054 - How Our Conservative Portfolio Is Beating The 2024 Market

Most conservative portfolios generate between 5 and 6% yield, but ours is beating the current market by a full percent! That's huge for a safety-focused portfolio. 

We always say that the right strategy can give you both earnings and safety. And today, we’re going to show you what that looks like with our current retirement portfolio holdings. 

Cutting stocks that will impact your performance is key. We’ve sold a few and picked up others since our last portfolio update in Episode 25. The other vital aspect is buying at the right price.

You can check out more show notes and the full portfolio here. 

Stocks we've sold since our last update. 

• CWH
• TSLY
• Half of MMM
• SLVO
• USOI
• Half of AFG

Drop us your comments or questions here. (no email required)  

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**DISCLAIMER**
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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Transcript

Welcome to roaming returns, a podcast about generating a passive income through investing, so that you don't have to wait to retirement to live your passions. Today, we're going to cover the updated version of the retirement portfolio. The right strategy can give you both earnings and safety.
While most conservative approaches generate between 5% and 6% yield, ours is beating the current market. Curious about which stocks we've sold and picked up since our last update? Check it out. Welcome back, guys, to episode 54.
54? We were just talking about how we can't believe we're at that number already. I'm an introvert. This is more than I've talked to, like, family in 40 years.
You guys should feel special. He doesn't even talk to me this much. I hope you're excited to see the portfolio updates for today.
Yeah, we're going to go over. Today is going to be the Vanguard. That's a retirement portfolio.
The next week will be the Schwab, which is our living in a van down by the river portfolio. Yes, sir. I was thinking about doing them both in the same episode, but then would have been super long, and I didn't feel like sitting here for that long, so we'll just split it up into two.
We have a bit of a heat wave, so sweaty Betty over here. A bit of a heat wave is an understatement. I forgot to close the window, so we apologize in advance if there's motor vehicles running by in the background, but it's hot in here.
Okay, so I had to have her refresh me. We went over this on Christmas as a Christmas present to y'all. We did the portfolios last, and since then, there have been a few sellings in the Vanguard portfolio.
Some adjustments, yes. The first thing that we sold was all of our CWH, our Camping World stock. I didn't like the 2% yield for the retirement portfolio, plus there was too much uncertainty, so I sold all that.
We still hold that in the Schwab. Well, let's do a quick refresher. The Vanguard retirement portfolio is my mom's retirement portfolio.
She's 66 years old, so she's got some years on me and us. Hers is more conservative, which is why Camping World was a cut. There is a lot of conservativeness to it, but there's also some income potential, and we'll get to that.
But his whole intention is to preserve capital as much as possible while still growing the monthly dividends, but he has a slightly different strategy with this because of the age of my mom and the soon her going to be tapping. If you listen to quote experts or you read stuff, her account is what I would consider a traditional dividend growth investing account, what it would look like. I'll go through what she has as a reminder, but then I'll definitely touch on what we picked up with the things that she sold, and we're going to go over what she sold.
Yes, I think that'll be excellent. I mentioned Camping World. I just didn't like the low yield combined with the volatility.
In any month, it's up like 6% or down 6%. It's very volatile and bounces around, and I didn't like what that was doing. It's been a while, or you need a refresher.
Camping World is the one that cut its dividends significantly. It was like an 80% cut because it went on a buying RV spree. It had a lot of debt.
It bought up every dealership it could possibly. It straight up went into growth mode, so it kind of anti-dividended, which was not what we had hoped. Yes.
Then the second thing that I cut on hers was the Tesla yield max, the TSLY. I honestly believe they have an idiot running that particular yield max. Yes, that one is the worst of all of them.
Tesla is such an innovative stock. It has its ups and downs like every stock, but it's such an innovative stock. There's no reason that it should be at $11 a share, although it was damn near down half of what it did.
When it initially came out, it was $20, and it was down to $11 something. There's no way that Tesla should be- They did a reverse stock split or something, didn't they, too, that manipulated the price because it was down so low? That's the only one that's had that happen, isn't it? I think they have a tool bag running that one, so I just don't like how that one's going. We picked up YMAX, the yield max fund to fund one.
It actually has a portion of Tesla in that, so we still have exposure to the Tesla yield max. Yes, YMAX is accumulation of all the yield maxes all in one. For her particular situation, I didn't like the dividend kept going down every month.
The share price kept going down every month, and then they took, I want to say, probably 60% of our shares. That one was too high risk, so we decided to cut it. We also sold half of our position in Triple M. I've touched on that in a few of the podcasts.
Triple M recently just cut their dividend after 60-something years. I think it was 66 years. I wasn't too concerned that they cut the dividend because if you're not familiar with what Triple M did, they actually spun off their healthcare portion.
It was, I forget what it was called, SOVL, or it was SOLV or something like that. They spun that off, so they basically gave you, I think it was 20% in their healthcare portion. You still had your Triple M shares, but when they did that, that's the reason they cut their dividends because the healthcare segment of Triple M was generating so much revenue that they had no choice but to cut the dividend because they're two separate entities now.
We sold half of that position because I don't know what it's going to do. It's performed admirably since then. Well, I think we thought it was actually going to drop in price, which is the whole reason, or one of the big reasons we cut it in half, and it didn't do what we thought it was going to do because people react really strange to certain news sometimes.
I was actually really surprised that when they announced the dividend cut, that it didn't go down. It actually went up. That blew my mind a little bit.
Well, most people knew that it was strained financially, that they couldn't do dividend increases anymore because their revenue was... There's a prime example of like, is that justified? I don't really know, and you don't really know what's priced in, what's not priced in, how people are going to interpret sentiment when the quarterly reports happen. So, it's really hard to pre-predict things. So, we cut our exposure in half that one just in case.
Just in case. That was a risk mitigation type thing. We still have exposure to it, and I don't plan on ever getting rid of it.
I just didn't like how much money. We had damn near $11,000 in it, so I took half of that. And I imagine if it actually has a dip in price, we'll probably put more shares back in it when we... Maybe if we actually have the capital.
Depends if there's any... If it makes sense to do that, yes. Any cash. Then we sold both the ETNs that she was in.
The SLVO, which is the silver ETN, we took that. We sold that one when it hit really high because the price of silver has been up drastically in 2024. So, we took all of our profits in that, and we sold it all.
If you're not familiar with ETNs, they actually don't actually hold any physical silver. Or they don't hold any of the commodity that they're exchange-traded note for. It's just they basically hold paper.
So, they're very risky, but they do give you exposure to... The SLVO gives you exposure to the price appreciation to silver. USOI, which is the other one that we sold, gives you price appreciation to oil. We got rid of both those in her portfolio.
And then we sold half the position in AFG. Again, that one, we bought it at $100, and it was trading at $140. So, we sold half our position and took a lot of profits in that one.
So, those are the sells in the last six months in the retirement account. And then, proceeds of those, Tim picked up some good stuff. Yeah, then I did some tinkering because that's what I do.
Every day. First thing, I already mentioned, we picked up YMAX. Basically, it's the fund of funds for Yieldmax.
I actually like that strategy. If you're interested in Yieldmax, it would be the YMAX because you get access to all of their current Yieldmax funds. And any new ones that come out.
But then anytime a new one comes out, they actually just rebalance their Yieldmax portfolio to include the new ones that they brought out. They just brought out a Bitcoin one, and they just brought out a gold miner one. So, if you have YMAX, you automatically get exposure to those without having to free up any capital.
I love that they did this. And that one's actually making a good yield. I think I just looked up.
It's like 44%-ish. YMAX is up 14% for the year. Nice, nice.
So, it is doing that. I like that one a lot. I like that one a lot, actually.
And then, we went on a utility spree. We bought BKH, which is Black Hills Electric. It's a dividend at risk.
I just raised this dividend like 50-some years straight. I know. We've talked a lot about that one.
It yields close. It's for something that has a 50-year plus dividend growth streak. I think it's 56.
It yields 4.73% to 5%, depending on the share price. So, that's like a no-brainer. People are always going to need electric.
And this is before I actually was able to identify that electric is needed for the AI stuff. So, we just lucked out in that regard. Tim's idiot savantness at its finest.
And then, we picked up ES, which is another utility. It's Everstar or something like that. It yields 5% as well.
It doesn't have a dividend growth streak like Black Hills, but it's another really good utility one. Then, we picked up Pfizer, a PFE. That one yields 6%.
That one's kind of been trading sideways all year. So, that's more just for accumulating shares until it does what it's going to do. Because after COVID, that one shot up a lot because of the vaccine.
But ever since the revenue from the vaccine dried up because people are like, I don't need the vaccine anymore, Pfizer shit the bed. Then, I picked up VALE, which is an iron ore company. It pays a variable dividend, but the dividend is close to 11%.
But you only get it once or twice a year. So, that one's more of a just doesn't really go down in price. Kind of just trade sideways.
And then, I picked up BSM, which is a royalty company. It's Blackstone Minerals or something like that. It's a royalty company.
If you're not familiar with royalty companies, they own the land that oil and gold and stuff like that is mined on. And the company that mines it just gives them a percentage of whatever they make, like they give them a percentage of their profits. That's pretty cool.
That's a pretty cool deal. So, they're basically like a landlord. Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
They're collecting their rent. Like a trailer park, right? And then, we have EMB, which is an emerging market bond fund. It doesn't yield a lot.
It's only 5%. But I do believe in the next five years or so until she has to start tapping this money, that that should be a very safe 5% because emerging market bonds are going to be in high demand because they're all at like a 7% interest rate right now. It costs a lot.
That's like $89 a share. So, maybe that's not one that a lot of people get into, but I thought it was good for her portfolio. And then, she has two oil ones, EQNR, which is a Norwegian oil company.
It yields 12%. It's banging. I like that one a lot.
I do like Norway. And then, EPD, which is like a dividend achiever. It's been 20-some years of dividend increase, and it's a 7% yield.
So, basically, I took the USOI proceeds, which were for oil, and I just dumped them into two high-yielding oil companies that were more consistent and conservative. And less risky. And then, because this is for her retirement, I actually did dump it.
I got two funds that are tax-deferred. These are NAD and NZF. They're both municipal funds, so she doesn't have to pay any tax on them other than state tax.
So, there's no federal tax on those. So, if you're close to retirement, you should look at muni funds because they yield 5%. So, you're getting 5% on your money, but then you're not paying any tax on it.
So, that actually is like 7% or 8%, depending on how much your income is. Yeah. You have to factor that into that percent because it actually kind of is a behind-the-scenes thing that does impact.
And then the last new acquisition for her was CME. It's the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. If you're not familiar with that, that's like the biggest exchange in America.
And they just started crypto, Bitcoin, and Ethereum, ETFs, and futures, and things like that. It only yields 2.24%, but that's one of those ones where if you just look at what Yahoo Finance says or what the experts say, the 2.24% is misleading because they pay a special dividend every year. So, it's more like 7% or 8%.
So, those are the new ones that we picked up. So, you can see it wasn't as diversified as I thought. It was some utilities, some pharmaceutical, iron ore, bonds, oil, a couple of funds.
So, it wasn't anything. I figured we'd be pretty high in the utilities and stuff because that seems to be where the market is leaning towards the best profit margins for future, short-term future. So, if you listened the last time, she still owns JEPQ.
She still owns XYLD. JEPQ is the NASDAQ covered call thing. That has just popped off this year.
It's gone crazy. It's up 12% this year. She's up almost 60% total on that one.
That's cray-cray. Well, a lot of people, like if you read the articles, they always try to persuade you to the JEPI one, which is the sister one of JEPQ. I don't know why they always talk about JEPI.
I don't know why they talk about that one. That one doesn't perform as well as JEPQ. That is really weird.
And XYLD is the covered call of the S&P 500. I'm a firm believer in not doing index funds. As you can tell, we don't have any index funds.
But my solution to the index funds was the covered call kind of thing. XYLD is only up 6% year to date. But she's up 9%.
But she's got $5,000 in dividends. And what is that? How long has she had that one? Not very long. Not even three years.
She has $5,000 in dividends. Not even three years. What did she have invested in it? $5,000 in dividends? She's $8,000.
Oh, my God. That is insane. She's almost doubled her money in three.
She'll probably double her money in five years in that one. That one's insane. She originally bought 164 shares.
She's up to 266 now. So it's banging off. Obviously, she's an ABR.
ABR is one of my favorite. Yeah, Arbor's the bee's knees. One of my favorite REITs.
It's had a rough year. It's down 8%. Well, that was the one that kind of got weird manipulated, right? Yeah, but she's still up 40% in that one.
Yeah, we saw that that was being manipulated or whatever. So we swooped in and picked up shares, but it was really down. Yeah, that's one of the ones.
Did we discuss insider trading in the podcast? I know I sent an email out about insider trading. This is one. Every time it drops below $12, $11.50, the CEO and the director and everything will just pick up more shares.
So that obviously is what they determine as a undervalued price. Any time it drops down that far, I just put in whatever cash I have into ABR. She has so many... How many shares of ABR does she have? She has 342 shares of ABR.
And then she still has Hercules Capital, which is... I can't say enough about Hercules Capital. Like, I never hear anyone talk about Hercules. Yeah, I find that really weird.
It's up 23% for the year to date, but she's up 115% in Hercules Capital. That's incredible. Absolutely freaking fantastic.
She only invested $5,500. She's made $1,800 in dividends and her current value is over $10,000. She is almost... Yeah, she has 500 and some shares.
It's ridiculous. She's like doubled price. Yeah, that's crazy.
She still has Icon, IEP. That's one that if you've been a long-time listener of the 54 episodes, you know that one shit the bed hard. And we've just wrote it out.
Did we dump any of hers? Yeah, you did. You did actually take a hedge for that one and we stayed in it full. We took some shares off the table to mitigate some of that pullback that happened.
So she's actually as far down as we are in IEP. I still think IEP is going to turn around because Icon's made some major changes. She's down 33 a total, but what I've done on that one is I sold a portion of it and I just keep buying it back when it drops down to like 15 or 16.
So it's like her total cost basis is only 24 where ours is like 40 something. But I mean, I still think the company... Take her as long as they like... That one I fully expect there to be a dividend cut at some point in the future. They're probably going to take it from $1 down to $0.50. I don't know when, but right now they're paying the dollar out.
So just ride it. I think, again, if you remember, the reason that we had such a big issue with that one, especially in our other account, was because we had a higher percent allocation of the portfolio in it than we should have. So it put us at more risk and that's one of those risk mitigation strategies is like don't go all too far into one stock because something like IEP can happen.
Don't... Big learning lesson. So don't do what we did. I don't... Like now I don't like to have more than 6% of my total portfolio in any one position.
Yep. That's one of those things where we actually completely overhauled our strategy because we got burned by a hot stove. But we're safer and more risk... The next one is... It's another tech fund.
It's NBXG. It's another one I don't really hear about too often. It yields 10%.
It's up 15% for the year. She's up almost 70% in that one. Oh my god.
And she's made $1,000 in dividends. Like that one's one that... Crushing. Well, I mean, I wouldn't get into these now.
But like if you listened previously and you depicted your interest and you got into JEPQ or NBXG, kudos because they're really high now. Like they're like at 52. They might be at all-time highs.
I'm not sure. Yeah, that's the thing. Again, even if we mentioned some of these stuff being in our portfolio, your buy-in price is where you make the money.
So you have to implement the strategies from the episode that we talked about with having your price point, your valuation properly and going through those metrics. And then she's in SBLK, which is a dry bulk shipping company. It only yields 8%.
It's up 30% for the year. She's up 40% in that one. Like, dude, she's up in everything.
So... My mom is one of the luckiest people alive. And then here's a BDC I've never heard about. I don't know if I mentioned that when we did this last time.
It's Trinity. Trinity Capital. T-R-I-N.
You talk about Trinity all the time. But like I've never heard anyone discuss it. Yeah, I don't hear anybody else talk about it either.
Anyone. They always bring up like Main Street Capital and things like that. Trinity Capital pays 14.
It's a 14% yield. It's only up 10% for the year, but she's up... What is she up in that one? 54% in that one. We're up actually more than Trinity than she is.
Woo! We're actually beating her in one. Now, QRTEP is a preferred share of QRTEA or something like that. It's basically the QVC channel.
I mean, we mentioned it before. It's a 17% yield. I still am blown away by this stock just existing in general still.
She was up a lot more, but it just had a recent huge pullback. So if you wanted to get into preferred share that actually has a 17% yield, it just dropped like 20% because the company that issued the preferred shares fell below a dollar. So the NASDAQ gave them a letter saying you have to get above a dollar within a year or you're going to be delisted.
So people sold, they panic sold in that one. It is what it is. You think that's actually going to happen? I don't care.
It's a preferred share. So even if they get delisted, you're still going to get your... Interesting. ...preferreds. Then she's in UAN.
I know I'm... What happens when you get delisted? You go from the NASDAQ to like the over-the-counter or stuff like that. Standard pours or what the hell is that other one called? There's the pink sheets, which is the OTC. Oh yeah, the pink sheets.
That's what it is, the OTCs. And I think the NASDAQ has something similar to the pink sheets where if you get delisted, you just go into that. So it's like the bees.
Yeah, you're on the JV team. You're on like the... What is that? The timeout box. Then she's in UAN still.
I really like UAN, but it's super volatile. So if you can't handle volatility, I wouldn't get into UAN. It yields 12%.
But at any time, it could be worth $70 or any time it could be worth $100. That's one of those crazy ones. But I believe in what they do.
It is a fertilizer company. So it's cyclical. Like during the spring, its price is going to be higher.
During the summer, its price is going to be lower. Then during the fall, its price is going to be higher. It's just cyclical.
If you know anything about fertilizer, they use it in the spring and the fall. Yep, farming. 101.
And she's still in the NVIDIA yield max, NVDY. That one just popped off this year. It's up 70%.
She's up 150% in that one. Double what it's up. Nice, nice.
That's probably the best yield max in terms of price or capital appreciation. You don't really lose a lot of money in the NVIDIA yield max. Whoever's doing the options for that one knows what they're doing.
They should put that in charge of the Tesla one. Yeah, so YMAX we talked about. She's in YYY, which is a bond fund.
It's similar to PDI. They just buy funds and then they pay you a dividend. It yields 12%.
And those are great alternatives to the bond market right now because bonds are overpriced. It doesn't maneuver. You don't get a lot of price appreciation.
She's only up 14%. But you don't get a lot of bond appreciation if you buy in high. She's only up a year, but what it's doing is you're getting 12% on your money.
Yeah, that's incredible. It's pretty safe. Yeah, that's incredible because it's like a fund of bonds, correct? Kind of like bonds.
Well, they just go out and they'll get 100 and some different corporate bonds and then they'll just give you dividends off of it. So they're hedging risk. You're not buying individuals.
They do leverage and stuff like that. I don't know all the details. When a closeted fund does leveraging, I think it's how they generate more income, but I don't know exactly how risky it is.
Assuming if it's higher leverage, if it's 100% leverage, that's super risky. If it's 20% leverage, it's not that risky. But I don't know what the threshold is for the risk.
Do you know which one this one is? A lower risk? It's like 20%. Oh, that's not bad at all. Leverage.
Okay. And then she's in ARCC, which is a BDC that I hear a lot about. It is the largest BDC.
It yields 9%. That's still pretty good. I like Trinity Capital better.
I like Main Street Capital better than ARCC, but for her portfolio, it works out nicely. Then she's in another BDC, Capital Southwest, CSWC. This is one a while back.
I took profits because it shot up way too fast. I took half the money off the table because it like- Did it keep going? It kept going, didn't it? No, it's settled down. Oh, did it? She got it at $21 and it shot up to almost $30 around there.
And I took profits and it's currently at like $25, $24, $25. High five, bro. So it yields 10%.
So if you were going, I would actually not get into Capital Southwest. If you're thinking about a BDC, it would be ARCC or it would be Trinity Capital. Trinity Capital is like a 52-week high though.
So if you were just new, it'd be ARCC or Main Street Capital. Yeah, I would avoid the 52-week high ones. Mentioned Triple M. And then she's in Verizon.
I mean, I know I mentioned that one, dude. She fucking killed that one. Yeah, you got in such a good buy-in point when everybody was tweaking out about those cables.
She's up 40% in Verizon. Plus, she's a good 7%. Was it 7% yield? And when did we buy that? We bought that in October.
46% in like, what is that, eight months? Call it for a dollar. Now, I'm starting, if you listen to the macro trend episode we just did, and I mentioned the energy because she's in a lot of energy stocks. She's in UAN, which is a fertilizer energy.
She's in Exxon Mobil, which is oil energy. I did mention that she's in BSM, which is a royalty for energy. She's in EQNR, which is a Norwegian oil.
She's in EPD, which is another oil. She's in a lot of energy stocks. We picked up Exxon Mobil in December, and she's up 17% in that one.
That's phenomenal. And I know they're part of utilities, correct? It's oil. Exxon Mobil is just oil.
Yeah, but energy oil, it's part of the utilities, right? Well, no, that one's like, whenever I do the top 10 things, I noticed that Exxon Mobil was trading at like $100, and I know that's super cheap. It should be like $115, $118, $120 around there. Okay, so it was just a pattern recognition thing? She got that at $99.
I can't remember the specifics of the utility episode we did, but if they're not in that category. She yelled at me for trying to pimp out the email thing, but on the email subscription thing- No, I yelled at you because you did a double take. Go ahead, go ahead.
The email subscription thing, I do have every week, you know people, if you subscribe to different financial publications, they'll be like the top 10 highest-yielding stocks going ex-dividend next week, or they have the top 10 stocks in their portfolio going ex-dividend, shit like that. What I do is every week, I look at a huge list of stocks going ex-dividend for the next week, and I pick out the 10 best valuation ones, whether it be a closed-ended fund, whether it be an exchange-traded fund, whether it be a stock, whether it be a bond, whatever it is, whatever the case, a preferred share, it doesn't matter. I look at the best-valued ones, then I give you the top 10, in my opinion, the top 10 valuation ones going ex-dividend the next week, and I use the same metrics for all of them.
That's how I identified ExxonMobil trading at $99, that it was super undervalued. So I took some of the cash and I put it in ExxonMobil, and she's done well on that one. The whole point of that basically is, if you're on that email list, you're getting the training wheels of what Tim pretty much does every week, so that if we were just saying a lot of the stocks that are in our portfolio are higher in value than we would actually pull the trigger on if we were getting in as a new stock purchase, so what he's giving in the email is actually more of the things you should be getting into if you're just starting to put money into stuff.
We're just giving you an update on the performance of what we've recommended. If you followed what we were following, you should have similar results. That's the thing with the stock stuff.
It is real-time. It changes constantly. I'm on OGN is the next one she's on.
OG! Yeah, all the youngins call me the OG when I'm playing basketball. They're like, oh, what's up, OG? I'm like, eat my dust, youngins. The original gangster, Tim.
But OGN is a pharmaceutical company, and this is another one that I found when I was putting together the list for the top 10, the ex-David M ones. For this week or last week? This was a while ago. She got OGN.
She got into that. Oh, so you're saying it came up in one of the emails. If you'd been on our subscription, you would have found out when it was low price.
She got into that in December, and it's up 49% in 2024. She's up 100% in OGN. Holy crap! It was trading at $10, and it's currently trading at $20, $21, around there.
Holy shit! I'm saying that's why I pimp out the emails. Again, applause, Tim. You are a freaking fan now.
Because you find the valuations. Value really was the thing that soared off our strategy. And if you listen to the macro trend thing, value investing is- You've got to couple that with a dividend approach.
It really covers your ass. Because the value investing is how it's going to be for the next- until the interest rates get sorted out, value investing is going to be how you protect yourself and make money. And if you can't find anything that comes up the right value, put it in bullet shares.
And wait. Yeah. Well, I mean, what I do is I have a list of things that I'm somewhat interested in, and then I just wait.
Yeah, until there's bad news or there's weird pullback. If I'm putting together the top 10 chart. And I'm like, well, that one looks interesting. I'll research it some more. And I'll be like, well, I guess I can put some money into that.
But like, for the most part, these are all ones like the ones that she made a lot of money on, except for Hercules and Trinity, I found in when I was doing the top 10 things going next to him. That's freaking awesome. So like, I'm literally what I'm giving people.
Yeah, you're getting a glimpse into Tim's mind every week. What I'm giving people to read is I'm like pulling the trigger on a lot of the shit. And I like now that you do the portfolio update as like a week-to-on-week basis, which is nice because it'll show people what we've actually changed.
Yeah, and she's in BTI, which is British Tobacco. There's always a discussion, do you want to be in Altria, which is MO, which is Marlboro, or do you want to be in British Tobacco, which is like Newport? So I did an experiment and I put us into MO and our Schwab fund and I put her mom into BTI. BTI is crushing it? BTI is up 10% for the year and she's up 10% total.
Do you know offhand if that's different compared to ours? Because she's usually beating us. That's why I'm curious. I think we're actually above.
Are we actually beating her on one? Holy crap. BTI yields almost 10% and Altria yields 9%. That's the difference.
But Altria is the dividend aristocrat. So I don't know why I didn't put her in MO and put us in BTI, but I just liked us better in MO and her better in BTI. I feel like you wanted a win.
No, BTI, I think if I was going through this right now, BTI is probably going to be one of the first to get cut. Oh, okay. I just don't like it.
It's price appreciation is not following suit with the other tobacco companies. But then she is in probably one of my favorite real estate stocks that we'll never have enough money in Schwab for, which is IIPR, which is the- How much is that a share? $108. Oh.
IIPR is, if you're not familiar, it is the real estate one for marijuana. Marijuana. It literally rents out buildings to all the pot stock companies.
It only yields 7%. That's freaking awesome if you're wanting to invest in pot stocks. She's up 14% and she just got that in December.
Again, she bought it in December. She's already made $3.64 in dividends. And that one's only going to go up and up and up because once they legalize marijuana, that fucker is going to just shoot through the roof.
Oh, I know. And they're on the cusp of that. It keeps popping up in the news.
That is going to take a long time. Now, here's one that I know nobody had the stones to get into. And I saw it and said, I'm going to get into it.
What is it? What is it? It's Bristol-Myers. Bristol-Myers, BMY. It only yields 6%, but it's down 18% for the year.
She's down 12% and I'll probably put more money into it. But Bristol-Myers, it is, when we were doing, when I was looking at the earnings reports for all of them, the reason that the pharmaceutical sector was down as far as it was, is because Bristol-Myers Squibb pulled the whole pharmaceutical sector down. Do you think that had an impact on Pfizer? No, Pfizer just had shit financials because the COVID vaccine was not... Well, they're not selling at the same rate, so it makes sense that they'd have to adjust profit margins.
But I'm sure there'll be another virus or something. But if you have the stones to handle volatility until it recorrects, you can collect 7%, plus I'm assuming at least 100% price appreciation throughout the years. And Warren Buffett always talks about buy when other people are fearful.
And when they're down like that, that's a fantastic buying opportunity. Good on you, Tim. Yep.
People don't have the stones to do that. They're like that. Contrary investing is super hard for people because they can't like... Herd mentality.
They can't fathom that everyone else is selling, why would you buy? But that's when you make money. Oh, man. Herd mentality is a... Okay.
The last stock... I mean, we did went through all the bottom ones already, the new ones. The last one is NEE. That's the... Oh, the utility in Florida.
The Florida Electric Company. That's up 32% for the year. That's awesome.
She's up 32% because we pretty much bought that at the beginning of the year, 1229, yeah. Is that the one you nailed for the price point in? Yeah. Fantastic.
And that's one that only yields 2.63%, but that's a super safe 2.63%. And again, utilities grow year over year. And like, yeah, they're going to give you your dividend. Like I think it's 7% to 10% dividend growth every year.
So that's when you just put your money into it and just set it, forget it. Yeah. Utilities are awesome.
It's a little high. It's trading around $80 right now. Why would we wait till it falls back to 60? Because it will fall back down to 60 at some point.
And then before getting to that one or just getting to NEP. I mean, NEE has a preferred share that yields 6%, but it's getting ready to... I think it gets called back in like six months. So you could wait if you're thinking about getting the NEE, because I'm sure they'll offer more preferred shares once the current ones are called back.
That's one of the few utility companies that actually has a preferred share. I was going to say, that's interesting. They have the sister company, NEP, and then they also have a preferred for the same thing.
I like NEP a lot though, but that's just because they have like, they're like the biggest... I like them both. Alternative energy. And then she has the MO bond and she has the Mylon, which is another... So you got her an MO through the bond, but not... She was in the MO bond since 2022.
That's cool. And she's been in the Mylon bond since 2020. She would have more, but that one actually cashed out, right? Yeah, that one we did discuss, it called back the bond.
She was up a lot in that one. And I will reiterate, had we got in that one at a current valuation price, she would have actually lost money at the callback. And that is why we do not recommend getting into bonds right now.
That's what she's in. You can see that how it's super, like, it's not super conservative, like other people think conservative is. But like, if you know us and how we talk, you can see that there are a lot of conservative investments.
She's in two bonds. She's in some... A lot of utilities. A lot of utilities, which are conservative.
She's in some municipal bond funds, which is conservative. She's in... And I think the risk mitigation component with getting in with the valuation change, that to me is a risk hedging conservative move. So like the price appreciation or the price capital preservation is working because she hasn't lost any.
Even when the markets did the shit they did in 2023, she wasn't really down all that much. And we were down like 20%. Yeah, she was down, I think, 6%.
So whenever things turned around in 2024, like she didn't really have a lot of appreciation to get back to where she was. But she was collecting dividends on all these undervalued companies that I've been getting her into. So she did have some growth more so than she would have had a flat rate.
Yeah, so like she's fine. Like she's getting around $1,500 to $1,600 a month in dividends. And you'll see whenever we go over the Schwab one next week that she actually gets less income than we do with our riskier Schwab portfolio.
But she has the comfort of the less risky investments that she's not going. She doesn't have the price fluctuation like we do. Yeah, she doesn't have the volatility.
This last week in Schwab, like the markets were technically up, but we lost like $4,000 in Schwab this last week. Yeah. And next week's portfolio isn't going to reflect that fluctuation because we did the numbers before.
Yeah, I did them at the Jan, June 1st. That is the kind of downfall. It takes a lot of time to go through this stuff.
And when the markets do these corrections, it's like- And I know, and if you've read or listened to any of the other experts, you're not supposed to have as many stocks as she does. She has like 34, 35. But again, I think that's horseshit.
I think if you have the time or the desire to stay on top of whatever you have, you can have as many investments as you want. I think it depends on your ability to manage what you have. It seems like she's super- She has a lot of oil stocks.
She has a lot of pharmaceutical stocks. She has a lot of utility stocks. I think those are three sectors that will be doing well in the next 12 to 18 months.
So that's why we stocked up on them. Yep. And that's where we were talking about that allocation episode that in an ideal world, you would have certain stuff as certain allocations.
But as macros shift, it makes sense to go heavier into different sectors as the economics climate changes. I think that I'd like to mention here, you noticed how when I was discussing BTI, I said the first one that will get axed is BTI. You should have an idea in your portfolio based on macro trends and economic trends and bull market trends and recession probabilities, you should have an idea of what you're going to get out of.
As things shift and unfold and the data comes out. So you're on the front run. All that list we have there, the EMB will probably, because it only yields like 4%, would be one of the first ones that if shit hit the fan, I would get out of and put it in bullet shares.
BTI is one that I would- is probably the first one to go. Then Capital Southwest would probably be another one to go. So I have a list in my head.
If I need- if things- the winds shift, I have a list of things that I'm going to get out of to put into bullet shares to preserve capital. So basically, if things go a specific way, you have a list of what you're going to do. It's like a preemptive action plan.
You always- you have to have that. You can't- this whole set it and forget it nonsense. I don't recommend it being in your head.
I recommend it being written out. The only thing that works for is if you do index funds, but if you do index funds- You have to sell to make your profit. That's a 30-year plan.
Exactly. That's not a year-to-year plan. That's fine if that's what you want to do, but we do not want the deferred life plan.
And we're speaking from the perspective- In your mom's situation, she doesn't have 30 years. So I couldn't do the index fund. Exactly.
And in our situation, we don't have the 30 years because I want to have the money so we can go do what we want to do now. So I don't have the luxury of doing a set and forget it when the index funds. And I was just talking to our super adorable older neighbor lady.
I'm not sure how old she is. I know she's on social security and she said she's only making $1,500 a month. I think that's it.
She got screwed out of her husband's life insurance and something else happened. But she did- It sounded like she took all her savings to pay her house off. But you know that inflation creep and all this other stuff's happening.
And I just want to help her so bad. So we may nudge her to see if she'd be willing to possibly take some advice. If that does happen, we'll update you guys because I'm actually kind of excited because I was just over here doing crazy risky shit.
And most people aren't like me, but I was like, I'd sell the house, take the proceeds, go half into Yieldmax, half into safety stuff, and then move, downsize apartment and get rid of a couple things. I just updated our- We completely got rid of Verizon. We are currently saving $1,000 a year switching from Verizon to Vision for Tim and I because it would have been $65 a month.
And then Vision comes out to be $25 a month per line. And that's 960. And then we actually had $220 sign up bonus thing.
So we actually ended up saving. So again, when we talk about shit in the podcast, we're actually doing it. That's why we're talking about it.
We're not like the ones that talk about it and actually don't do it. Anything that I mentioned in the podcast, I invest in. I've been wanting to do it, but it was a huge pain in the butt.
When we're talking about the budgeting thing, we've already done the budgeting thing. When we're talking about the money saving possibilities, we've done a majority of the things. We're just currently switching around credit cards so when we get on the road, we'll have a 5% cash back for gas and a 5% cash back for groceries because that'll be our two biggest expenditures.
And I want to get one for utilities because I didn't realize Starlink went up as much as it did. So I want to maximize that. And I was running the numbers for what we possibly are spending.
And we could be conceivably saving, I think, almost a full $1,000 for the year. Or actually, it might be closer to the $1,500 mark, which would actually be you live 11 months and you get a month free of your bills. Like I literally just said that like we were just feel like I didn't do the conscious math.
She was talking about something a couple of days ago. Because we were only doing the 3%. You're literally like if you do it correctly, you're living, you're getting a month free every year.
A month free. And that's the thing. Tim did his precursory brain thing that he does.
And then I was like, oh, that's a great idea. And I went deep dive mode. I'm going to create a spreadsheet for people.
And it's going to be based on your intentional spending plan, like what your highest categories are. You should be maxing out those 5% where you can for sure. I mean, this is completely off topic from the portfolio.
But if you are doing the credit, I can't stress enough. You have to be responsible. Yes.
And the reason that they do that is because they know most people aren't responsible. And they'll be paying almost the 30% interest on their balance carryover. On their freaking rent possibly.
That's insane. No. Yeah.
I definitely caution risk. The first part about it. You've got to be a responsible credit card spender.
Yep. And do that auto. If you can do that, then you can literally live a month.
I'm in the process of putting together a system to actually try to help people do that. Almost seems like it could be a YouTube thing. Like how do you live a month free? But I'm thinking I actually am going to create a system so that you can – It's almost like you're not using credit cards, but you're using credit cards because you're setting up these auto pays.
And then you'll be moving money from one account to – Like you'd set up two accounts so that when you look at your account, you see what's left. Because a lot of people will spend based on what's in their checking account. But if you have that separate account, and you move money every time you make a purchase on the credit card, you kind of put that buffer in place.
I'm going to create a course, or we'll do a YouTube video, or we'll do something once I get the whole – Trust me, it's a lot of credit cards to go through, and it's going to take me a hot minute because I'm very thorough. Oh, so like I forgot to mention. For her portfolio, she's up almost 12% for the year, year to date.
What's the market up? The market was up 11%. So she's been – She was up 1% before like when we updated this. So like that portfolio is doing well.
It's not doing as well as Schwab is. That's great. That's a conservative portfolio.
What's the normal return on a conservative portfolio? Like 5%, 6%? 5% or 6%. Yeah. So that's freaking like double that.
That's fantastic. That's what they don't tell you. Like if you do like the conservative approach, it's like 5% to 6%.
If you do the risky approach, it's either 0% or it's like 15% or 16%. If you do the index fund, it's like 10%. So like that's like when we discussed – They all have trade-offs.
The risk tolerance in your investor profile. This is all stuff that I had in my head. The – Order.
The order that we did everything is because you need to know what your risk tolerance is. Most people don't have a lot of – Like they think they do, but they don't. When it comes to seeing your like portfolio balance going from like 100,000 down to 75,000, they shit their pants.
Yeah. But you have to believe in the process that in the investor profile, you have to determine like what you are comfortable investing in if you want like a moderate portfolio, if you want like an aggressive portfolio. And as a newbie, I definitely recommend going the conservative route out the gate.
So that is why like – That's why everything went – The order did and like we're starting to get into the nitty-gritty. Like I can't wait to do the episode where I actually – Yes, where you get to actually analyze real-time for people. You can see real-time how I analyze just five stocks and I'm just going to pick from random and go in next dividend.
So you can see like, oh, that's what he's doing. Yep. And we're going to do a video for that one.
Because I was literally just talking to Carmela about this. I want this to be where you guys learn everything and you don't have to listen to me. Yep.
Our goal is to make you not need us. We want to teach you how to fish so you can keep fishing. So I'm hoping that like – It's not even like a lot of people will teach people.
So then they're like, I learned this from so and so. You should watch their channel. Ideally for me, I'd like you to learn and then people be like, wow, you're doing great.
Then you teach them the exact same method and they don't even ever need to like listen to me because they just listen to you. I teach you the fundamentals. I teach you the valuations.
I teach you how to do everything. And then you teach other people so that like I'm guessing – Snowball. We just want to snowball.
I guess I'm teaching by proxy. You're teaching vicariously through other people. When we get on the road, there's going to be like – I'm probably going to sit around.
She'll probably record me sitting around talking to other like travelers. Yeah, we'll start doing live time. And I'll be talking just like here's how – here's our investing.
Here's how we're paying for our life on the road. Everybody should do it. And then it will be like you see us interacting with people like one-on-one.
It's going to be interesting. I think you probably won't like that as much as – Well, we'll keep doing the podcast if this is your jam. But then we're going to have other types of ways.
I can't stress enough though like if you haven't subscribed to the email, you should subscribe to the email. Like the email – Yeah, if you're getting ready to pull the trigger on stuff, you really should be on the email because you're getting the training wheels. You're getting a list of top 10.
The podcast is like two to three weeks behind the emails. Yeah. So like when I bring it up in the podcast, that price valuation has already possibly passed.
So like if you – so like when we're discussing like say when I was – I don't know. I'm discussing CME for example. Well, that price passed because it was like two, three weeks prior.
But if you were on the email, you would have got it real time. So just saying that guy can't – Well, we can advance. Two weeks to the minimum.
Yeah. But it's still not real time. Well, whatever.
Closer to real time. The next week is the Schwab portfolio. That's the more fun portfolio.
Yeah. So we're going to do the same thing. We're going to talk about it from a slightly more risk prone perspective.
But we really do do that safety margin thing with the valuation. So we have like – so next week is Schwab. The week after that is going to be the real time.
I'm going to do five real time. Then I'm going to do that. So that next week and then the week after is the five real time valuation thing.
Then the week after, that's the Yieldmax thing. So that's that. So next week, Schwab portfolio.
And I think she'll link like a bunch of shit down in the notes. I don't know what she does. I'm going to do – I'm going to actually put a thing so you can look over the portfolio in the show notes.
Cool. Have a good week. Because I know that was a lot to consume.
So have a great week, guys. See you next week. Enjoy your summer and we'll be back next week.
It's hot as freaking balls in the northeast. Yeah. Heatwave.
It's supposed to be 100 degrees this week. So I'm going to be outside and play basketball. Alrighty, guys.
Enjoy your week and keep on keeping on. Fighting, bitches.