment publications out there, but to them high yield is like four or 5% and that's like, that's like half of what I'm looking for. So those

numbers might make you think that we get into super risky stuff and like risk is such an interesting. It's such an interesting concept. I feel like the definition really is bastardized, like people assume risk means you're gonna lose it all. I mean, as a potential for some of the like really stupid high yield bonds that are like super sketchy and like the super sketchy companies that buy like, the bad debt and all that other stuff, but

super sketchy.

He takes so much time to find these things like the scanners and screeners that they have are useless or useless. So he has to like manually dig for these gems.

To give you a good starting point you can go into like Yahoo or you can go into Schwab or you go into wherever, anyplace as a screener you can put in like high yield like some of them say high yields more than 6% Some will say they let you pick like you can go in and say I want 10% or higher. But even then it brings up a list of like hundreds of stocks that you actually then have to navigate through and look at like the fundamentals you have to look at it

like this is something that he does on a compulsive basis that he wakes up like when I wake up in the morning he's like sitting there with a computer, like literally looking at stuff so I'm like power to grow like That's awesome. So he's got like, I finally got to making spreadsheets and like keeping data I'm probably gonna try to come up with some kind of system where it's easier for him to like write

down for example, I have like probably 150 ish companies on my waitlist that don't quite meet the 10% yield or they've actually pay more than 10% but their financial models are kind of messed up so I'm I just have them on a on a waitlist and between the three portfolios that I like oversee like ours are moms and one of our friends like probably another 20 or 30 stocks there. So I think point I have like 200 between stocks prefer bonds and CDs and I'm looking at my bond Okay, CDs, obviously you can't do 10% But the average CD right now is like I think they said it's 5% and you can totally fine five and a half to 6% you just have to know where to look.

But when you do your allocation strategy and your risk tolerance assessment like when you do the diversification that you can get some of the bonds to have that this fixed assets the lower percent, which then will allow you to go into some of the ones that have 22% yields and they will average out to that like your end of the day for Portfolio Yield comes between like 10 to 15% for the year. So like he's got really good setup I've been looking over and one of my favorite things

to do is like I will say on my waitlist, there's 150 companies, I actually will look for preferred shares within those 150 companies and a lot of time with preferred shares will pay like it'll pay a few percentage points less than the yield and they're

not easy to find unless you specifically are looking for them. I remember you said a friend of ours like you have to actually dig. That's something we'll teach you guys later.

Like say for example, you can go like a lot of people like the EPA, it's like a oil transportation company. Well, you can get a BP at like 7% or you can actually mitigate the risk by getting a BP preferred at 6.5% preferred meaning that whenever they pay out dividends per every quarter for shares get first crack.

Yeah, they're almost like first shares are a weird hybrid where it's almost like a bond like a fixed income.

How we mitigate risk and some of these higher yielding things I'll actually just find a preferred share that is undervalued that pays a little bit less than the original exit and the company's stock. Yeah,

so he hedges there. He does that with that. And then because he's up to date on the news, and he is watching stuff on a regular basis and he has his strategies in place and you can mitigate a lot of risks by just like simple little tactics like risk in my opinion, really is the need to have to pull money out at an inopportune time when it's being volatile and depreciate like you're in a bear market. Like it's an emergency and this is why you should always have an emergency fund set up outside before you actually get into an investment account because you do not want to be liquidating your assets. They're down

anywhere between 10 and 20% of our money is in high interest savings, whether that'd be worthy, whether that'd be steel or wherever it's going to be. Again,

we'll get into that in another episode, but like there's definitely places you can put your money that you're making way more than a conventional savings account.

So what I would do if I was starting out was okay if it's the only if it's only like $1,000 I would literally take $250 that I put it into worthy and I take the other 750 and I put it into a brokerage and then when I make our contributions I would do the same thing would be a 75 25% split so that you're always going to have 25% set aside for in case of emergency break glass and then 75% can keep growing, we'll probably ultimately going to end up doing like the first three years that we're on the road, we'll probably not even going to touch our Schwab account for the dividends and let it keep compounding and we're going to use money that we put in other stuff.

And what's really cool is they have this thing called World packing where you can actually like stay for free places if you work like 15 hours a week and they give you food like a lot of them will pay for your meals and stuff. Like you can totally travel significantly less money than you think if you just gotta like work a little bit outside the box and a lot of them will let you actually borrow their vehicles. If you're going to go work somewhere in Texas or something and you're working on a farm like they'll actually let you borrow their vehicles to go go hike or go in town or go whatever I'd like your time off. Because these people were so appreciative of having like people come

through some very controversial risk. Word I do believe is made up by people that get your money. That's

very possible. I think it's the scare people because like the general population like 90, what is it 99% of people who invest lose money, but it's because they get scared out by the valuation swings, which is the whole thing that causes the risk.

First part of that is you're gonna lose money yourself.

Exactly. Gotta look the long term if you literally pull out and you look at like the SNPs whatever the heck the ticker is for the index. If you zoom out 10 year view 20 or 30 year view, it's trending up so even if you have those dip pullbacks or if you wait long enough,

you're actually going to be in a profit I read enough stuff you're actually understand that the market always goes up. So honestly, all

you have to do is extend your time horizon. I almost think we should say risk is a mess. And I believe it's

made up by the quote unquote experts to actually sell their crap. It's very possible like do you want to be in this risky oil stock? That's

another thing that we hate. Tim refuses to be like the spammy people that are out there where it's like, wait 45 minutes for this video to play and then forces you to pay to get on a subscription list to just get a ticker name. It's so It's so frustrating. It wasn't

a podcast, you read the emails that I send out a week and if you read the subscription that we will have starting in August, there always going to be tickers like I'm never going to withhold tickers

and we're not going to spam you with emails every freaking day. We want to do one a week so

to me, the most annoying thing is okay, this person for example, there's this 30% yielding VDC let's check this out. Maybe this one I don't know about. I'm going to read about it. It's like a 25 minute video. That lot of times they won't even let you just read the transcript I read faster than I listen. And I tried to like read it and like go through like all this crap 25 minutes with the stuff and they're like, well, I'll give you the ticker for free. If you just sign up to this or you pay me

they say they're making all this money but why are you charging all this money?

This money free if you require me to pay something?

I hate house but it's so freakin spammy in the in the financial world. It's disgusting. It's absolutely disgusting.

When I say free I literally will I actually do give out tickers all the time. I don't want to keep the information on myself. I don't want to make Okay, I'll be honest, I want to make too much off of it. I need to make some extra cover like the electric and

getting paid for the app or if you guys are gonna be doing a one on one. Like if you don't want to pay us for any coaching you literally can learn pretty much everything from I was just

like if you read if you get the if you sign up for the emails within probably like two to three years you'll know the entire portfolio. And you actually

I don't know genius for people who want an entire like,

because I don't go into say I have 150 shares ABR but you'll know that I'm in a VR and you won't know like my allocation percentage. Keeping that like survival like

but our actual ideal goal would be to teach you the process not just tell you the tickers. teach you the process

so that you can then teach other people

Yeah, we want we literally want to pay forward like we want to want as

many people as possible to be independent, financially independent to do whatever they're passionate about their passions, do what they want,

because the world will seriously be a better place if everybody's doing the things that they love.

And I'd like ideally I'd like most people to actually not use a former like what our what, what our fan life friends do is she's actually using our 401k which is it is what it is but it'll be nice in like 20 years. Yeah, but like I

accounts are nice if you really really, if you really know you're going to wait until retirement age to tap it that what you can do is actually open a retirement account and have a brokerage account is not in retirement setup. So you have one of both. I'm

fairly sure about I'm fairly certain about this, but I'm not 100% Certain like I'll top my head but like if you have a brokerage account, and you're invested in companion stocks, I don't think you're taxed until you actually pull the money out. So you literally could have just a regular brokerage account and Schwab and just grow it for like 10 years not paying anything on it. So you pull out but then you pull out.

I think you you actually pay when you get the dividends and you pay when you sell unless you fall into one of those tax exemption. No, I don't think we've been getting taxed because of the confusion that we had. I think that's what's been happening over. I know that tax deferred accounts you don't

want to look into that tax thing like if anybody knows I'd be awesome if someone's a tax person.

We are not a CPA we actually hire that I was one of the few things we actually pay because the rules are constantly changing and mine I do not have time for the bandwidth

to like deal with time it goes over I get like this

isn't one of the areas that like and I am like a dilettante. I literally will research everything do everything for myself. One of the areas I

want to do bro is how much do I owe or how much am I getting back and how much do I have to pay you? That's all I wanted. Thing

is like where you pay a CPA. That's a write off for next year. So I don't see any like and again if he loves it if he lives and breathes that like I'm happy to get him out of it because I do not like even looking at tech stuff. My brother Yeah, right jump into a cold icy stream for sure for sure.

So that's one thing that ideally once this actually takes off, I actually am going to do like a range like biking trips like with with subscribers Yeah

guys, we're gonna be traveling like certain areas that we can sit down and if we're if we're actually in your area and you want to put us up in your yard or something, we will give you free financial advice like

to actually do like, like they have like family gatherings. I'd actually like to do a van life stock gathering. That'd be really cool. Everyone bring your laptop to the middle F and nowhere and we'll just talk stop. That's my goal is to just wanted to be more of a community than the normal subscriptions. Almost.

I do like the community aspect. We want to empower people. We're just trying to get like 200 300 500,000

email followers, so they actually have their metrics I can do this only takes off. I only get like 30 people I'm fine with that. Yeah, it's cool to be 30 quality people 30 people that will be set for life

while we do one.

That's about all I got for the knife. Go watch. What's your season three so

Alright guys, we're gonna keep this short. Hopefully that was a good intro for you. future episodes are going to be more digging into dirty like nitty gritty things. If you guys have specific questions, comments, whatever, check out the blog. Check out the Facebook page. Leave comments. We're here for you. email, send email for sure. Income investing for nomads it's on Facebook, you just type it in.com You'll find it somewhere. Because she's always

returning emails. They don't like texts or phone calls. Emails work best, but like I'll do a

live q&a session.

I plan on doing that for the end of 2023 I'm actually going to have a live session